Welcome back to Brothers in Music: The A. R. Rahman Edition.

 We’re in 1998 — the year Dil Se burst into our lives, our cassette players, and our television screens. The image is still impossible to forget: Shah Rukh Khan dancing atop a moving train to Chaiyya Chaiyya, while Rahman’s music thundered across the country.

For many, Dil Se isn’t just another Rahman album — it’s the Rahman album. Every track is a classic, every song remembered and reinterpreted even twenty-seven years later. It’s an album that captures the intensity of youth, love, and longing, wrapped in sounds that feel at once global and deeply Indian.

Joining us for this episode is the writer Samanth Subramanian. Together, we dive into the jokes, the analysis, and the nostalgia that Dil Se evokes. You’ll hear Swaroop’s story of being stranded in Mangalore, a hundred kilometres from home, with nothing but a Dil Se cassette for company; Samanth’s memory of discovering boy-meets-school-bench Chaiyya Chaiyya; and us unpacking how a single note — just one change — can turn a theme of doomed love into a song of grand romance. We go deep into the album’s musical architecture too — from the haunting strains of Raag Jog to Rahman’s playful departures from classical form. The way he leaves out a note, bends another, and in doing so, creates something that feels ineffably emotional: part sorrow, part transcendence.

So tune in, as we remember, argue, laugh, play the flute and some piano, and maybe hum along. Because this is Dil Se, and this is Rahman at his most incandescent.

This episode was edited and mastered by Nihar Mamidipudi.

Podcast Insta: @brothers.in.music

Swaroop: @tnagartornado on X and Instagram.
Sharan: @sharanidli on X; M R Sharan on LinkedIn.