You have always had an extraordinary result with A.R.Rahman, who unlike you barely knows Hindi and Urdu. How do you explain foolproof joint collaborations like Dil Se..., Saathiya and now Guru? I think that music directors, like lyricists and singers, have a very keen sense of the most delicate tonal variations in sound. When we work together, I like to travel with my words as usual and he likes to travel with what he can do in music that is innovative. But the results come because both of us are travelling with the film.
Also, a quality that Rahman has is that he has totally changed the format of our songs - with him it is not necessary to have the conventional mukhda-antara-mukhda structure. His songs often run like a free verse poem, and free verse eminently suits me! Guru is yet another example of how I mentally go and park myself into the characters psyche in a situation. Aishwarya Rais song Barso re... has all the images associated with a village. Abhishek Bachchans songs have liberal Urdu and Persian as he has worked in Turkey, and I have maintained this even in their duets! In fact in one song the heroine even asks him in a line, Kyoon Urdu-Pharasi bolte ho? ----- For full interview http://www.screenindia.com/fullstory.php?content_id=14670
