ohh...you dont like Rahman !

While going thru all the headlines on corruption/black money/fasts, i happened to tune in to a radio and listen "tere bina" from guru and this song brought back one of the age old questions to my mind. "Why did not A R Rahman ever care to learn Hindi ?".It is just because i have been curious to know what different magic his voice and especially his music could have created had this been true. I know am upsetting loads of Rahman fans here, but here is what i feel.Take this song,"tere bina(Guru)"(and several others sung by Rahman), in certain sections of the song sung by Rahman one finds the lyrics to be quite unclear, by the time you figure out what he sung, song is actually all over and you end up hoping Rahman could have got better with the pronunciation . And its not that singers from non-hindi regions have not done well, in fact most successful Hindi singers are from non-hindi speaking native region ranging from from manna dey, kishore kumar ganguli to SPB, kumar sanu, shreya ghosal and so on.Why cant words of Rahman have such clarity of words is a question to me.
As a music director, one should be very aware of what the individual words mean, so that you can do justice to at least the most precious words and this is something which easily can be seen lacking in Rahman's songs where filler words play important role. Take the song for instance "jai ho", i would say "aja aja jind shamiyane ke tale, aaja zari wale neele aasman ke tale" is a marvellous piece by the ace lyricist Gulzarji, but after Rahman worked with the song, all we hear is "jai ho" dominating the song which actually is just a filler ! I guess Gulzarji may not be the happiest soul with treatment. Some people might argue , if Sonu and Shreya can sing in tamil movies why not same with Rahman. my answer would be simple , there is a difference between a singer and a composer.As a singer you more need to pronunce and sound well but as music director you need to understand the lyrics. Rahman has been very creative with his compotions and be it the voice of water drops in "taal se taal miila" , tweeting of birds in "saathiya" or the sound of calling birds in "genda phool" he has very precisely and beautifully placed the relevent sound in his music. He has been different and he has been innovative. But i believe a very nice music can always provide a nice "feel" to song but its always the lyrics that form the "soul" , if you cant do justice to the lyrics, there always shall be something missing !!!!