Rahman continued, “And then the nominations happened, and I got nominated for the Oscars. Then, the email came in, and it said, ‘Michael wants to meet you’. But I said, ‘I don’t want to meet him now’.” Rahman added, “I said, ‘I don’t want to meet him. If I win an Oscar, I’ll meet him, otherwise, I won’t.’ I was sure I was going to win. I won, and the next day, I went to meet him. It was almost 6:30 pm, and the sun was going down. And then, somebody opened the door with gloves on…”

Rahman said that he spoke to Jackson about his music, world peace and his popular dance moves. Jackson also raised Rahman for his work in Slumdog Millionaire for which he also won the Oscar. “He introduced me to his kids, but I was jet-lagged because I’d been working day and night. I was waiting to return to India… It was unforgettable,” he said.

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After the meeting when Rahman returned to India, he started working on Shankar's 'Enthiran' starring Rajinikanth and Aishwarya Rai. Shankar asked him to try a collaboration with Jackson. Rahman recalled, “I said, ‘Wow, will he do a Tamil song?’ And I called him, and we spoke that week. He said, ‘Whatever you say, we will do it together’. We met again, but unfortunately, he passed away in 2009. He was sick at the time.”

On the work front, Rahman's documentary 'Headhunting to Beatboxing' directed by Rohit Gupta will have its premiere at the Indian Film Festival of Melbourne (IFFM)2024, Australia.