ARR wins hearts in arena of world music

The only Indians to have held the Oscar stauette, which according to Hollywood fable was named by Bette Davis after her first husband because the backside rsemebled Harman Oscar Nelson’s posterior, are Satyajit Ray (lifetime achievement) and Ms Bhanu Athaiya (costume design for Gandhi, shared with John Mallo). If memory can be trusted, the country’s finest film maker Ray was given the award in 1992 in his hospital bed even as he was fighting for his life.

Ms Bhanu could not have won the Oscar in1982 for dressing up Gandhi because he barely wore anything but then some of the others, like Nehru, the Mountbattens and Jan Smuts were immaculately dressed in the period epic.So many other Indians have come close without quite being able to clutch the 33.75 cm, 3.8 kg statue made of the alloy Brittanium and plated in pure gold and which has gone to 2,701 people so far. Aamir Khan was a hopeful when he went to Beverly Hills in search of support for his cricket-based starrer Lagaan. Deepa Mehta’s Water, with many Indian stars in the moving film on the widows of Varanasi, was officially a Canadian entry but did not make it on the big night at Kodak theatre.

In the hunt for the Oscars pertaining to movies made and released in 2008 is also ‘Guitar’ Prasanna, the composer of the background music score for the documentary Smile Pinki, made by Magan Mylan.

Rahman is the first Indian to get three Oscar nominations, including one for best original score and for two songs in the film — Jai ho and O saya.

The odds are he will swing it, hopefully for the bigger one too, which is the best original score category.