"He mentioned R D Burman, Madan Mohan and Illayaraja as some of his contemporaries who influenced his work.". Well said, Krish. It was indeed quite grateful for Gulzar to say that. We have quite a few ungrateful people in Tamil film who consider Ilayaraaja as being irrelevant. They have to just look back at their own career and see how Raaja's music influence played a big role in boosting the collections of hundreds of mediocre and lousy movies. Music listeners still croon the tunes not knowing the movie name. We have many rare musical gems from movies which have flopped commercially even though they had star directors and cast. The producers were able to recoup some of their investment from Raaja's music rights because the soundtrack was a platinum hit. In fact, artists in other languages respect and value Maestro's skills more than our own.