On the beauty of the known and the new

I’ve always believed that art needs to keep finding new forms. Almost every great artist seems to believe this in one way or another. My favourite composer, the maestro A.R. Rahman, feels like the epitome of that idea. This man has reinvented himself year after year, album after album, in ways that still feel almost uncanny. It is hard to believe that the same person gave us the chilling melodies of “Hey Rama” in Rangeela (in 1995), the beloved bhajan “O Palanhaare” (in 2001), and the heart-wrenching ballad “Agar Tum Saath Ho” (in 2015).

The first word that comes to my mind when I think of Rahman is novelty. That, to me, is the core essence of what makes him one of the greats. And it makes even more sense when you look at what made him revered in the first place. In a world of overheard dholaks and strings, Rahman arrived with Roja carrying a new melodic language and a percussion palette that felt unlike anything Indian film music had heard before.

Lately, though, there’s a composer I’ve been listening to on repeat. His music has found its way into corners of my heart that even Rahman’s had not touched before. The funny thing is that, in some ways, he is an antithesis of Rahman. The composer I’m talking about is Sanjay Leela Bhansali.

Let me explain.

Where Rahman seems to discover something new in every song, every beat, every verse he composes, Bhansali seems to hammer down on what he already does best. He returns to the same emotional climate, the same textures, the same perfumes, and somehow discovers something new within them. He does not run from recurrence. He deepens it.

I realised this through a very ordinary observation, though one that became oddly revealing. As usual, I have an obsessive habit of ranking everything. As an expression of this habit, I was mentally ranking my favourite Sanjay Leela Bhansali songs. This is the order I came up with:

1. Laal Ishq

2. Aayat

3. Aaj Ibaadat

4. Ek Dil Ek Jaan

5. Binte Dil

There are two patterns in this list. They are not immediately obvious, and it took me a quick search to confirm what I had only vaguely sensed at first.

The first thing I noticed was that the first four songs all have almost exactly the same feel. It is as if each of them is a reflection of the same truth, and yet each carries a different scent you would want to wear on different days. The answer, as it turns out, is that all four are based on Raag Yaman.

The resemblance goes deeper than melody. These songs all seem to emerge from the same inner world: Urdu-inflected lyricism, Sufi thought, old-world yearning, folk and classical instrumentation, and a kind of devotional romance that Bhansali returns to again and again. Three of them are even sung by Arijit. All of them feel less like isolated inventions and more like different windows into the same palace.

And once you notice this, it stops feeling incidental and starts feeling central to Bhansali himself. He is notorious for uncovering something new in what has already been found. He repeatedly turns to the same kinds of singers, the same actors, the same emotional architecture, the same period settings. Arijit and Shreya become recurring voices. Ranveer and Deepika become recurring faces. The period drama becomes a recurring home. Every ounce of Bhansali screams recurrence. You somehow already know what Bhansali will give you. He somehow still manages to surprise you.

That, to me, is his artistic superpower.

Now let’s go back to my favourite Rahman songs:

1. Kun Faya Kun

2. Lukka Chuppi

3. Tum Tak

4. Maa Tujhe Salaam

5. Agar Tum Saath Ho

On any given day, I change the last three entries, but even if we go with these five, the only pattern I find is the absence of one.

Where “Kun Faya Kun” is a traditional qawwali that feels like spiritual transcendence, “Tum Tak” is a vibrant declaration of obsession, “Lukka Chuppi” is grief in conversation, “Maa Tujhe Salaam” is patriotic fire, and “Agar Tum Saath Ho” is a intimate heartbreak ballad. Even vocally, the world keeps changing. Rahman lends his voice to some, but elsewhere there is Mohit Chauhan, Lata Mangeshkar, Javed Ali, Alka Yagnik. These songs do not feel like siblings in the way Bhansali’s often do. They feel singular.

And that, again, is what makes Rahman Rahman.

Bhansali and Rahman seem to represent two very different philosophies of artistic discovery. Rahman looks outward. He seems driven by reinvention, by the need to keep moving into new soundscapes, new textures, new emotional architectures. That instinct is visible not only in the music itself, but in the artistic worlds he builds around it. Rahman’s obsession with novelty has also pushed him toward different directors, different lyricists, and different singers across his career. In the process, he has played a hand in discovering (I’m using discovering loosely here) some of India’s greatest voices — Sukhwinder Singh, Hariharan, Shankar Mahadevan, Javed Ali, Mohit Chauhan, among others. Even when he returns to a familiar collaborator (like Sukhwinder or Mohit Chauhan), it rarely feels like repetition and is often to deliver something new.

Bhansali, by contrast, looks inward. He returns to the same emotional climate, the same textures, the same perfumes. Arijit and Shreya become recurring voices. Ranveer and Deepika become recurring faces. The period drama becomes a recurring home. Every ounce of Bhansali screams recurrence. You somehow already know what Bhansali will give you. He somehow still manages to surprise you.

I still believe that an artist needs to keep discovering new things. Art becomes stale otherwise. But listening to Bhansali has made me reconsider what that discovery actually demands. Must one always venture far out to find something new? Or can one simply look deeper into what one already knows, what one already loves, what one is already unable to leave behind?