Our very dear, very own, A R Rahman gets three Oscar nominations in two categories. One of the nominations is for the same song for which Rahman got a Golden Globe, the golden song - Jai Ho. The thing i'm happy about is that this time Gulzar also got nominated for the song along with Rahman.
The other song in the same category of original song is o saya, which is a fine song, though not upto the level of Jai ho, or even other creations of Rahman while one counts the best of him. Still, a nomination is acceptable.
But the nomination that came more as a shock to me rather than surprise was for a category called Original Score. For slumdog millionaire, of course. This was something i did not understand. I feel that if a movie gets an award (or a nomination) for an original score, it has to have more than a few good songs. And as far as Slumdog Millionaire is concerned, i beg to differ. Slumdog is hardly one of the best original scores Rahman has produced, even with a good song like Jai ho, for which i would like to give credit to Gulzar and Sukhwinder Singh along with Rahman.
If one has a doubt about the mediocrity of the score of Slumdog, one just needs to listen to Ringa Ringa, the song which is almost a choli ke peeche, I need not write, from Khalnayak. (probably more because of the notoriousness of the song, rather than popularity)
Though, i was told by somebody that Rahman and the Slumdog team wanted to give a 90's touch to the music. But then, i suppose if it's that much inspired or has a 'touch', it can't be Original.
On the whole, the thing that troubles me the most is that Rahman has made far better songs than the soundtrack of Slumdog Millionaire, but owing to the ignorance of the 'big' people, the ones giving out all those Golden Globes and Oscars, and who never came to know about all that great music of Rahman, all awards are being given to a mediocre creation of Rahman, and I feel it's unfair to all of us Indians who know what actual Rahman is. And still, we're so happy to get all these awards. But I don't feel like celebrating the ignorance of these big people myself.
Anyway, for now I wish all the best to Rahman, because he has given us lots of lots of great music for which he deserves a lot more.
