Rahman, in his natural habitat at the computer, works on five or six films a year, juggling several at a time. He is a kind of national hero in India.
One of the most prolific and successful film composers in India, he has three nominations, all for Slumdog Millionaire: best original score and best original song, for both “Jai Ho"; and “O ... Saya", a collaboration with the Sri Lankan-British rapper M.I.A. (The film, by Danny Boyle, has 10 nominations, and last month Mr. Rahman won a Golden Globe for best score.)
“It would be a great honor,” Mr. Rahman said with characteristic diffidence in a phone interview this week from Los Angeles, where he was preparing to perform at the ceremony. “It would help me to do bigger things.”
Ask him what those bigger things might be, however, and he grows even quieter. Naming some Western directors he would like to work with, he sounds distracted, almost bored, as if the future is just too abstract to worry about.
“Baz Luhrmann,” he said. A beat, then: “Ridley Scott. I’m a big fan of Ridley.”
But when it comes to his music Mr. Rahman, who is 43 but with his cherubic cheeks could pass for less than 30, turns surprisingly chatty. His work has been in more than 100 films since 1992, and after scoring Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Bollywood- themed stage musical Bombay Dreams in 2002 he enjoyed had a steadily growing profile in the West. One of the first major composers in India to embrace digital technology, he is in his natural habitat at the computer, and he maintains the manic, multitasking rhythm of a true 21st- century techie.
“I like to see a film and then start scoring it in my mind, while doing something unrelated,” he said. “You just grasp a film and start working, and something unpredictable comes out from a third element. The mind, the more active it is, the more productive it is.”
Productivity, along with a gift for golden melody and a cosmopolitan touch that reflects the new, globally conscious India, have given Mr. Rahman, who lives and works in Chennai (the city formerly known as Madras), a kind of national-hero status. “Rah Rah Rahman,” The Times of India proclaimed on its front page after the Oscar nominations were announced.
“He has a rapper from Tanzania working with him,” Mr. Boyle said, “and fulfilled a mutual desire to work with M.I.A., part Sri Lankan, part London, part New York. Add the house- music disco beats sweeping Bollywood dance lately and you have a real moment of fusion.”
Mr. Rahman works on five or six films a year, juggling several at a time in various stages of completion. While unheard of in Hollywood, that pace is common in India, and Mr. Rahman has made his share of modern classics, like “Lagaan: Once Upon a Time in India” (2001), beloved by Indian and Western critics alike, and “Dil Se” (1998).
“Slumdog,” Mr. Rahman said, was created in relatively luxurious circumstances: “I kept three weeks aside. I moved to London and did the whole score there.”
