Two years back when rickshawallon ka apna hero cum music director cum singer Himesh Reshmmiya expressed his wish to sing for A R Rahman, I could sniff that there was something more in between the lines. For me it was the beginning of a real life drama where the two protagonists come from two opposite stratum of culture.
There is no common platform where these two persons can be compared apart from the fact that both are Hindi film music directors.
Some images flashing in my mind:
Himesh Reshmmiya was the judge of a popular music talent hunt show. There was a boy whom Himesh was mentoring. Every time that boy was losing out on votes from his nearest competitor, Himesh used to scream at the top of his voice and would 'promise' him 'another' song in his forthcoming film. Now the scene was that, at that time Himesh was at the peak of his career as music director and was having numerous projects in hand; whereas, that other boy's mentor was Ismail Darbar who had nothing but to smile and digest the insult as he could not 'promise' any song to his disciple as he had no project in hand. This action of Himesh brought huge applause in the set and also 'good words' for him. Eventually when that movie released where that contestant of that talent hunt show was supposed to sing three MAIN songs had only one remix song sung by his loved disciple. I know NOBODY really bothers to know who sings which song NOWADAYS but what about the promise? And that promise which is made in front of so many viewers?
Another image:
When A R Rahman composed the song Tere Bina for Mani Rathnam's Guru, he asked Qadir to sing it and he actually recorded the song with him. But Mani Ratnam wanted Rahman to sing it and he was not ready to listen to any arguments. When Rahman saw that there was no way to convince Mani Ratnam, he sang it. But he was not in peace. He broke a promise that he had made to Qadir. After that on every possible occasion whenever Guru soundtrack was mentioned, A R Rahman made it a point to mention this incident to the media, which was more like asking for the forgiveness from Qadir. Someday later Sony Music brought out an MP3 with Rahman's songs, including Qadir's Tere Bina in the CD and thus Qadir's song reached to millions. No prize to guess who might have requested the company to put that song.
Now back to present day. Suddenly one day Himesh Resmmiya makes a sensational statement in the media that he being a huge fan of A R Rahman, he would like to sing for A R Rahman. The media gets excited. They ask A R Rahman on every subsequent interviews that when he was planning to give Himesh a song. Probably here comes the cultural difference between two people. While Himesh made this comment just for some extra publicity, Rahman really believed him. Though he never promised anything to Himesh (at least via media), two years later when A R Rahman finally composes a tune for Himesh, the latter turns it down for some stupid reason.
The media must be happy with such a live drama happening through them and there must be many articles on this incident explaining many things from many perspectives. But this incident once again proves that no matter how a person lives or tries to live, his real instincts finally comes out just like Himesh's dirty nature came out.
