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*Music maestro AR Rahman is a National Treasure. He is certainly bigger than Slumdog Millionaire. * New Delhi, Jan 23, 2009: By bagging 3 Oscar nomination AR rahman has made India proud. Slumdog Millionaire has swept Oscar nominations and Indian maestro AR Rahman has got 3 Oscar nominations. This is the first for any Indian and everyone is sure that Allah Rakkha Rahman would certain be rewarded by an Oscar. Allah Rakka Rahman or AR Rahman is on his way to an Oscar. He has done the whole nation of billion plus people proud by bagging the first ever Golden Globe Award by any Indian. The occasion was all the more delightful for India as there was Shah Rukh Khan who was asked to give away one of the Golden Globe prizes. This was also the first for any Indian. Both are big names of Indian cinema. Shah Rukh Khan is known as King Khan in India's Bollywood, the film industry that produces the largest number of films in a calendar year. He is indisputably the No.1 actor in Bollywood. AR Rahman is the best film composer in India. He is the reigning music king of Indian film industry for the last more than two decades. Besides he has composed music for almost all leading vernacular film industries including Telgu and Tamil that are known for big budget films. Rahman has won all the known awards for his music. He is the 1995 recipient of the Mauritius National Award and the Malaysian Award for contributions to music. He was nominated for a Laurence Olivier Award for his first West-End production. A four time National Film Award winner and conferred the Padma Shri from the Government of India, Rahman has received six awards for Best Music at the Tamil Nadu State Film Awards and eleven awards for his scores at the Filmfare and Filmfare Awards South each. In 2006, he received an honorary award from Stanford University for contributions to global music. A 2008 Critics Choice Awards winner for Best Composer, Rahman became the first Indian national to win a Golden Globe, winning for Slumdog Millionaire in the category of Best Original Score AR Rahman was born actually as Dileep Kumar on the 6th of January in the year 1966 in Chennai. His father was a known musician but dies the day when the first film he had composed hit the theatres. AR was only 11 years at that time. His early days were one of struggle and hardships. At the age of 11, his father passed away following a mysterious illness with rumours abounding that he was the victim of black magic practised by his rivals. Unfortunately R. K. Shekhar passed away the very same day his first film as composer was released. It was at this time that Rahman's belief in God first took a beating. Much of his time was filled with hospital visits, pain and anxieties. It is an issue that Rahman outrightly refuses to discuss even today. After his father's death the pressure of supporting his family fell on the young Dileep. At first the family subsisted by lending out his father's musical instruments. It was his mother who encouraged the young Dileep Kumar to follow in his father's footsteps and fully supported him in his vocation. But all this had an adverse effect on his formal education. Infrequent attendance and an unaccommodative management forced him to shift schools from the prestigious Padma Seshadri Bal Bhavan to the Madras Christian College and finally he dropped out of school altogether when he was doing his 11th grade. Later he was able to get a full scholarship to the famed Trinity College of Music at Oxford University from where he obtained a degree in Western Classical Music. He came back with a dream to bring an international and contemporary world perspective to Indian music. Dileep converted to Islam from Hinduism in 1989 merely years before his first Bollywood blockbuster Roja was released. He converted to Islam along with his family after a personal experience with a Sufi Pir. When asked what prompted him to convert to Islam, he says "I remember my father suffering. He was taken to eight to nine hospitals, including the CMC hospital in Vellore and the Vijaya hospital in Madras. I saw him suffering physical pain... I remember the Christian priests who would read from the Bible beside his hospital bed... I remember the pujas and the yagnas performed by the pundits... by the time, the Muslim pirs came , it was too late. He had already left us. After my father passed away, for some years when I was a teenager I believed there was no God. But there was a feeling of restlessness within me. I realised that there can be no life without a force governing us... without one God. And I found what I was looking for in Islam. I would go with my mother to durgahs. And pirsaab Karim Mullashah Qadri would advise us. When we shifted to this house, we resolved to stick to the faith."Rahman became a very religious and devout Muslim. After this period his career graph began to take the upward path. More and more advertising offers came his way. In Bollywood he came through famous Tamil and Bollywood producer Mani Ratnam. He was introduced to Mani Ratnam by one of Ratnam's cousins. He was interested to learn about his music and one day dropped at AR's studio. The 24 year old lad played out a tune that he had been pushed into composing by his school friend G.Bharat alias Bala when they both had been greatly disturbed by the socio-political tensions in South India over the Cauvery river waters issue. Listening to the tune that was played, Mani was hooked instantly. Without a second thought he signed on the composer to score the music for his next film. That film did not work out but Mani signed him on for a new film which was to be produced by the veteran Tamil director K.Balachander for his respected 'Kavithalayaa' banner. That film was 'Roja'. That tune would become the song "Tamizha Tamizha" in 'Roja'. The music of the film would be a phenomenal success that would revolutionise modern day Indian film music. The name of the 25-year old composer was A. R. Rahman. And the rest, as they say, is history. http://www.khabrein.info/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=19512&Itemid=70&limit=1&limitstart=2 -- regards, Vithur
