AR Rahman Turns 52: 10 Lesser-Known Facts About the Musical Maverick

Referred to as 'The Mozart Of Madras', AR Rahman turns 52 today. The music composer has been an inspiration to many and his work is a window of his rollercoaster journey.

He's well known for his soulful music and plethora of awards and honours, but still, there's a lot about him that not many people. On AR Rahman's birthday, here are some lesser known facts about the singer-composer:

1. Rahman was born into a Hindu family as Dileep Kumar. At the age of 23, the music composer went ahead to embrace Islam, after he met his spiritual guru, Qadri Islam.

2. Before he stepped in the entertainment industry, he was seen in Doordarshan's Wonder Balloon as a kid where he shot to fame for being the kid who could play 4 keyboards at once.

3. Mani Ratnam was the first one to spot the talent in Rahman and the began film scoring for Ratnam's Tamil film Roja in 1992. He got a sum of 25000 rupees for the project, and he became the recipient of National Film Award along with huge success, popularity and admiration.

4. Rahman married Saira and his three children namely- Ameen Khatija and Rahima. Interestingly, his son, Ameen share the same birth date, that is 6th January.

5. AR Rahman is the first Asian to have won 2 Oscars in the same year for 'Slumdog Millionaire'. The Padma Bhushan and Padma Shri recipient has also won 4 National Awards.

6. Not many know that the Oscar winning song "Jai Ho" was initially composed for the Salman Khan starrer- Yuvraaj!

7. Apart from Slumdog Millionaire, Rahman has also composed great scores for other Hollywood films like 127 Hours and Lord Of War.

8. AR Rahman joined hands with Mick Jagger, Dave Stewart and Joss Stone to introduce a completely different kind of music under the name SuperHeavy. Stewart termed SuperHeavy as a 'mad alchemist type experiment'.

9. To honour the singer-composer, a street in Markham, Ontario, Canada, was named after him in November 2013.

10. Reportedly, Airtel's signature tune which is composed by Rahman, is said to be the world's most downloaded mobile music with over 150 million downloads.

Here's wishing a very happy birthday to AR Rahman!