At TIFF 2025, renowned composer A.R. Rahman took a pause and talked about the moment of risk, fear, and ultimately faith that could have changed the course of his career.
Years ago, when the offer to score Slumdog Millionaire came in from director Danny Boyle, Rahman’s manager wasn’t convinced.
In fact, he was warned against it. “Actually, what happened was my agent at that time said, ‘Don’t do this because you might get fired.’ I said, ‘Okay, nobody will know that I got fired if I don’t tell it out. So, I scored the movie and Danny was amazing. You have all the system around which confuses you. So, I went ahead with it and the result was great. It was actually a leap of faith and courage. Sometimes, people confuse you but you have to think what you have to do, what is right."
What makes Rahman’s story so powerful isn’t just the global success that followed — it’s how personal the journey was. He didn’t even tell his own team what he was working on.
“I did it in secret. The team thought it was a documentary or something like that. It brought in a bigger international audience for me. In life, you get certain projects which are very blessed." He said.
Even now, despite his success, Rahman continues to hold himself to a standard that many would find exhausting. “Please myself? Yes. I torture myself. I am not seeking validation. My validation which I seek is within myself. If I do something under my level, I feel guilty. I don’t sleep for many nights."
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And the pressure doesn’t fade — it evolves. “Sometimes, I have sleepless nights for a month, thinking about why I did something and how I should have done better. Even with mixing or anything else. I have trained a lot of people now so that even if I miss anything, they do the last checkup. The problem with life is that – the more you evolve, the more guilty you feel, the more you want to go deep in within your work."
Now, Rahman is channeling that same drive and depth into Gandhi, an ambitious series by Hansal Mehta, with Pratik Gandhi in the lead.
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