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Rahman will score for Shekhar Kapur's Paani
70 per cent of his compositions these last two years never saw light of day!
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Subhash K Jha
A R Rahman will compose the score for Shekhar Kapur's Paani. The film, set in a Mumbai 20 years from now, will be scripted by Andrew Niccol who wrote Peter Weir's Jim Carrey starrer, The Truman Show.
Paani will mark Kapur's second collaboration with Rahman after Andrew Lloyd Webber's hit musical, Bombay Dreams. That show -- Kapur suggested Rahman as composer to Webber -- recently crossed the 10 million pounds mark in London and staged its 200th performance on December 11.
After Bandit Queen and Elizabeth, Kapur briefly made waves last September with The Four Feathers. The film was not a box office success.
Rahman reveals that Webber wants to work with him again. This time on an opera, "though I have no clue what he wants," he chuckles.
The affable composer is riding high with his score for debutante director Shaad Ali's Saathiya. "After Taal all my music, like Lagaan, Zubeidaa and The Legend Of Bhagat Singh was period-specific. After a long time, a soundtrack of mine has been liberated from a specific situation. That is why Saathiya has been liked."
"A lot of Saathiya's music is from its Tamil original Alai Payuthey," he continues. "That is because it is the same story. When I heard the story, it immediately conjured a specific set of ideas in my mind. When I had to do the same thing again in Hindi, I could not revise those images. There were two tunes from the original Tamil that did not work in Hindi . So I composed two new ones, Banjar hai and Naina milaike."
In a startling revelation, Rahman says 70 per cent of his compositions in the last two years never saw the light of day. "Between 2000 and 2002, nine of my projects in Hindi and a couple in Tamil never took off. So 70 per cent of my output during this period never came out. It was very frustrating. There are so many people waiting to work with me. I had to turn them down to do work that never got released. But I can't complain. I know what the film industry is going through. I am hoping something like my work in Deepa Mehta's Water gets released."
He is off to London again which, he says, has become his cultural centre, midway between India and the US. This time, he will compose his first-ever English set of songs for Toronto-based musician Karen David.