Before the country recognised the talent of AR Rahman, the celebrated composer says there was a phase in his life where he felt like a failure and thought about ending his life almost every day.
The Oscar-winning composer says the initial low phase of his career eventually helped him emerge braver.
“Up until 25, I used to think about suicide. Most of us feel they are not good enough. Because I lost my father, there was this void… There were so many things happening.
“(But) that in a way made me more fearless. Death is a permanent thing for everyone. Since everything created has an expiry date, so why be afraid of anything?” Rahman told a agency.
The turnaround for the 51-year-old composer came when he built his recording studio Panchathan Record Inn in his backyard in hometown Chennai.
“Before that, things were dormant so may be it (the feeling) manifested then. Because of my father’s death and the way he was working, I didn’t do many movies. I got 35 movies and I did two.
“Everyone wondered ‘How are you going to survive? You have everything, grab it.’ I was 25 then. I couldn’t do that. It’s like eating everything. You become numb. So even if you eat small meals, make it fulfilling,” he adds.
The composer talks about hard times and other events in his life in “Notes of a Dream: The Authorized Biography of AR Rahman”.
Written by author Krishna Trilok, the biography, in association with Landmark and Penguin Random House, was launched on November 3.
