AR Rahman has six National Awards, two Oscars, and two Grammy Awards among other accolades to his credit. He has his parents to thank for the same. While his father was a music composer who inspired him to pursue the profession right from childhood, his mother encouraged him to skip academics and follow in his father’s footsteps.
“She was the visionary who felt like I should take forward what my father did and not go waste my time on schooling, college and everything. And she was completely opposite to how other parents were. It stunned me. In fact, the one decision I took was to build a memorial for her because I think she deserved that for the courage to take a decision with an instinct that’s not normal for any mother to do,” said Rahman.
In the interview with Nayandeep Rakshit, he recalled how it surprisingly came as a relief to him that his parents passed away, since they suffered in ill health for years. “I was too young (when my father died). He was suffering. When people are suffering, you feel a sense of relief for them when you lose them,” confessed Rahman.
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He claimed that the sudden demise of his sound engineer came as more of a rude shock to him than the slow death of his ailing mother. “My sound engineer died of a heart attack. That hit us harder than what my mother went through for eight years, suffering, and then passed away. When she passed away, we felt good for her. She almost said, ‘I don’t want to suffer more. Please let me go.’ And then we didn’t know what to pray for. We just left it to God whatever is good for her. So life is complicated. But when you see what other people are going through, mine is nothing,” added Rahman.
Rahman‘s father RK Shekhar was a composer and conductor in Tamil and Malayalam films. Rahman began assisting his father early on, and learnt the piano and the keyboard at the age of four. Rahman was just nine when his father died so he had to often skip school to work and support his family. Rahman’s mother Kareema Begum passed away in 2020.
On the work front, Rahman is all set to kickstart his ‘Wonderment’ tour. The maiden concert will take place on May 3 at DY Patil Stadium, Mumbai. In February, Rahman wowed the audience in Chennai by joining global singer Ed Sheeran on stage during his Mathematics Tour concert. He is also set to compose music for the Dhanush and Kriti Sanon starrer Tere Ishk Mein, which is a spiritual sequel to the blockbuster film Raanjhanna. It is directed by Anand L Rai.