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While many of his collaborators believe that Rahman’s compositions have so much emotion that they don’t require lyrics to embellish them, Rahman himself says he imbibed the importance of language from Subhash Ghai who would say, “If you don’t learn the language, you cannot compose.” The two collaborated on Taal, arguably the biggest hit in Rahman’s Hindi film career. “Earlier, I used to think that my music would survive anywhere... but after his advice, I started learning Hindi, reading couplets and poems in Urdu.” It introduced him to the history of Hindi film music. Coming from the South, he says his knowledge was limited to a few soundtracks. “Then I discovered Naushad, Madan Mohan, Hridaynath Mangeshkar, S.D. Burman... it was amazing.”