When AR Rahman’s rejected track for a suit ad with Saif Ali Khan-Tiger Pataudi was later reused for Roja. Watch

Director Rajiv Menon, who worked with Rahman early on in his career, recalled the incident as he was also working on the same advertisement. In a video shared on Twitter, the filmmaker recalled how upset he was at that time of the rejection. The caption for the posts states, “Filmmaker Rajiv Menon shares an amazing anecdote about how A.R.Rahman’s music for a Gwalior suiting ad in early 90s, which also technically marked the screen-debut of Saif Ali Khan, was rejected at last minute.”

Rajiv said in the video, “Sometimes, a lot of effort goes into something and we put in enormous effort in a track for Gwalior suitings. It was Mansoor Ali Khan Pataudi, Sharmila Tagore and they just wanted to include a bit of Saif. We shot it in Cochin and it was pouring rain, and we really slogged and in three days, AR worked back and back. A lot of the elements that he used in those tracks, you’ll see some of those elements coming in Roja’s background score.”

He continued, “That track got bounced. I was furious, I wrote a letter to the company saying that I’m not coming. I refuse to accept it, this was it. Rahman was upset too. He said, so much of effort and somebody sits somewhere and says change it. They got the track done by Louiz Banks. But so many ideas that are there in Roja were already there in that thing and people bounced it. Years later they must be feeling foolish now that you have an Oscar award-winning composer who did a commercial and you kind of bounced it. That was part and parcel of the agony of working in advertising. It’s not that you convince a director and it goes straight to the audience. There are so many layers… it’s a lot of effort getting wasted. AR, in that sense, was cracking it with new technology which is digital recording and he was doing it himself, in his house, at his time.”

Mani Ratnam’s Roja, starring Arvind Swamy and Madhoo, became one of the top selling music albums in India, both in Hindi and Tamil. Rahman went on to win two Oscars, a BAFTA, Golden Globe and two Grammys for his score on the Hollywood film Slumdog Millionaire (2008).

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