MUMBAI: Oscar-winning composer AR Rahman walked off the stage at an event last month after the anchor spoke in Hindi, video went viral on the Internet. The ace musician had attended the event for the promotion of 99 Songs of which he is the co-writer and producer. In a recent interview with a portal, AR Rahman explained his reason for walking off the stage.

AR Rahman said that it was a joke and it was not meant to be taken seriously. In the video, the anchor posed a question to Ehan Bhat who is the lead star of 99 songs in Hindi. To this AR Rahman could be seen exclaiming "Hindi!" and walking off stage while the crowd cheered. Explaining his actions, Rahman told Bollywood Hungama that they were launching 99 Songs in three languages and while the Hindi version was already launched, they were focusing on the Tamil language launch then. He explained that the Tamil launch required them to follow certain protocols on stage as they were talking to a Tamil audience who were already talking about Ehan Bhat's fair skin. For this reason, he asked the anchor to follow the protocol and speak in Tamil.

He thinks the anchor wanted to be kind to Ehan as he understands Hindi better and asked the question in Hindi. Him walking off stage was meant as a joke as the set required the same for other people to walk up on stage. However, people just saw the first part of the video and thought that he left the stage as he got angry and upset. AR Rahman jokingly added that the viral video has saved them a lot of promotion money as Ehan's and his face was trending on social media. In the full video, viewers can see smiling after walking off stage and teasingly telling the anchor in Tamil, "Didn't I ask you to speak in Tamil'" to which the anchor replied by saying, "it's always a pleasure to be trolled by the master."