Mozart of Madras becomes Bollywood badshah…

Two years after he made a sensational debut with the Tamil hit ‘Roja’, AR Rahman made his debut in Telugu cinema in 1994 with the Venkatesh-Nagma starrer ‘Super Police’. Call it a jinx or pure coincidence, over two decades, it was the only film that he has scored music for in Tollywood till date, as all his other local hits were dubbed from Tamil, helmed in by big banners and famed directors like Mani Ratnam, Shankar, Rajiv Menon, etc.

A year later, the maverick movie maker Ram Gopal Varma, took one of the numbers from this Telugu film to include it in the collection of songs for his Aamir Khan-Jackie-Urmila venture ‘Rangeela’. This song “Yaro Sun Lo Zara” is a faithful replication of the Telugu song in which a hyper active Venkatesh and Nagma jive to the peppy beats of the ‘Mozart of Madras’.

Not only this number, the film had all its songs lapped up eagerly by the upcountry audience. This resulted in a mercurial shoot up of AR Rahman into the top league of Hindi film music industry, in a jiffy.

If it was an indoor, set-confined one in Telugu, here the ambience is open and public. As the opening strains of the music arise in the background, a slightly hyper Urmila Matondkar, matching the over-the-top gesticulating and hand waving of Aamir Khan gets ready for the bump-n-grind routine.

Only that it is calibrated to suit the pace and moves of the average dancer that Aamir is, as seen performing. Playing the role of a street-smart youngster, Aamir had won many hearts with his performance.

Only that in retrospective, the song looks simply placed and without the adornments that modern compositions have. Urmila, when it comes to her turn too, moves awkwardly to begin with, but the grace factor is better in her case.

The lyrics which emphasise how material things are important in day-to-day life by the heroine, is contrasted by the devil-may-care attitude of the hero who believes in living for the day. The dance gets more freestyle and carefree, with the junior artistes jumping around the two crazy stars.

As the scene moves towards the beach, Udit intones in a high pitch: “Hum ko dekho mere yaara, apni marzi ke raja”…. to which the heroine gives a pointed repartee. There is no way Aamir can be tempered as he continues “naam apun ka munna bhai, hum karein woh dil mein samayi”, which says it bluntly.

This five-minute creation of Rahman has been a top-of-the- mind one for many who have been keen to live life on their own terms, throughout the past two decades it has been playing out across audio platforms.

Urmila, who had a record run during that period pairing with many marquee names of the film industry was also linked with RGV for reasons more than professional. The simple, jingle-jangle of the song with a soothing set of visuals depicting the city of Mumbai, the high rises and the sea waves makes it a personal favourite.