Krishna Trilok

“AR confesses that 1989 was a turning point in his life. ‘I had my studio at last,’ he says. ‘The only problem was that the room was an empty shell. I would sit in it and look around at the empty space and wonder if I could ever afford to buy any equipment to fill it.’1 Kareema Begum took yet another bold decision at that point. She sold all the gold jewellery she had saved for the marriage of her two younger daughters, Fathima and Ishrath. ‘We had to take loans too,’ recalls Fathima. ‘But Amma was very firm about it. I used to go with her to get a loan for the generator and so on.’ With all this money his mother managed to raise, AR got his first Fostex 16-track mixer-recorder. ‘Sitting in the music studio that night and staring at my new recorder, I felt like a king,’ says AR. ‘The new me was born . . .’2”
― Krishna Trilok, Notes of a Dream: The Authorized Biography of A.R. Rahman

“Mani Ratnam is by no stretch of the imagination an expressive person. He does not show much emotion, except in his stories. But that does not mean he doesn’t feel it in real life. ‘I was stunned that day,’ he says, some twenty-five years later. ‘I could not believe what I was hearing. The music he played for me that day, it was fabulous.’ AR thought, at the time, that Mani Ratnam hated his music. ‘I didn’t think he would ever come back,’ he says.2 But a few days later, the director got in touch with AR and told him that he’d like to sign him on for his next film—as music director. ‘I love a lot of stuff,’ he said. ‘Let’s meet and I’ll tell you what will work for me.’3 It was a decision that would end up altering the course of AR’s life, as well as Tamil, Indian and world music and cinema.”
― Krishna Trilok, Notes of a Dream: The Authorized Biography of A.R. Rahman