Salaam Bombay: Making of Bombay Dreams
Last weekend, some of us(Rahman fans) had a get together at our place. Gopal brought the DVD of ‘Salaam Bombay: Making of Bombay Dreams’.
This DVD has an extensive coverage of AR Rahman and his studio. I haven’t seen his studio, and it was great to see some clips on Rahman composing music. And they show him composing the music for ‘Salaam Bombay’. The way he was playing the keyboard was magical.
In one particular incident, Rahman actually imitates a dance step. Priceless!
The DVD also contains in detail, the choreography for dance sequences by Farah Khan. I liked the shakalaka baby rehearsal, when Farah herself dances. Otherwise I didn’t find this portion that much interesting!
There is an entire section devoted to the visit of Queen. They interview almost everyone, right from the person who sweeps the theatre, till the person who gives her a bouquet. It’s hmmm interesting 
On the whole this DVD is a must have for all Rahman fans. Unfortunately, it’s not available in India. Its available only in US and UK. So if any of your friends/family are coming back from US/UK ask them to get it for you.
Apart from this DVD, we saw Rahman’s interview when he was honored at the Stanford University. It seems Maniratnam told Rahman the story of ‘Alaipayuthey/Saathiya’ where he mentioned, there is a romance sequence on the train. Rahman composed ‘Chaiyya Chaiyya’ and Mani had switched to Dilse without informing Rahman I will try to post the online link of that interview. It’s good. Very rarely you get to see such interviews!
And do check out this wonderful interlude medley of some 114 Rahman songs, compiled by Wasim. It plays for 67 minutes or so, and is a worthy download.
on 23 Jan 2007 at 11:52 am # Karthik
i cannot vouch for this information, but i read somewhere that chaiya chaiya was not rahman’s original composition. it was inspired from a punjabi folk song and was composed by sukhwinder singh himself. sukhwinder agreed to use this tune for an ajay devgan film, but later sold/gave it to ar rehman for dil se. ajay and sukhwinder thus had some problems because of this. so unable to reconcile this info with the info that u provided on the song. dunno which is true.
on 23 Jan 2007 at 1:12 pm # Marutham
Cha..just missed to put 1st comment!
Again- ARR!!
on 23 Jan 2007 at 3:09 pm # Gopal Srinivasan
Karthik,
The lyrical theme of Chaiyya Chaiyya is indeed inspired by Baba Bulleshah, a sufi saint’s poem Thayya Thayya. There have been several adaptations of these, including those by NFAK and Abida Parveen. It is also true that it was Sukhvinder Singh who introduced the works of Baba Bulleshah to ARR. However, the musical composition as manifested in the song Chaiyya Chaiyya, is entirely a work of ARR’s creativity and any thing else you might have read or heard is completely untrue.
Gopal.