Ramayana in Chennai: Yash sings Rahman, Ranbir says sorry

Ramayana ended its Indian promotions in Chennai on Wednesday night, in the rain, with A.R. Rahman and his orchestra on stage and most of the cast in front of them. Yash sang one of Rahman’s old Tamil hits back to him, Sai Pallavi spent half her speech being a fan, and Ranbir Kapoor used the microphone to apologise for something he had said the day before.

The evening, held at the Chennai Trade Centre to celebrate the film’s music, opened with a children’s choir singing the Tamil version of Jai Jai Ram before Rahman took it over with Chinmayi. The orchestra moved through themes from the score, which Rahman has composed with Hans Zimmer, and live versions of Mangal Rang and Jodi Jodi, while Sachet Tandon gave Main Ram its first live performance.

Sai Pallavi admitted she is usually scared of speaking at promotions, but said she had been looking forward to this one because of Rahman. “When we were young, dancing in school, I used to dance to sir’s songs,” she said. “Coming to college, his songs became the background music to my life.” Some parts of her life she only remembers through his music now, she said. “Thank you for existing.”

She also explained why the Tamil trailer’s lip sync looks so clean. When she went to dub, she said, the dialogue had been written the way a proper Tamil film would be written, not translated line by line, and the same effort had gone into every language, including Chinese and Japanese. And she let the room in on a habit of her co-star’s. Ranbir, she said, keeps up with Tamil cinema better than she does. “Once he asked, ‘Did you do Amaran?’ He had watched it,” she said. “From Maharaja to Vaazhai, he keeps himself updated on all films.” Playing Rama was not easy, she added, because the character is so restrained, “but he’s got some sort of an inner peace in him, and it just radiates through his eyes.”

Ranbir kept it short and started with an apology. At a Dussehra event in Kolkata the previous day, a line about good and evil had come out the wrong way round, and the clip had travelled. “What I meant to say is: no matter how powerful evil may be, in the end, goodness and truth will triumph,” he said. Then he found a way to blame a Rahman song. In Rockstar, the film the two made together, there is a line about words ruining whatever you mean to say. “So I truly apologise for that.” Before he left, the host taught him a line of Tamil, and he repeated it to the crowd: Chennai people are the best.

Yash got the loudest welcome of the night, which Sai Pallavi said happens at every stop of this tour, and he spent most of his time on Rahman too. As a boy in Karnataka he used to dance to the songs from Gentleman, he said, and Rangeela is how he learned Hindi. Then he broke into Take It Easy Policy, from Urvasi Urvasi in Kadhalan.

On Ravana, he was direct. People had asked him why he would play the most hated character in the story, he said. His answer was to find something else in him. “I took Shiva’s energy in the character,” he said, crediting Ravana Tandav, the Rahman song released on Dussehra, for getting him there.

Rahman himself told a story that he said had left him stunned. In 2014, a man named Satish from New York emailed him about a dream: Rahman leading a musical show, with leaders of the industry, built around “our greatest epic Ramayana”. That same man got in touch again the day before the event. “Remember this dream?” Rahman said the foundation of Indian music, south or north, is bhakti, so nobody needs to teach a composer how to score the Ramayana. He spent three years sending tunes to producer Namit Malhotra, who would sit with them and edit them.

Nitesh Tiwari opened with his own confession about Tamil. Thirty years ago, a boss at an ad agency told him he was missing great films by not knowing the language. Since the VCDs he could find had no subtitles, he brought along his girlfriend, now his wife Ashwiny Iyer Tiwari, to translate Michael Madana Kama Rajan for him. She laughed all the way through and never translated a word. They have been married 21 years, he said, and he still cannot talk to her relatives in Tamil.

Rakul Preet Singh, who plays Shurpanakha, said Yash is “just terrifying on screen”, while Ravie Dubey, the film’s Lakshmana, recalled being screen-tested by casting director Mukesh Chhabra almost exactly three years ago and said he had teared up when Ranbir said that if he could have a brother, it would be him.

The bookings were already moving before Chennai: Ramayana crossed ₹5 crore in advance sales within a day of opening them. The film has its world premiere in Los Angeles on October 27 and opens in theatres on November 5.