Jai Ho!!!

Hurray! He did it! A billion prayers answered. An Indian composer wins the prestigious Golden Globe best composer award for the first time. It's ARR's tribute to India and Indian music. I was lucky to catch the live presentation of the 66th annual Golden Globe awards on TV last Sunday and all the anticipation ended in jubilation. I was so proud to see the entire audience, the who's who from Hollywood and from other film fraternities around the world, give an impromptu standing ovation to our "Mozart of Madras" as he walked up the stage to get his award. And then each time a Slumdog nomination or award was announced, the inspirational song "Jai ho" played in the background.

I would not say that Slumdog Millionaire is Rahman's best work. It very well ranks with the top music he has produced in the last 15-16 years. But he needed this film to catapult himself and India to a global level of recognition. In fact, in the 2 days since the GGs, I have heard at least 4-5 people I work with, actually evincing interest in his work and talking about his music for the film. I think that is simply remarkable. Soon, they will be able to pronounce his name well too! (They called him AR Roman or some such thing at one of the award ceremonies.)

2008 was indeed a fantastic year for ARR. Before we could have enough of one album, he came up with another chartbuster. Jodha Akbar, Jaane Tu Ya Jaane Na, Ada, Yuvvraaj, Ghajini, Slumdog Millionaire... wow! And what a way to start the year! I can see many more awards coming his way in the next few months. An Academy award too perhaps; watch out on February 22, 2008. Another billion prayers for the musical genius please!

And from reading a million news articles on ARR in the last 2-3 days, I can tell you somethings that you probably didn't know:

That Shahrukh Khan was offered the part of Anil Kapoor as the host of the 'Who wants to be a millionaire', but refused because he was busy with Om Shanti Om. He apparently regrets it now! First, he missed Lagaan, and now this.

The award winning song "Jai Ho" was composed by Rahman for Yuvvraaj, as a song for Zayed Khan's character. Subhash Ghai felt that it did not suit the movie, and agreed to let ARR use it for Slumdog instead.