Hyderabad, July 22 -- "A R Rahman, who?" If this question is posed by any common man, who has absolutely no general knowledge, forget about his filmy knowledge, it would have been no surprise.

But certainly not by a senior actor like Nandamuri Balakrishna, who has been in the film industry for nearly five decades.

Son of legendary actor late N T Rama Rao, who reigned supreme in Tollywood, Balakrishna, fondly called "Balayya" by millions of his fans, refused to acknowledge the existence of Oscar-winning music composer Rahman, leave alone recognising him as one of the greatest contemporary musicians in the world.

Ironically, Rahman had composed the background score for Balakrishna-Vijayashanti-starrer "Nippu Ravva", of course as an assis...