In an interview to Nikhil Kamath on his podcast People by WTF, AR Rahman reflects on his early struggles, the making of Roja, the promise and peril of AI, and why India must reinvent its cultural spaces
Oscar-winning composer AR Rahman, in a new episode of People by WTF, offers a rare, inward-looking conversation that moves across childhood loss, creative reinvention and the role of faith in his life. The episode opens with Nikhil Kamath tracing Rahman’s early years in Chennai and Bengaluru, a period Rahman describes with stark clarity. “My father passed away when I was nine. My grandmother passed away, too. I used to see trauma every day. Every day I used to wake up to that.”
Rahman credits his mother for providing stability during that time. “My mother was a single, confident lady. She took all the pain… she single-handedly brought us up and encouraged me to go into music.” He explains how those years shaped his emotional foundation, saying, “It affects you because that’s the only thing you have — your parents. That’s the only holding ground for you.”
Music entered his life early. “My whole childhood was with 40-year-old and 50-year-old and 60-year-old in the studio playing music,” he says. Without a typical school or college experience, he feels he missed the shared vocabulary of adolescence but gained an immersion in craft that guided his trajectory. His entry into studios also aligned with the need to support his family after his father’s passing. These early environments became crucial learning spaces, even if they meant growing up faster than most children his age.
Roja, Mani Ratnam and a new creative identity
Kamath moves the conversation to a familiar milestone: Roja, the soundtrack that redefined Indian film music. Rahman recalls a shift in confidence when he built his own studio. “Magic happened when I built my studio. It’s when I felt empowered. Like I had something which nobody had.”
Working with Mani Ratnam on Roja was transformative, but Rahman admits he initially wanted to keep his world small. He remembers telling Mani Ratnam, “I am very satisfied working with you. I don’t want to work with other people. I’ll just do jingles or private albums.” Mani insisted otherwise: “No, you should work with everyone.” Rahman jokes that for nearly a decade after that, he still felt, “Okay, enough.”
Also read: Rahul Ravindran on The Girlfriend: ‘It’s moving to know that my film healed many’
His later move to England for Bombay Dreams expanded his creative vocabulary, adding musical theatre, orchestration and new technologies to his toolkit. That inclination toward experimentation continues today, with Rahman exploring granular synthesis, algorithmic composition and AI-assisted workflows.
Simplicity and the long game
When Kamath asks whether he has experienced impostor syndrome, Rahman answers without hesitation: “Always. That’s why I surrender.” He ties that mindset to the simplicity with which he still chooses to live. He recalls life during Roja: “I didn’t have money for even putting petrol.” Even now, he insists, lifestyle should not perform wealth. “Your lifestyle, even whether you have money or not, can be the same… you don’t want to show the whole world what you are.”
For him, the measure of a career is endurance. “Consistently doing something good for a longer time is better than doing everything at one time and then not having money. So I believe that consistency is very important.” Rahman also reflects on the Indian music landscape he entered. “There was a traditional kind of music, which is beautiful… But my sensibility was different.” His influences came from jazz, rock, Qawwali, Carnatic and Hindustani traditions — a mix that led him to modernise production and experiment with structure.
The aim behind Roja was explicit: globalise Indian music. “Each Tamil song I do should go around the world. And it was planned. I worked for it. That’s why I did less work… I need time to heal, I need time to listen to it, I need time to change, I need to evolve a song.”
AI, ethics and the future of creativity
The discussion shifts to one of the central concerns in today’s creative industries: artificial intelligence. Kamath suggests that “creativity will become more relevant in the world of AI.” Rahman agrees, describing AI as “a very empowering tool for younger people who don’t have access to make a movie or make art… but they have a vision.” He believes artists will be forced to grow. Using the example of the artist Raye, he notes that her recent song tries to escape algorithmic predictability. As he puts it, “You have to be contrarian to whatever the predictive model is.”
But Rahman’s first instinct around AI is ethical. “Don’t make people lose jobs. Empower people to remove the curses of generational poverty, misinformation, and lack of tools to create.” He argues that AI should take on tasks beyond human capacity rather than replace human creative labour. Despite his optimism, Rahman acknowledges that “AI in music will hurt musicians.” Still, he insists it cannot replace the human chain of knowledge transmission — “the human way — passing on the spirit of music to a student.” In his view, live performance and theatre will grow in value as AI becomes more embedded in creation.
His upcoming AI-based project Secret Mountain (in collaboration with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman) reflects that blend of technology and craft. “We use the best of AI and we use the best of humans,” he says, explaining that the goal is to create “something extraordinary from India to the world.”
Faith, Sufism and a personal code of sincerity
Kamath asks Rahman about spirituality, comparing him to a “God of music.” Rahman dismisses the idea. “I am not God, I am a servant. It just takes one second for people to completely turn the coin.” What matters to him, he says, is sincerity: “If I am not sincere in my music, I am not sincere to myself.”
Rahman is direct about the losses that shaped his calm outlook. “All the scary things have already happened in my life — my father’s death, my grandmother’s death, my mother’s death.” These losses made him, as he puts it, “completely numb… zen mode,” and helped him accept the transience of life. “It made me believe that everybody is going to die.”
Also read: Kaantha review: Dulquer Salmaan’s grand period drama can’t sustain its epic pitch
Faith remains his compass. “If you believe in God, every breath is a blessing to me, every opportunity is a blessing to me.” Performing, he says, feels like a ritual. “When I perform, I feel like it’s a shrine, we are all enjoying the fruits of oneness in a stadium.”
His turn to Sufism, he explains, stems from the search within. “The simple thing is to discover yourself.” Kindness, for him, is part of that spiritual ethic. “Smiling at someone is the biggest charity, if you don’t have money to give, you smile at them.”
Reinventing entertainment for future India
Rahman speaks at length about the need for India to build new cultural infrastructure. “The movie theatre business is not going anywhere. It is going to stay. But it should be reinvented.” He points out that cinemas have remained visually unchanged for decades: “For 100 years, we are still seeing a rectangular screen.”
He argues for immersive theatres, better acoustics and large-scale musical productions. “We don’t even have a proper symphony hall in India,” he notes, suggesting that even every metro could house an immersive venue. Musical theatre, he believes, is a major untapped opportunity: “We have so many talented singers, actors here.”
Such spaces, he stresses, are not luxuries but necessities. “You have a right to have proper infrastructure. It’s very important there should be enough places which bring hope.” With confidence, he adds, “Our country is now prosperous enough. This is for future India, for our youth, for our children to experience all this.”
He has similar views on the entertainment economy more broadly. Rahman encourages young entrepreneurs to “find the void.” He sees gaps in music, design, technology, and even areas like musical instrument manufacturing. “I find void in art, artistic stuff, fashion, even furniture,” he says.
Awards, solitude and the private costs of fame
Reflecting on international recognition, Rahman says the glamour around the Oscars and Golden Globes can be misleading. “When you see from outside it’s much more fascinating than being inside.” He describes the changing attention around Slumdog Millionaire: “Nobody called me at first, then there was the Golden Globe — three people called. Then the next one is Oscar — a hundred people calling your name.”
Rahman admits that public life makes personal relationships difficult. “There’s no time. Even to spend time with family, I have to make sure I pull them for dinner or something.” He adds that the people he collaborates with — “all the directors” — end up becoming his closest friends because of the intensity of shared work.
His sense of responsibility remains grounded. “Each one of us is humanity, our good and bad affects humanity.” For young people looking to build careers in entertainment, he offers simple advice: “Look at your own family, your own welfare, your own parents, your kids… If you look after your family, the world will take care of itself.”