You just need to make something that no one else did - Because it came from you

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Music is the one form of art that I loved learning. I used to play the keyboard, and I could very easily play the tune after hearing it once.

While I’m impartial with my appreciation of good music and artists, A.R. Rahman is an artist I respect.

His jingles—specifically the one for Titan Watches—are one of the most natural tunes to play. It always felt like that music was just in the air, ready for it to be played.

But my respect does not come just from the sheer number of hits he has composed but also from the experimentation he puts into his tunes.

From cross-cultural fusion such as “Maiya Maiya” (Turkish) and “Khwaja Mere Khwaja” (Sufi), to a raw, almost improvisational music score like “Aaromale,” his experimentations have not just widened the taste of Indian music but also helped in the success of the movies that carried them.

There are times when I used to wonder, “How did Rahman come up with this tune?” and at times, “How did he even dare to think that the audience would like this score?”

When I was young, I thought this is what originality looks like—that it is reserved for people who are blessed with immense talent. The tunes are all in the air, waiting to be found and composed by the Originals.

Until I heard the story behind the movie Gravity.

On the surface, the movie is a space movie—an engineer on her first space mission, and an astronaut on his final expedition, have to survive in space after they are hit by debris while spacewalking.

Director Alfonso Cuarón, a Mexican filmmaker well known for directing the movie adaptation of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, was working on his own arthouse project. In 2008, his project fell through—no financing—and he suddenly went broke.

He meets his friend Jonas and says, “I need to write something now. But no Arty Shit. I need to write something that is appealing to a studio so they’ll write a cheque now, for me to keep going.”

Jonas, understanding his situation, responds, “Well, if you’re going to do it, it has to be something that is relevant to you,” and says, “Okay, what do you feel like now?”

Jonas now asks him to continue on how he feels about it, and Alfonso, without a second thought, says, “I feel like falling in the damn void.”

That feeling is what became Gravity—an astronaut lost in space, spinning out of control, trying to put her feet back on earth.

Everyone goes through these ordeals in their day-to-day life. But how we interpret and express it is what makes it original.

When I was researching Rahman’s inspirations, I stumbled upon one of his first interviews on national television after the success of his first movie Roja. When asked about his process of music composition, he says, “When I ask a traditional artist to play a note, they play it in a very traditional way. To break this up, I play the entire track myself and play it back to him. And he interprets it in a very different way. When you do this to each instrument and mix it together, magic happens.”

Rahman’s music is not experimental and original because it came from him. It is original because of how each artist playing the instrument interprets the music and expresses it.

After writing this whole piece and looking back at another one of my favorite jingles, the Airtel jingle, I get what he means.

In fact, the Titan jingle that I mentioned at the very beginning was an adaptation of Mozart's symphony no. 25. The notes are similar, but it carried a different emotional weight to align with Titan's art of gifting and how Rahman interpreted it.

You just have to start with what you feel—and trust the process, and the people, to turn that into something worth hearing.

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One Bias that impacts our decisions:

Originality Bias:

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We often fall into two traps when it comes to judging our own ideas:

• Overestimating originality: We get too attached to our first idea, thinking it’s so unique that we stop exploring further. This kills iteration early and leaves potential on the table.
• Underestimating originality: On the flip side, we sometimes dismiss our ideas because they don’t feel groundbreaking enough. We forget that originality often emerges through refinement and layering, not at the very start.

The truth? Originality is rarely a lightning strike. It’s a process.

A.R. Rahman’s music evolves through collaboration and reinterpretation. Alfonso Cuarón didn’t start with a sci-fi epic — he began with a feeling of being lost. And Amazon? It started with books, not world domination. Iteration turned the ordinary into something game-changing.

Don’t overrate or underrate your first draft. Stay with it. Shape it. Let it unfold.

One Question to reflect for the week:

Would love to hear your thoughts.

I hope you enjoyed this week's version. See you next week.

Best wishes,

Nimalan.
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