Shaji

Ravindra Jain: Living The Light Of Music

2012-01-10T03:28:00.000-08:00

He who has light within him will sit in the centre and enjoy a bright day

But he who hides a dark soul will walk in darkness under the mid-day sun

To his own prison.
-John Milton

After an entire night and morning of music listening, reading and writing, I fell on my bed at mid day eleven into a deep dreamless sleep. Suddenly the cell phone sounded like a piercing sound of hell. I took it, with my barely open eyes casting anger and reproof for being wakened. The call was from Rajesh Sharma, my friend from Mumbai. He was brief and to the point: “You had wanted to meet Ravindra Jain, right? He is in Chennai today. He returns to Mumbai in the afternoon. I am sending you his number and the name of the hotel where he stays. Leave at once to meet him. I will call and tell him that you are coming.” I got up from my bed, still half asleep, and readied myself in a hurry. As I hastened out of my house, I did not forget to pick up a CD of songs of Ravindra Jain. My car drove ahead to the foot tapping number ‘Geet Gaata Chal, O Saati Gun Gunaata Chal’.

‘My friend, keep going ahead with a song on your lips……..’ It is a happy song that brims with hope and energy. Penned and composed by Ravindra Jain, one of the great composers to have born on the Indian soil with many such melodic gems to his credit. He illuminated countless hearts of music lovers by touching them with the brilliance of his compositions like ‘Akhiyon Ki Jharokkon Se’ (From the entrance of my eyes). His songs like ‘Ghungroo Ki Tarah Bajta Hi Raha Hoom Mein’ (I am ever playing like the bells of anklet) are unforgettable evergreens. His song ‘Do Panchhi Do Thinke’ (Birds couple that flew carrying two twigs) moistens my eyes every time I listen to it.

Ravindra Jain, who has given us many sweet songs based on Hindustani classical ragas, has also shown unusual creativity and flourishes in scoring the instrumental music parts of his songs. He is a lyricist, at once poetic and with a sense of beauty as well. In fact, he has written the lyrics of most of his songs! It does feel strange that, in his four decades as film music composer, he has composed music for only about forty films! But his songs have never failed to make us happy, to bring that smile in our face or a tear in our emotionally moved eyes.

My love of Ravindra Jain musical creations started in 1976 with the songs of the film Chit Chor. In this film, Yesudas had sung all the four songs which had become a raging success all over India. Ravindra Jain wrote the lyrics of all the songs. ‘Gori Tera Gaon Bada Pyaara’ (Fair maiden, your village is so lovely) scored in folksy style was on every lip of those days. Foot-tapping number ‘Aaj Se Pehle Aaj Se Zyaada’ (I was never happier than this day before this day) was hugely popular as well. ‘Jab Deep Jale Aana Jab Shaam Dhale Aana’ (Come when dusk falls, come when lamps are lit) in Raag Yamen Kalyan and ‘Too Jo Mere Sur Me Sur Mila Le Sang Ga Le’ (Let your pitch mingle with mine as you sing with me) in Raag Peelu not only became the favourites of discerning music lovers, but to no one’s surprise became hugely popular hits as well.

My heart skipped a beat as I prepared to meet a living miracle, a legend who gave the world so many songs that are close to my heart! I arrived at the hotel where he stayed. Before I entered the room, I saw Yesudas leaving. Ravindra Jain was seated in a sofa, dressed in a long white dress. Wearing his big dark glasses, he welcomed me with softest of smiles. He did not look his sixty six years. He did not betray any uncertain restlessness normally displayed by visually challenged persons. I went near him and touched his feet. He said: “Your voice reaches me from a great height. You must certainly be more than six feet tall.” When he learned that Malayalam was my mother tongue, he asked me: “Did you see Yesu? He just left.” He kept talking to me for the next two hours, telling me of his life, his music.

Born on 28^th February of 1944, Ravindra Jain’s father was an Ayurvedic Practitioner in Aligarh of Uttar Pradesh. Ravindra Jain’s eyes were tightly closed when he was born. Doctors, who surgically opened his eyes, revealed their foreboding diagnosis that his visual capability was low and that it will completely fade away, soon.

In spite of lacking sight, he was eager to learn all things new even as a child and was deeply interested in music. His father felt that thinking of music and launching himself in music will guide his son from darkness to light and presented him a harmonium at a very young age. Ravindra Jain simply loved to listen to and learn from his multi-lingual elder brother who read out to him from his books in Hindi, English and French.

When stumped for songs in any letter of the alphabet while playing Antakshari game of songs at home, he was the kind of precocious child who would create songs of his own for the occasion. The social scene in Aligarh, where Hindi and Urdu were the warp and weft of a composite culture that evolved as an amalgam of Hindu and Muslim culture, broadened his capacity for both humane and artistic understanding.

Later, learning the classical music in traditional manner over a long period under the tutelage of different teachers, Ravindra Jain was able to obtain the highly valued title of ‘Sangeet Prabhakar’ by the time he was seventeen. Respecting the opinion of his music Guru that staying in Aligarh will not further his prospects in a career of music, he left for Calcutta. There he stayed with a Bengali family and became proficient in Bengali language. He became an aficionado of Rabindra Sangeet. Soon he was teaching music in schools of music in Calcutta and writing and composing songs for Calcutta station of All India Radio as well. He had also recorded a song sung by the popular Bengali singer Aarti Mukherji, there. It was this impact of Bengali music forms that later made him a great creator of light music that unfailingly touched the hearts of his listeners. Many even consider him a full-blown Bengali to this day. Many, like Yesudas, fix the Bengali suffix for elder brother ‘Dada’ while addressing him.

When he had met a Hindi film producer in Calcutta, the producer had promised to give him an opportunity in Hindi film. This motivated him to shift to Bombay (now Mumbai) in 1968 and there he plunged into full time efforts to become a music composer. In 1971, he was asked by the Director of the film Mehboob Ki Mehendi, to work as assistant to Naushad, the film’s music composer. But he refused the offer point blank, saying that he wanted to be nobody’s assistant. This was the decision of a very clear and determined mind that, even with the daily handicap of a visually challenged person, was supremely confident of his own art.

His first tilt at becoming a music composer was the opportunity provided by N.N.Sippy’s production company that had many superhit films to its credit. But the film was shelved before songs were recorded. Later, this company went on to make the superhit movie Sholay. The first film to be released with Ravindra Jain as music composer was Kanchh Aur Hira (1972). ‘Nazar Aati Nahin Manzil’ (Destination is nowhere in sight), one of the best of sad songs sung by Mohammad Rafi, was a superhit song of this not-so-successful film. The first film to become popular with Ravindra Jain’s music was Chor Machaye Shor. It was in this film released in 1974 that the earlier mentioned song ‘Ghungroo Ki Tarah Bajta Hi Raha Hoom Main’ sung by Kishore Kumar stole the hearts of music lovers. This film also had another blockbuster number ‘Le Jaayengey Le Jaayengey Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jaayengey’ (Big Hearted Lover Will Carry Away the Bride). This song is the staple of all marriages in the last 37 years. Ravindra Jain had himself written the lyrics of this song and the blockbuster line ‘Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jaayengey’ became the title of one of the all-time big grosser film with Shah Rukh Khan playing the protagonist!

This song had a background of many interesting anecdotes. N.N.Sippy, the producer of this film, was reluctant to give Ravindra another chance after his earlier film got shelved. At that time, Sanjeev Kumar was acting in another film of N.N.Sippy. Sanjeev Kumar was a friend of Ravindra from his Calcutta days. And finally, Ravindra Jain got his chance on the insistent recommendation of Sanjeev Kumar. But that was not the finale for his problems. Sippy as well as Shashi Kapoor, the protagonist of the film, kept rejecting all the tunes composed by Ravindra Jain!

Tired by the repeated rejection of the many tunes sung by him, Ravindra felt extremely irritated. He told them in a matter of fact tone that he will finally sing to them one more tune and if it fails to pass muster with them, then he will withdraw himself from the film. What followed should certainly rank with top mysteries of film making! Ravindra sang to them a tune that ranked as an ordinary one in his books. Surprisingly, both Sippy and Shashi Kapoor approved the tune, at once, saying that this was what they expected! Truth to be told, no film composer knows why a tune is rejected or why another is selected!

From that moment Ravindra’s stars were on a continuous ascendance. As a classy composer of Hindi film music he kept on creating one marvelous score after another. He was called upon by such big banners as Raj Kapoor’s R.K.Films, Rajshree Pictures, Sippy Films and Barjatya Films, now and then, to work his creative magic. Though he did not achieve commercial super stardom, Ravindra Jain is a happy and contended man that he has done more than justice to the opportunities he had been afforded with his superbly crafted songs. His innings as music composer continues up to the recent film Ek Vivah Isi Bhi starring the latest young protagonist Shahid Kapoor.

‘Tera Mera Saath Rahe’ sung by Lata Mangeshkar for the film Saudagar(1973), ‘Jo Raah Chuni Tu Ne’ sung by Kishore Kumar for the film Tapasya(1975) and the earlier mentioned duet ‘Do Panchhi Do Tinkey’ sung by Kishore Kumar along with Aarti Mukherji for the same film, ‘Purvaiya Leke Chali Meri Naiya’ sung by Lata Mangeshkar and Shailendra Singh for the film Do Jasoos(1975), ‘Kaun Disha Me Leke Chala Re’ sung by Jaspal Singh and Hemlata for the film Nadiya Ke Paar(1982) and the beautiful rain song ‘Sona Kare Jilmil’ sung by Suresh Wadkar and Hemlata are great examples of the genius of his music and composing craft.

‘Fakira Chal Chala Chal’ sung by Mahindar Kapoor for the film Fakira (1976) was full of magical moments of Sufi music. ‘Shyam Teri Bansi Pukarey’, a song studded with beautiful note sequences of the Raag Charukesi, was sung so marvelously by Aarti Mukherji and Jaspal Singh for the film Geet Gaata Chal released in 1975.It was a song that created, at once, the sadness of separated lovers and atmospherics of a Bhajan suited to the devotional scene that was picturised on it!

You would have noticed that most of the names of the singers cited above are new. Hemlata is the female voice that had sung with Yesudas in the songs of the film Chit Chor. Hers is a voice not very familiar to the world of Hindi films. But she is still remembered for singing the already mentioned song ‘Akhiyon Ki Jharokkon Se’. Aarti Mukherji who sang the song ‘Do Panchhi Do Tinkey’ is a marvelously emotive Bengali singer. I started liking her sweet voice for that slight tremolo (vibrato?) in her singing voice. Ravindra Jain had introduced, enthused and encouraged many singers with opportunities to sing in Hindi films, exactly the way he had encouraged Yesudas to sing in Hindi. This includes names like Jaspal Singh, Suresh Wadkar, Sushma Shreshta and Kavita Krishnamurthy.

Talking on this subject, he narrated how he had always been on the look out for new voices and how in the process he had found the classically trained and pleasant to hear voice of Yesudas. Impressed by the voice of Suresh Wadkar when he went as a judge to a music contest, he gave him a chance to prove himself. Jaspal Singh was actually a practicing lawyer. Ravindra Jain found that he had a voice that exhibited some of the traits of Rafi and Mukesh at different levels. Hemlata was a Bengali girl who was his student. Ravindra narrated how Hemlata, while seeking a chance to sing, had sung before Roshan and Naushad a few of the scores he had composed before he came to be a film music composer. Naushad then went on to copy one of the tunes sung by Hemlata and recorded the song ‘Jo Chala Gaya Usey Bhool Jaa’ for the film Saathi (1968) with the voice of Mukesh.

Ravindra Jain was a great fan of the songs of composers like Madan Mohan, Roshan and S.D.Burman. Lata Mangeshkar had always been his favourite singer. With her voice, Ravindra Jain had given many beautiful songs like ‘Tera Mera Saath Rahe’. For this song, in particular, he had waited for two months to get Lata Mangeshkar’s date and as he readied for recording he received a telegram informing him of the passing away of his father. But he stood and recorded the song with heavy sorrow weighing in his mind!

Unfortunately, his relations with Lata Mangeshkar were always traumatic. Apparently Lata had believed that he was only interested in furthering the interests of new singers like Aarti Mukherji and Hemlata. Ravindra says: “I had always wanted Lata Mangeshkar for my songs. But I was a new person in the industry. Many of my producers were small budget producers. We could not wait for extended periods to get her date. I also thought that new voices would lend new feel and expression to my songs. These factors made me use other singers for recording. Lataji could never accept this. She was always short tempered with me.” But Ravindra Jain, later, went on to win the Lata Mangeshkar award for accomplishments in music.

Ravindra Jain’s take on Lata – Asha Bhonsle comparison goes like this: “Lataji’s voice is pure, delicate and suited to classical music. Lataji had a voice made for natural rendering like Rafi Saheb. But Asha’s voice lacked these qualities. She improved the tonal qualities of her voice by rigorous training. Singers can indeed improve their rendering style by voice training. But it is not possible to change the voice quality itself.” There are only a few successful songs for Ravindra Jain-Asha Bhonsle combination. The song ‘Sajna Hai Mujhe Sajna Ke Liye’ (I have to dress up for my love) in the film Saudagar is one such rare song.

On Mohammad Rafi: “I first met Rafi Saheb in a function at Calcutta. But, there a mob of admirers literally pushed me out. Later, in Bombay, we were both neighbours in Bandra. He used to come to my place in his lungi for the rehearsal before recording. He was humble and a very simple person in spite of being such a great singer. He always spoke softly. It was as if he reserved all his energy for singing.”

He had only good words about Kishore Kumar too: “The first song he sang for me was ‘Ghungroo Ki Tarah’. Even today I am asked to sing this song at all my stage shows! When I first approached Kishoreda for the song I told him ‘I am a composer from Calcutta wishing to come up. I have set a Bengali-music-type tune for you. You should hear it.’ He said, ‘No need. Get ready for the recording.’ Unexpectedly, on the recording day he came to the recording studio by nine o’clock. At that time nothing had been readied. Even the score sheets had not been given to the artistes of the orchestra! I was upset and worried. But he surprised me by asking me ‘Just sing the pallavi (first stanza of the song) for me now.’ When I sang the pallavi for him, he comforted me by saying ‘Take your time. I will leave only after recording your song.’ That day, he recorded the song for me after cancelling all his other song recordings. And he started calling me ‘Rabindranath Tagore’!”

In his early days, Ravindra Jain had met Raj Kapoor and asked for composing opportunities after singing a few scores of his. He kept on ringing up R.K.Films to ask Raj Kapoor for that coveted chance. Raj Kapoor had then said: “When the time comes, I personally go knocking on the doors of talented ones.” Later, Raj Kapoor invited him to Pune where his birthday was being celebrated and offered him his film Ram Teri Ganga Maili. Ravindra Jain won the then most credible and priceless award of Filmfare in 1985 for this film. Raj Kapoor had then told him: “I see in you a combination of Shankar Jaikishen and Shailendra.” They were Raj Kapoor’s favourite composers and lyricist respectively.

When I asked him about arranging the orchestra for his songs, Ravindra Jain had this to say: “Good songs have emotional souls of their own based on their Raaga and composition. Instrumental orchestration should be attuned to this soul. People who merely arrange the orchestra mostly may not understand this. I arrange the instrumentation for my songs myself. Present day arrangers are mere arrangers of sounds without the soul. I have scored the background music as well for all my films. And I had put them together with great care to synchronise with narration.” What is a matter of wonder for me is how a visually challenged person could have scored the background music for a film without the benefit of its visuals in such a visual medium!

Seeing that I was talking about only his Hindi film songs, Ravindra Jain asked me: “Have you not heard my Malayalam songs?” I had liked the songs he had composed for the Malayalam film Sujata released in 1977. Asha Bhonsle had sung the song ‘Swayamvara Shubhadhina Mangalangal’. It was a highly successful song that was frequently heard on wedding days in Kerala. ‘Kalidasanday Kavya Bhavanayay’ and ‘Thalippoo Peelippoo’, both sung by Yesudas, were great songs as well. But none of them were in my mind’s radar when I was talking to him. He commented with a smile: “Apparently you are totally immersed in Hindi songs.” He had also composed music for the Malayalam film Sugam Sugakaram in 1994. Though the songs were good, it somehow did not reach the audience.

When I think of Ravindra Jain, I never cease to wonder how in spite of being visually challenged, he handles with aplomb his many roles in scoring the background music for films, composing music, writing lyrics, conducting stage shows, acting in music video, being a judge of music contests on television and many such tough assignments. He told me: “In the world of cinema, people will overlook absolutely everything, if we give them what they want. I never faced any problem in the film industry on account of being visually challenged. But in the realities and daily chores of personal life I do face some difficulties. But still, I count my blessings.”

He went on to say:”I am able to bring greater intensity and attention to my work, being visually challenged. Physical deficiencies do not depreciate your talents or what is good about you. One should never give up that zest for life.” Then he recited to me this poem that he had written:

Face has but two eyes

Mind watches with thousand eyes

Eyes on the face go to sleep

Mind’s eyes are ever vigilant;

Eyes of many remain closed for ever

And darkness engulfs their minds

But there you can be the star on parade

Many sink in the river of life

Unable to find its shores;

For them you can be shore at hand.

Many are lost in unending Darkness

For them you can be the beckoning beacon.

Poet Laureate Milton who also was visually challenged once said: “Sorrow lies not in living in darkness. Real sorrow is not being able to bear with Darkness.” There was not even a trace of darkness on the face of Ravindra Jain. That is because he always lives in the cozy lap of music, a beacon of light that never fades.

My Third Book in Tamil

2012-01-05T20:57:00.000-08:00

My Third Book in Tamil

'In The Light of Music' got released

Shreya Ghoshal: India’s Nightingale

2011-11-30T21:26:00.000-08:00

Maayabono Bihaarini Ami Noi

Shopono Shonchaarini Ami Noi

Shondhaar Meghomaala Ami Noi…...

Gaan Shudhu Gaan Bhora Ye Jeebon

I am not a wanderer in magical woods

I am not a traveller in dream worlds

I am not a dweller on evening clouds....

I am the life where music alone overflows

This is a Bengali song. I will say that this is by far one of the most wonderful songs that I have heard in this past decade. The very first time you hear it, its tune, its lyrics and the way it has been rendered with a rare beauty transports you to the magical woods it sings about. Joy Sarkar, an important contemporary Bengali musician, has composed its music. The many poetic phrases used in the lyrics have been culled from Rabindra Sangeet of Tagore. Just as Tagore is the only world poet to have been born in India in the last 150 years, Shreya Ghoshal is the best female singer to have appeared on the firmament of Indian film music in the last 50 years. And she had sung this Beautiful song. Shreya, the singing marvel is another priceless contribution of Bengal to India.

In Indian film music many famous composers like Salil Chowdhury, S.D.Burman, R.D.Burman, Anil Biswas, Bhappi Lahiri to today’s Pritam Chakraborty many have come from Bengal. Singers from Bengal like Pankaj Mullick, Hemant Kumar, Kishore Kumar, Manna Dey and Geeta Dutt have been well known all over India. But that fame was as Hindi film singers. Singing fluently in other languages has often been a big challenge for singers whose mother tongue was Bengali. Manna Dey, Pankaj Mullick and Geeta Dutt could not quite get over their Bengali accented pronunciation even while singing Hindi songs. But Shreya Ghoshal is different. She is a Bengali only when she speaks or sings in Bengali!

Shreya is an Assamese singer when she sings in Assamese. In Malayalam, she is a Malayalam singer. And for Tamils, she is totally a Tamil singer. It is for the first time in India that such a singer who understands to a dot, regardless of the language, her instructions with all their minute nuances and sings with the rare felicity of an exact pronunciation. Lata Mangeshkar, with Marathi as her mother tongue has sung a song or two in Tamil and Malayalam. She had pronunciation difficulties there. Shreya Ghoshal was easily able to surpass Lata Mangeshkar in this respect. But this felicity of pronouncing exactly in many languages is merely one of her many amazing capabilities as a singer. No one, who evaluates her regarding any aspect of music, can deny that Shreya Ghoshal is indeed a rare singer!

Many famous singers have a speaking voice and a singing voice. But there is no difference between the speaking voice and singing voice of Shreya Ghoshal. Shreya has a sweet and delicate voice that holds in thrall everyone from five years old children to eighty years old elders. It is the voice that males fantasise as the voice of the most beautiful woman. It is the voice of the most desirous girl tenanting their dreams. But surprisingly it is a voice that has, innately, no trace of sexual attractions. The attraction of the voice lies in its delicacy and closeness to the listener’s soul.

The usual problem of such delicate female voices is that when they reach higher notes of scale they tend to screech. Often, on the lower notes of scale, these voices sound boomy and unclear. But Shreya’s voice shines alike both on lower notes and higher notes of scale. Neither shrillness nor flaws or lack of clarity sullies her voice at any time. It is a great and lovely voice that easily expresses all the sweetness and the emotions inherent in every song.

In music there is what we call a Perfect Pitch or an Absolute Pitch. This is an amazing ability that one can get only as an innate gift of a rare birth. A person with Perfect Pitch can sing with fidelity to that pitch, any time and in any environment. Such a person will hold on to the pitch, never deviating from it, even when there is a play of the wrong pitch in the background! But ever so few of the musical artistes are born with such perfect pitch. Among the great musicians of the world there are very few with perfect pitch like western classical maestros like Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin and Handel, singers who created history like Nat King Cole, Frank Sinatra, Stevie Wonder and Michael Jackson, Jazz and Blues singer Ella Fitzgerald, the contemporary pop singer Celine Dion, the singer actress Julie Andrews of Sound of Music fame, the wonder with guitar Jimi Hendrix and the marvel Yanni. Shreya Ghoshal belongs with those legends as a singer with the perfect pitch! Anywhere, anytime, Shreya Ghoshal sings to her pitch so perfectly. Whether it is a recording studio or a stage show her pitch neither trembles nor deviates!

The amazing consistency of her rendering style is another wonder that we can see in Shreya. Usually the standard of rendering of a singer varies by his / her state of mind and body at the time of singing. But in none of Shreya’s songs that I have heard from the time she was fourteen to this date, have I found any decline in standard or lack of consistency! From the time she had appeared on television as a child singer Shreya Ghoshal had demonstrated her amazing talent and standard in music and she continues to record that with an amazing consistency. Each passing day finds it getting more and more polished! It is not an exaggeration to say that her voice and rendering style is absolutely peerless and incomparable in the rendering of Indian melodies.

Whether the songs given to her are classical based or ghazal styled or western music based or folk based, nothing strains Shreya. She has this amazing ability to understand a score in totality as soon as she is instructed on it. This ability to grasp the music and emotions of a song with such speed is an extremely rare one. As she internalizes the score she also understands the intricacies of word play of the language.

Regardless of the language of the song she notes down the lyrics in Devanagari script. She uses a self-created collection of accent and pronunciation notations above the lines of lyrics to decipher the nuances of word accents. She gets the relevant person to explain both the context of the song in the storyline and the meaning of the lyrics. She gets ready for recording the song within half an hour, however complicated the score is. Shreya has no trouble whatsoever in singing difficult songs because of her marvellous breath control. Her rendering style is comparable to that of a river flowing smoothly and freely without any restraint.

There have been other singers in India who had displayed both talented voice and speed of learning. There are many, even now. But more than these qualities, ability to express emotions through one’s rendering style is very important for a singer. Many singers, who handle all techniques exactly, fall down when it comes to expressing the emotions of the song. It is here that Shreya demonstrates her uniqueness by bringing out all the nuanced emotions of a song totally even as she brings her unique voice and rendering style to the song.

People like me, who fancy vintage songs beyond measures, always watch discerningly how a new singer, male or female, sing our favourite vintage songs. Many contemporary singers often fail miserably in doing justice to what should be a pleasurable task of singing golden oldies. Present day singers disappoint us principally because they are unable to reach out to the soul of those old songs so lovingly created and carefully crafted. But the one contemporary singer, who can render the best creations of my most favourite composers like Salil Chowdhury and Madan Mohan with a flawless fidelity, often going a step beyond the original in creating the feel and mood of the song, is Shreya Ghoshal.

Singing a song composed by Salil Chowdhury is a tough ask but when she was just fifteen, Shreya had effortlessly sung with great felicity many songs with difficult scores composed by Salil Chowdhury like ‘Shurer Jharna’, ‘Ni Sa Ga Ma Pa Ni’, ‘Gungun Phagun’, ‘Laage Dhol’ and ‘Akaash Kusum’ in Bengali. Recently, I was overwhelmed hearing Shreya sing on television late C.Ramachandra’s ‘Yeh Zindagi Usi Ki Hai’ from Anaarkali (1953). It was said, not by me alone, that Shreya Ghoshal sang even better than the original sung by Lata Mangeshkar! But Shreya, who is an ardent fan of Lata Mangeshkar, has said that she follows Lata Mangeshkar style in the way she renders with importance given to the words of lyrics.

Shreya Ghoshal was first contracted in 2002 to just sing one song for the Hindi film Devdas directed by Sanjay Leela Bhansali with music composed by Ismail Durbar. But she ended up singing a total of 5 songs for the film! ‘Bairi Piya’, ‘Silsila Yeh Chhahath Ka’, ‘Dola Re’, ‘Morey Piya’ and ‘Chalak Chalak’ were those five songs with which Shreya Ghoshal announced to the world, in no uncertain terms, that she is no ordinary singer! In the nine years since then, there are no heights in the Indian film music that Shreya Ghoshal has not touched.

One can go on listing her famous Hindi film songs that beautifully express love, songs oozing sensuality, night club dance numbers and sweet melodies. ’Jaadoo Hai Nasha Hai’ and ‘Chalo Thum Ko Lekar Chalen’(Jism 2003), ‘Bahara Bahara Hua Hain’(I Hate Love Stories 2010), ‘Theri Ore’(Sing Is King2008), ‘Yeh Ishq Haaye’(Jab We Met 2007), ‘Hont Raseeley’(Welcome 2007), ‘Tere Mast Mast Do Nain’ and ‘Thoo Jo Pal Bar Mein’(Dabang 2010), ‘Shukraan Allah’(Kurban 2009) and ‘Piyu Boley’(Parinita 2005) are all songs which have been rendered by Shreya Ghoshal with her distinct stamp on them. ‘Ami Je Tomar’ (Bhool Bhulaiya 2007) is a justly famous number from her repertoire of songs, of peerless quality with elaborations in Hindustani classical style and lines. When we hear her dance number ‘Soobi Doobi’ from Three Idiots (2009), it is difficult to restrain our legs from stepping up for an enthusiastic jig!

Shreya has shown that it is not merely the film songs but also songs steeped in classical music that she is good at rendering with ease. For example, the late maestro Ustad Bade Ghulam Ali Khan had sung and recorded in 1960 a Hindustani classical piece ‘Bhoru Baye Tori Bat Thakat Piya’ in Raag Gurjari Todi. A.R.Rahman had used this classic piece for his film Delhi 6 released in 2009. Shreya has sung this song with all its embellishments with a stunning maturity along with Ustad’s voice taken from the old recording. It is a scintillating effort that, if he were to listen to it, Ustad Bade Ghulam Ali Khan himself would have applauded!

In Tamil, Shreya Ghoshal remains a favourite singer of composers like Ilayaraja, A.R.Rahman, Vidhyasagar, Harris Jayaraj, Yuvan Shankar Raja, G.V.Prakash and other emerging composers. And she sings in her amazing virtuoso fashion for all without discriminating between veterans and newcomers. Her repertoire of songs includes such famous Ilayaraja numbers as ‘Onnavida Indha Ulagathil’ (Virumandi), ‘Elangaathu Veesudhey’ (Pitamagan), ‘Enakku Piditha Paadal’ (Julie Ganapathy), ‘Kaatril Varum Geethamey’(Oru Naal Oru Kanavu), ‘Konjam Konjam’ (Maaya Kannadi) and ‘Gundumalli’ (Solla Marandha Kadhai). She has sung for A.R.Rahman such scintillating gems as ‘Munbe Vaa En Anbe Vaa’ (Sillunnu Oru Kaadhal), ‘Nanna Re Nanna Re’(Guru), ‘Mannippaaya’ (Vinnai Thaandi Varuvaaya), ‘Kaadhal Anukkal’ (Endhiran) and ‘Kalvarey Kalvarey’(Raavanan).

The same Shreya who sweetly renders a Vidhyasagar composition ‘Oru Nila Oru Kulam (Ilainjan), a love song, sings in company of other singers a song like ‘Anndangkaka Kondaikkari’ for Harris Jayaraj. If that is not diversity, Shreya sings ‘Ninaithu Ninaithu Paarthal’ (7G Rainbow Colony) for Yuvan Shankar Raja, renders ‘Urugudhey Marugudhay’ (Veyyil) for G.V.Prakash and ‘Neeyum Naanum’ (Myna) for Imaan. Sure enough, she does a great job of singing new comers N.R.Rahanandan’s ‘Yaedi Kallachhi’ (Thenmaerku Paruvakkatru) and Lakshman Ramalinga’s ‘Ennavo Seidhaai’ (Yaen Ippadi Mayakkinaai). This ‘Ennavo Seidhai’ song is the best melodic Tamil song among the ones I recently heard.

Shreya has said in an interview: “A.R.Rahman and composers like Mano Murthy, today’s frontline Kannada film composer, place before singers a musical framework for the song. They give the singers the freedom to fill the framework with their range of colours. But Ilayaraja is not like that. He is very clear about what he wants. He does not expect any contribution from singers. He is firmly of the opinion that if the singer sings to the true pitch, emotions take their place automatically.”

Shreya, who asserts that Kannada is the one language in India where melody songs achieve most fame today, is the favourite singer for all contemporary composers of Kannada films. No wonder she has sung hundreds of hit numbers there. In Telugu, so far, there are many super hit songs like ‘Tharimae Varama Thadimae Swarama’ (Yae Maaya Chesaavae 2010) in her repertoire of over two hundred songs. Shreya, with about twenty songs to her credit in Malayalam, has won the Best Singer award of Government of Kerala.

Shreya had once reflected on the contemporary music scene saying that everything had become totally commercial and expressed the heart-felt wish that she were a singer of the golden era that gave importance to a leisurely way of expressing art where the singers and orchestra got together at the same time to lovingly record the song. Though there is cut-throat competition in the film industry, Shreya maintains that there is no competition for her at all. She sees her voice and her rendering style as marks of her identity and has deep faith in the dictum that endless training, not straining, of vocal chords is the only way to grow in music. She sums up that a beautiful voice alone is nature’s gift, but everything else is creative result of our ability to grasp all details and put in the needed hard work.

Shreya, who nowadays insists on singing only one song a day, believes that she will get the songs that she ought to sing and has the self-confidence to assert quite frankly that those who are in a hurry can certainly have their songs rendered by others. Shreya Ghoshal also reveals that when she feels that the track singer has done justice to the song while listening to the track of the song, she recommends to the music director to release the song as it is. Shreya insists that this had happened many times!

For many of her fans Shreya Ghoshal is a world beauty! For countless others, she is a beautiful girl next door. It is difficult to deny that her looks too merchandised as a million dollars when she appears on stages all over the world, in the blaze of lights. At present, she constantly appears on the reality music shows of Hindi television channels and appears on advertisements of Jewellery shops. Many feel that the time is not far, when she may start acting in films. But it is also a fact that none among ardent lovers of her music welcome either her sing and dance shows on television or her glamorous appearances in advertisement films.

After music, cooking is Shreya’s intense love. She not only loves to cook a variety of dishes, she loves to feast on them to her heart’s content. Her favourite is rice with Bengali fish curry and fried fish. When she gets time, she reads books too. She would love to sing for private albums, other than that of cinema, of classical music and other songs. But it is her abiding regret that such opportunities are rare in India and that, if it all such opportunities arise, they will get neither the money nor the respect, due to them.

Shreya Ghoshal, who has won 4 National Awards and countless Filmfare, State and private awards by her present age of 27, is hailing from a family of scientists and learned persons. She is the first woman of her family to have chosen music as the field of her endeavours. Born in a small town in Bengal, brought up in an even smaller town of Rajasthan, she learnt her music there in the traditional style from the age of six. She was identified as a big talent by Kalyanji while singing in a television event in Mumbai, where she had migrated to at the age of thirteen, and was trained by him in the technique of singing film songs. At the age of 16, in 2002, she was introduced as a singer of film songs.

From that day on, she has been singing, without interlude, maintaining at all times highest level of musicality that no other contemporary female singer in India had touched. We can call her as the first true Indian singer because of her amazing ability to sing with ease in all Indian languages. We can also call her the current Nightingale of India, acknowledging the sky-high standard of her singing. May her life overflow with music and music alone. Let her, forever travel in the dream world of music. Let her forever live in the high clouds of music never descending.

Jagjit Singh: The Last Ghazal of the Night

2011-11-18T12:39:00.000-08:00

Dusk was evolving into a dark night on one Saturday evening of last June. Depressed and dull, I was aimlessly trudging in Malleswaram area of Bangalore. I thought fleetingly of entering one of those omnipresent bars for a drink. But on Saturday nights in the Bangalore bars even standing space will be too much to ask for. Supposing I do find a place, the loud music and the noise and shouts of drunks make for an ear splitting trauma that would only multiply the depression that I was in. So I continued my aimless walk along the avenue under the brooding trees. That was when I saw the flex poster nailed on a tree trunk. ‘Come to Chowdiah Hall at 7.30 p.m. on 18^th June to hear Jagjit Singh’s unique music and experience the cool breeze of his voice.’ The concert was only half an hour away but since Chowdiah Hall was not very far, so I hailed an auto.

The program had already started in the huge Auditorium built to resemble the violin of Chowdiah, the legendary musician. There were barely a couple of seats left in the auditorium built to accommodate more than a thousand people. When I bought a ticket and rushed into the hall in search of my seat in a corner of the last row, Jagjit Singh was singing a soulful Ghazal that he himself had penned, composed and sung twenty five years ago: ‘Aye Khuda Re Ke Zehara Ko Samandar Kar De’

Even at 70 his haunting voice had that undiminished flow and depth. And that rendering style bore the so familiar and much loved Jagjit Singh stamp of the seventies! I was once an intense fan of Jagjit Singh but I had stopped buying and listening to his albums when I became frustrated at the sameness and lack of novelty of his later albums. But that night I was completely lost listening to his fifteen or more all-time classics. When I left the auditorium well past eleven after the concert, I had completely forgotten the reasons for my depression! This was not just an experience that I alone felt with the Ghazals of Jagjit Singh.

His voice, which is quiet like a river flowing through the plains and his rendering style, is capable of being a balm to the pained mind. He never resorts to any type of gimmickry just to attract attention. He just loses himself singing what he likes as he knows it. His music has no place for egoistic manners like, “Now I am going to a sing a very intricate and difficult piece. You all listen to this” The very form of Ghazal music, which is originated in Persia a thousand years ago and arrived to Indian sub continent about six hundred years ago, is a highly evolved art which is not capable of entertaining such egoism. Though often simplistically defined as a simplified form of Hindustani classical music, Ghazal is innately capable of profound outpouring of emotions like no other music form. Yet these emotions are expressed in soft cadences without loud or dramatic plays. That is the greatness and underlying note of Ghazal.

Ghazalformat is not for too much orchestration. The usual scene has artistes playing a sarangi and a tabla with a gentle touch even as the vocalist renders the Ghazal sitting in the centre and all of them are lost in a dream world of soft expressions. Ghazals sing of indefinable pains of human life, its unavoidable sorrows, worship of feminine beauty, love, separations, yearnings, philosophy of life, the little pleasures of life like wine, mind that seeks happiness even in the midst of pain.

It is not easy singing Ghazals well. Total dedication of self to music, a deep understanding of the emotions of the ragas and the meaning of lyrics are an absolute must for a Ghazal singer. The purpose of a Ghazal is not to rock the listeners by singing difficult or intricate pieces. A true Ghazal singer who understands the soul of a raga and renders it emotionally himself becomes the Ghazal. At the moment of singing he is all alone and sings only for himself. Listeners who absorb this emotional rendering experience it as an intensely personal happening. This emotional intensity is the reason why there are so few Ghazal singers of class in this world. Mehdi Hasan, Ghulam Ali, Begum Akthar, Iqbal Bano, Abida Parveen, Farida Khanum, Malika Pukhraj, Tahira Sayeed, Munni Begum, Hariharan……this list of four generations of great Ghazal singers is impossible to extend any further.

When India was partitioned in 1947, almost all our important Ghazal singers migrated to Pakistan. It was only in seventies with the rise of Jagjit Singh that India could hoist the proud flag of Ghazal on an equal footing with those who migrated to Pakistan. Jagjit Singh had a rare, made for Ghazal voice like that of Mehdi Hasan and Ghulam Ali and an entirely honest rendering style that was faithful to emotions of the Ghazal. Whatever the form of music he chose to espouse, they too became Ghazals.

While the likes of Hariharan made Ghazal one among their many interests and forayed into film music, pop music, acting on screens big and small, reality music shows and tumultuous stage shows, Jagjit Singh alone lived exclusively for Ghazal. Jagjit Singh’s role in raising the count of the Ghazal listeners in India is an inalienable part of post-Independence history of Indian music. Countless music lovers sought his Ghazals to serve as balms on the pain they experienced in their lives. But Jagjit Singh erased the sorrows in other people’s lives with a music he created out of the countless sorrows of own his life.

Though Jagjit Singh was born and brought up in Sriganga Nagar of North East Rajasthan on the border with Pakistan, he was basically a Punjabi Sikh. Bade Ghulam Ali Khan, the maestro of Hindustani classical music and Mohammad Rafi, by far the greatest playback singer of Hindi film industry, were both Punjabis as well. The great composers of Hindi film music like Madan Mohan, Roshan, Jaidev, Khayyam and O.P.Nayyar, legendary singers like K.L.Saigal, Suraiya, Shamshad Begum and Ghazal singers like Ghulam Ali, Noor Jahan and Anup Jalotta, the historic figure of Qawwali Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Tabla maestros like Alla Rakha and his son Zakir Hussain were all Punjabis. We can say that Jagjit Singh is an important part of this long list of Punjab’s contribution to Indian music.

Jagmohan Singh Dheeman aka Jagjit Singh was born in 1941 as the third son among the 11 children of lower level Government employee Amar Singh Dheeman, a deeply religious Sikh. He was brought up as a Sikh who is always supposed to wear a turban. It was this turbaned Sikh who metamorphosed on the music stage as a superstar Ghazal singer with a free flowing and handsome hair. Jagjit Singh spent his childhood days in poverty in a free two-room government hutment with neither electricity nor running water in it. For him even flying kites on the street like other children was an extravagant desire. Instead He roamed the streets feeding grass to the cows on the streets and singing loudly the songs that caught his fancy. When he was seven his family moved to his father’s native town Jullundur in Punjab.

Amar Singh, seeing how well his son sang when there was not even a radio in the house to listen to songs, arranged for him to learn from Chaganlal Sharma, a blind music teacher. But he wanted that his son should become a high-ranking government official. Later, Ustad Jamal Khan became Jagjit’s music Guru. By going to the nearby homes with a radio and listening to the likes of Abdul Karim Khan, Amir Khan, Bade Ghulam Ali Khan and Talat Mehmood, he had become a madly enchanted music lover. He sang on a stage for the first time when he was barely nine. The crowd of fans loved his singing. Many in the crowd came forward to thrust into his hands anything from half Anna coins to two rupee notes. His father, who took those offerings with trembling hands, embraced his son and wept.

Jagjit learned Classical music in proper Guru-shishya tradition for fifteen years, but he had no desire to become a classical singer. He was consumed with a passion to become a film singer, where the emphasis was on light music, like his film music favourites like Talat Mehmood, Hemant Kumar and Lata Mangeshkar. Even though he did not do particularly well in his studies, he was looked upon with favour both in school and college because of his singing talent. He failed the tests of All India Radio many times, but soon his songs were heard on the air waves from Jullundur Radio station.

None too soon, he became a Radio star. Once when he was singing in a college function, power failed and the stage was plunged in darkness. Only the loud speaker system was functioning on battery power. He did not stop singing, even for a moment. And not a soul stirred in the crowd! For more than one hour they sat in darkness listening and wildly applauding to Jagjit’s songs! Banking only on the confidence that such appreciation gave him, at the age of twenty, Jagjit Singh arrived in Bombay, seeking opportunities in film singing.

He searched for and knocked on the doors of many popular Hindi film composers of the day. He even sang before many of them. But not a cheep anywhere! Jaikishen of Shankar Jaikishen duo of the lot praised his cultured voice but offered no opportunities to sing. The little money that he had was soon all spent. Then came a pass where he did not have the money to pay and get back his laundered cloth. A mentally tired Jagjit then boarded a train without ticket and returned to Jullundur hiding in train toilets for two days.

Four years later he again returned to Bombay. He lodged in a room in an old ramshackle chawl with four others. He slept on a rusted iron cot allowing its denizens of bugs to suck his blood. Even rats joined in to chewing up his feet. He used to eke out a living with the help of a rented harmonium by singing at small parties and functions at homes of Bombay’s rich and famous. He even sang free at homes of many film industry persons in the fond hope that someone will notice him and open the doors of opportunities in the film industry. But nobody noticed him. If they had indeed noticed, it was obvious that the deep musicality and the pain of his voice would hardly have suited the sturdy heroes of the film industry gleefully chasing the heroines around the proverbial tree. In a way it was a blessing that he did not become a playback singer. His composing skills, his felicity with words, his deep understanding and love of classical ragas would have been totally lost in films.

Finally what ended this nightmarish phase of his life was the agreement with HMV to sing and record two Ghazals. It was for the cover jacket of that record Jagjit gave up his Sikh turban and the long hair and beard. He made this new look his permanent one. He did not want to make a Sardarji’s look, the identity of his music. But his father was never able to get around to accepting his son giving up his religious identity.

Jagjit Singh decided to dedicate his life entirely to Ghazal. It was a time when Ghazal as a genre of music was disappearing in India. He created a very unique style of Ghazal that differed from the occasional Ghazal that struggled to emerge out of film music. He brought in Santoor, Guitar, Violin and electronic instruments as accompaniments in place of the traditional instruments like Sarangi used in Ghazals. He abandoned difficult to understand Urdu poems and chose simple lines for his lyrics. But nothing brought him success instantly.

At this point of time, he had to sustain himself by composing and singing for advertisements.

It was during one such song recording that he met a Bengali singer, Chitra Dutta. Jagjit Singh, at that very first meeting was attracted to Chitra who had an ever ready to cry expression on her beautiful face, blue eyes that spoke of deep pain and a voice that reminded of a child’s purity. Chitra was married and living a very sad life with her eight years old daughter. Love blossomed in the life of Chitra and Jagjit Singh. With only thirty rupees in hand, Jagjit Singh married Chitra who had obtained divorce from a life that had all the material comforts. Chitra’s daughter Monica with her innocent smile and purity of love became Jagjit’s dotting daughter.

Jagjit also became the music Guru to Chitra who had no formal training in music. The duo of Jagjit Singh and Chitra Singh began recording discs and performing stage shows. But success was yet far away. Next year they were blessed with a son. Once Jagjit spoke of those days: “When Vivek, whom we fondly called Babu was born we did not have any money. Chitra and Monica who had left a comfortable life behind to live with me had to live with me in a one-room tenement. But these did not weigh on our minds at all. Carrying Babu around, those were the days when I felt like one of the richest men in the world. Babu smiled and filled our minds and home with happiness. Chitra went to studios to record her advertisement jingles carrying barely twenty days old Babu in her hands. She sang cradling the sleeping baby in her hands. I roamed around looking for the opportunity of a concert or mehfil”.

But soon the travails of poverty became things of past. ‘The Unforgettables’ the record he had cut in 1975 and its cassette were released in the same year to unprecedented welcome. Its massive success established Jagjit Singh & Chitra Singh couple all over India as the most popular singers outside the film world. In the songs of this album which came out with totally different sound from that of traditional Ghazals, Jagjit had creatively used many western music instruments. Some music critics faulted this as a move to destroy Ghazal. In truth, it was a historical event that breathed new life into Ghazals in India. Songs like ‘Baat Niklegi’, ‘Ek Na Ek Shama’, ‘Ghum Bade Aathey Hain’ and ‘Dost Ban Ke Mujh Ko’ remain a live testimony to this day.

After this turning point only successes happened in Jagjit Singh’s music life. Money and fame poured in. He flew to all parts of the world conducting up to 400 shows a year. There were no days without a show. He has to his credit over 300 shows in Delhi’s Siri Fort Auditorium alone! The same film world that rejected him now even made films based entirely centred on his music. Jagjit composed and sang totally Ghazal styled songs in them!

Songs like ‘Koyi Gesu Koyi Aanchal ‘(Ek Baar Kaho), ‘Hoton Se Chhoolo Tum’(Prem Geet), ‘Tum Ko Dekha To Yeh Khayal Aaya’, ‘Yeh Bata De Mujhe Zindagi’, ‘Yeh Tera Ghar Yeh Mera Ghar’ and ‘Yoon Zindagi Ki Raah Mein’(Saath Saath), ‘Tum Itna Jo Muskara Rahe Ho’ and ‘Jhuki Jhuki Si Nazar’(Arth), ‘Nasheeli Raath Ko’(Zulf Ke Saaye) and ‘Hoshwalon Ko Kya Pata’(Sarfarosh) are some his film Ghazals that became wildly popular. The cassette album combining his songs from Saath Saath and Arth released by HMV became its largest selling combination music album ever for them. Doordarshan brought out and telecast the life history of Mirza Ghalib (1797-1869), undoubtedly the greatest poet of Ghazals. Jagjit Singh’s composition of Ghazals in the serial was another milestone of his achievements. ‘Beyond Time’, a short disc cut by Jagjit Singh was the first such effort in India to have been recorded on the multi-track digital recording system.

In July of 1990, when he was at the height of his fame, his 19 years old son Babu, around whom Jagjit’s life revolved, died in a tragic road accident. Chitra Singh never again recovered from the trauma of that immense loss. After that event she never again sang even a note. There was a magical quality about the music shows staged by Jagjit Singh Chitra Singh duo. Fans lost forever the opportunity of listening to that enchanting music live. After Chitra Singh no full-fledged female Ghazal singer of mention emerged in India.

Jagjit Singh returned slowly to the music scene after many months spent in tears over the unbearable sorrow of his son’s death. At first he just spent hours listening to his tanpura. Then he began singing with tanpura as accompaniment. Later he started occasionally singing on the stage with eyes brimming with tears rendering a Punjabi folk song called ‘Mitti da Bawa’, a dirge usually sung by a mother crying over her son’s death in an accident. He had later said that, “Tears I had shed over my son’s death became the album ‘Man Jeete Jagjit’”.

Jagjit plunged into the world of Ghazals with rare fortitude. In the decade of 1991-2000 he released about 55 albums. I remember this phase well. I had toured entire South India for the publicity of his album ‘Face to Face’ released by our music company. He in the company of Lata Mangeshkar, brought a Ghazal album ‘Sajda’. In 2003 he composed music for the album ‘Samvedna’ comprising Ghazals written by the then Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee. Albums kept coming with a vengeance. He was also conducting countless stage shows. In 2001 he sang for an event in Kolkata even on the day his mother passed away!

This was a time when custom had staled his music with none of the novelty either in tune or his arrangements. All his new songs sounded the same as his old songs. After a stage, if he had left composing and background arrangements to other musicians and instead concentrated on singing alone he could have avoided the staleness that crept into his music. Unfortunately, he never thought on those lines. I completely stopped seeking his new songs and kept listening to his old numbers now and then. Then in 2007, he recreated and sang ten Hindi film songs that affected him most and released the album ‘Close to My Heart’. It was a good move but the way he changed the arrangements of the lead song ‘Kahin Door Jab Din Dhal Jaaye’ did not go down well with many listeners who knew the music of Salil Chowdhury.

But beyond all that, what stands out is his historic contribution to Ghazal as a music form in India. Jagjit Singh is the genius who breathed life into Indian Ghazal and popularized it at a time when it had almost disappeared from the music scene. As far as Ghazals were concerned, he was at once a one man movement and one person industry. It is unfortunate that no new Ghazal singer emerged in his footsteps following his inimitable Ghazal style. In his lifetime not one important singer made Ghazal his important forte. There are some singers who sing Ghazal well. But none of them felt inclined to make it their most important form of expression in music.

Jagjit Singh as an individual lived a very transparent life. He never hesitated in ventilating his opinions explicitly. He lived the life of a very humane and kind person. He helped others without any let or hindrance. He did his best to encourage new singers and musicians. To the end he continued to help individuals and organizations like Child Relief and You (CRY), National Association of the Blind, Library at St.Mary’s and Bombay Hospital. His take on this was: “Nobody helped me in my early days when I was facing utmost tribulations. Helping the needy will not diminish anything. Help confers relief to those who receive it and peace of mind to those who give it.”

One summer’s day in 2009, Jagjit’s daughter Monica committed suicide by hanging from a ceiling fan at her home. Two years later Jagjit was admitted in hospital on 23^rd September after cerebral hemorrhage and after a 17 days’ struggle he passed away in the early hours of 10^th October. Chitra Singh alone left abandoned to loneliness. Jagjit Singh has sung ‘Your tears are deeper than the ocean’. Will Chitra be comforted by Jagjit’s Ghazals that have comforted millions?

Feel me with your lips

And make my songs immortal…

Hoton Se Chhoo Lo Tum..

T M Soundararajan – Singer of The People

2011-09-26T05:51:00.000-07:00

A current Tamil film singer told me, “I hate TMS songs.” When I asked him the reason for his hatred, he could not name a proper one for it. He lamely said, “His songs remind me of the dust and heat of Tamilnadu.” I retorted: “You must have come to Tamilnadu only during your summer vacations and heard his songs only at the height of those summers.” His opinion was only a reflection of a youngster born in Tamilnadu but brought up elsewhere. Some never outgrow their juvenile state of mind!

Honestly, I too did not like TMS songs in my childhood. It was a time when I was under the impression that Yesudas was world’s greatest singer. But after a few years I started listening to TMS songs. I sang a song of his during a school function as that song had made a deep impression on me. I made a mess of it neither knowing the tune well nor having learnt the lyrics properly. That earned me a warning from the head master to desist from singing again.

My memories of TMS go back to a person we had all called ‘Annachi’. In our place all Tamilians are called ‘Annachi’. I do not recollect his name. He was a daily wage-earner in a tea shop. He was a dark slender person who always sported an innocent smile on his face. He used to marvelously render the song ‘Sathiyame Latchiyamaai Kolladaa’. I was absolutely certain in my mind that ‘Annachi’ was my hero from the day I heard him sing that TMS song.

His job was to draw water from the wells of the village and bring it to the tea shop. He used to fill water in two recycled square oil tins dangling from the ends of a bamboo pole and bring them to the tea shop balancing them on his shoulder. I would walk alongside beseeching him to sing the song ‘Sathiyame Latchiyamaai’. Some of the times he would oblige me. I can never forget that majestic opening ‘Sathiyamae’ and the softer landing word ‘Selladaa’. I can also never forget the scene of Annachi leaving our village in tears, after he was dismissed from tea shop work for some reason.

Many TMS songs like ‘Pattikkaadaa Pattanamaa’, ‘Adi Ennadi Raakkamma’, and ‘Poomazhai Thoovi Vasanthangal Vaazhtha’ were very popular in our cool hill villages. I slowly found myself beginning to appreciate his songs for his emotionally rich rendering style. But it was many years later during my Hyderabad days that I have attentively listened most of his important songs.

I was then living in Feroze Guda, a semi-slum area of Hyderabad. It was the place bachelors from all over India, coming in search of jobs roamed the streets. They stayed together in small one room dwellings. They cooked, ate and slept in those tenements sharing dreams and talking of landing well-earning jobs abroad. Summer in Hyderabad is hotter than summers of Tamilnadu and people sleep on roofs and terraces at night. I was part of this crowd. There was a bachelor in the corner of our street. But he stayed alone in his room. He was rarely seen outdoors and never interacted with people. His name was Dennis and he hailed from Kuzhithurai of Kanyakumari district in Tamilnadu. Even when the summer heat touched 47 degree Centigrade he never came out!

He will get up quite early in the morning and immediately play a TMS devotional song on his tape-recorder. The songs played would be anything like his ‘Pullaanguzhal Kodutha Moongilgale’, ‘Nee Oru Thaayaanal’, ‘Karpanai Endraalum’, etc. After that till his departure for work he will play some film song or other of TMS without a gap. His tape recorder would again start broadcasting TMS songs as soon as he returned from work in the evening. I do not remember him playing the songs of any other singer! On Sundays the TMS songs will play continuously from morning to night. I was a daily fan of this very devoted broadcast.

Dennis always had a forbidding expression that warned all to keep away. But I wanted to befriend him. My intention was, in particular to see his collection of tapes and have a good look at his tape recorder which reproduced such superb quality sound. My room mates had warned me that Dennis had some incurable skin disease and that it was contagious. His face and exposed parts of the body had reddish allergic skin lesions. This unprepossessing look had alienated him from others.

One fine morning I made bold to knock on his door. When he opened the door he only had his vest on. The skin was coming off his body like thin patties. It was an allergic skin disease called psoriasis. I asked him in Tamil whether we could talk. He did not allow me in. He sent me off saying he was busy.

It took me many days and as many efforts to befriend him and enter his room. But once I made friends with him I realized that he was such a wonderful friend. I explained to him that psoriasis was not a big disease and that it was not contagious. That brought him closer to me. His tape recorder was a big one. It was the original made-in-Holland Philips. His collection of TMS songs was huge. You name a song and he would play it for you.

I had spent many sultry nights in his room listening to TMS songs and talking about them. Whenever I went to his room he will serve me his fantastic tea. Some of the times he had even cooked a meal for me. He would never allow anyone to touch his collection of tapes; much less lend it to anybody. But he had lent to me many tapes which I copied. Even today I have with me the copies of his tapes of TMS songs.

After some years there, the mental depression caused by a failed love affair made me leave Hyderabad for Bombay. With barely a hundred rupees in hand I landed in Bombay thanks to the free lift offered by a tanker lorry driver. I roamed Bombay for two days looking for job. I approached a few distant relatives and old friends for help. But none was forthcoming.

On a moment of depression I spent twenty rupees of the last thirty rupees that remained in hand on a bottle of beer that I drank. Then I caught a bus to Taloja area looking for a person hailing from my native place. The owner of the house where he stayed said that he had left for the city on a welding job and that the date of his return was uncertain.

At around eight in the night I reached a place called Kalamboli on Mumbai Pune Hyderabad Highway. I tried to thumb a ride in the passing trucks. But no one stopped. I started hiking pointlessly on the highway. My mind had been numbed by hunger and exhaustion. The ‘swish’ of wakes left by thrusts of trucks that whizzed past buffeted me. After what seemed an interminable half an hour I saw a Truck Stop where drivers stopped for rest and refreshment. As I neared it, I heard the TMS song ‘Yennai Theriyuma’ and that woke me up from my numbness. The joint had the name ‘Mani Ka Dhaba’ in red letters on white tin board written on it in English, Hindi, Telugu and Tamil. It was a road-side eatery. I staggered towards it.

There, the usual customers, the drivers and their assistants were busy tucking into the tandoori chicken and rotis with different gravies to ease their way. I went and stood before the cashier there with a pathetic look. He asked me ‘What?’ in a most sullen Hindi. I explained my position to him in Tamil. He could not make out what I was telling him as he did not know Tamil.

He called out to the kitchen. “Come! Somebody here is asking something in Tamil.” A black person who was stoutly built came out without wearing a shirt. He was Mani, the owner of the eatery. It appeared that he was the cook there as well. I told him that I stopped by as I heard the TMS song. He heard out my story with a touch of skepticism. Then he just went back into the kitchen without saying anything. A procession of TMS songs, seemingly so appropriate to my situation, was parading for the benefit of my ears. ‘Pallaakku Vaanga Poenaen’, ‘Kann Pona Pokkile Kaal Pogalaama’, ‘Yaarai Nambi Naan Porandaen’, ‘Sodhanai Mel Sodhanai’ and so on. They made me forget my hunger. I sat there looking at those who were sitting on the cots and eating, waiting for the proverbial ship that will take me to the farther shore, as Tagore had waxed eloquently in his poem.

Mani came out and talked to me when he found respite from his work in the kitchen. He was from Trichy and totally plighted to TMS. He spoke of TMS with considerable emotion. His tape recorder was very old fashioned. But his pile of TMS song tapes was unbelievably huge. “Brother, TMS songs alone are my life. Foolish chaps categorise his songs as MGR songs and Sivaji songs. But they are all TMS songs and his songs alone. Till my death my place of living will resound with TMS songs.” Mani served me tandoori roti and chicken gravy. He asked me to rest there.

I stretched myself on a dhaba cot under a big tree. I kept carefully listening to the TMS songs that were being played like ‘Ulagam Pirandadu Enakkaaga’ and ‘Arivukku Velai Kodu’. Suddenly the hope that these songs offered dawned on me. They offered encouragement and strength. The songs had a confidence, clarity, a can-do enunciation and above all a majesty that leads one to greater heights. I felt that millions of simple people loved TMS songs because of the hope that it offered in their hopeless lives. Suddenly, I too felt comforted and rejuvenated.

I never knew when I had dozed off. Mani woke me up after arranging with the driver of a Mazda van to take me back to Hyderabad. I could pay him after reaching Hyderabad. I was speechless with gratitude. TMS was singing in the background: ‘Nee Yenge En Ninaivugal Ange’. I did not know why, but tears ran down my cheeks.

Many years later when I met TMS in Chennai for an interview I told him the stories of Annachi, Dennis and Mani. I saw the same innocent smile of Annachi on the face of TMS. TMS said: “Brother, when I started my life I too was like your Annachi. At first I had stood in front of many with extended hand like a beggar asking for money so that I can go for my music lessons. Later I became another type of beggar asking for a chance to sing. Did you know that in those days I have even acted as a beggar in a film? You would not have seen it; it was in 1951 for the film Devaki where I sing the song ‘Theeraadha Thuyaraaley Paazhaagiye’ as I beg. In the credit titles they did not mention my name as a singer; instead they put me down as ‘T.M.Soundararajan – A beggar’.” As he said this his smile widened and broke into laughter. “Millions of fans are what I earned in my life, nothing else. That was the biggest alms, the beggar’s bounty that God granted me.”

Thoguluva Meenatchi Soundararajan was born on 24.3.1923. He was already past 45 when I was born. But even today wherever I go I am still hearing TMS songs played or sung. He is the biggest and most famous of Tamil Playback singers with almost 10,000 songs to his credit. He has a tremendous voice that travels from low bass to the highest notes with utmost ease. TMS, who had dreamt of becoming a classical singer of Carnatic music, had in those days M.K.Thyagaraja Bhagavathar as his idol and ideal. When he began singing he adopted the style of M.K.Thyagaraja Bhagavathar but later moved to his own popular style of rendering.

Beginning his career as a singer in films in 1950, pretty soon he became a star singer. During his time as singer he sang as a playback for all front rank stars. He had a unique ability to recreate the emotions in his songs with a dramatic singing style that adapted itself to the acting style of the star for whom he sang and still match it with the emotions required of the song in the film. Everyone is aware how his voice was employed to make a film star, a leader of the people and the Chief Minister of a state. Even today his voice is serving as an efficacious tool to garner the votes of common man!

T.M.S. was born in a very poor family in Madurai. His father Meenatchi Ayyangar was barely able to eke out enough for two meals a day from his occasional income as a priest. He was also a singer of bhajans. He used to take his son too for his bhajans. Meanwhile TMS cultivated his interest in music by seeing the films and hearing the songs of M.K.Thyagaraja Bhagavathar. TMS who could sing the songs of MKT so marvelously well unfortunately flopped in his studies. But he was least bothered. His only goal was to somehow learn Carnatic music from a good master. He did not have the money for the ‘Guru Dakshina’, the token payment for the master. He pleaded and collected pittances from the rich of his Sowrashtra community and with that small amount started learning music in a formal manner as the disciple of Karaikudi Rajamani Ayyangar. But this did not last beyond a year.

TMS says that in that one year he had learnt from his master clear delineation of notes of Carnatic music, the basics of the classical music, twelve varnams and 48 keerthanas. He also claims that after this learning curve he had no more doubts to be clarified in Carnatic music. He says he learnt on his own through utmost dedicated hard work whatever was left to be learned. With that kind of self-confidence backing him he tried to arrange his own debut show, the Arangaetram. But he did not have the kind of money needed to hire the auditorium and other event expenses. So he started accepting concerts however small the concert money paid to him. When he started singing the songs of M.K.Thyagaraja Bhagavathar in some of his concerts it attracted people in droves to his concerts. This kind of adulation for film music encouraged him to try his hand at film music. He was by then married and badly needed the income to run his household.

Central Studio of Coimbatore was in those days producing important Tamil films. TMS started frequenting Central Studio in search of opportunities. At that time the film Sudarshan was being produced with P.U.Chinnappa in the lead role. He joined the studio as an odd job person. He did all that he was asked to do from cooking, cleaning, serving the male and female artistes to taking care of their children. At the same time he made every effort to attract attention to himself in the hope that those looking for a different voice will one day notice him. Once when a P.U.Chinnappa song was being rehearsed before Subbiah Naidu, the composer, T.M.S. stood just outside and sang a P.U.Chinnappa song in a loud voice. When a person who was there asked ‘Is this boy mad?’ P.U.Chinnappa was supposed to have remarked, “No, he is singing well. He has a good voice. If he continues this practice, he can become a good singer.”

In 1950 Director Sundar Rao Natkarni gave TMS his first chance in a film. The film was Krishna Vijayam. In today’s cinema language we can call it a remix song. It was more or less a copy of the song ‘Radhey Unakku Kopam Aagaadhadi’ in Chenchurutti raga sung by MKT for the film Chintamani in 1936. It had the same tune with lyrics changed to ‘Radhey Nee Ennaivittu Oadadhedi’. Its background score had been altered to a more contemporary score. On his own TMS added a few combination notes and Jathis or dance notes. It took about ten hours to record the song. Hearing that song today, one gets the impression that he was a new version of MKT. This song heralded the arrival of a new singer. TMS sang three other songs as well in the same film.

But the struggle was not over for TMS. He got no further chance. After knocking on many doors at last he got a chance to sing ‘Annamitta Veettiley’ in the film Mandiri Kumari, the same year. G.Ramanathan was the composer, but the song itself was barely noticed. TMS was not mentioned in the titles either. This was followed by the beggar’s song mentioned earlier. Two whole years passed without any further chance to sing. Then in 1952 he sang two duets for the film Valaiyapathi. But nothing happened even thereafter.

By this time Chennai had become the centre for Tamil films. Studios in other towns lost their importance. A.M.Rajah and Ghantasala had come up as prominent singers. With the little money left in his hand, TMS arrived in Chennai. He visited various producing companies beseeching for a chance. Nobody showed interest in him. The experience of having sung seven songs in Coimbatore and Salem studios did not wash well enough in Chennai. Money in hand was running out and even eating once a day was becoming difficult. TMS made up his mind to return to Madurai.

As a last resort he approached K.V.Mahadevan who was working as composer in HMV Company and begged for a chance with tears in his eyes. He sang a select few songs that were K.V.Mahadevan’s favourites while asking for a chance. Mahadevan saw the talent in the young singer and immediately engaged him to sing two devotionals. He also arranged to have the fee for the two songs to be paid to him immediately. He advised TMS to approach AVM Studios for a chance.

The very next day he went to AVM Studio and put in his attendance before the company’s composer Sudarshanam asking for an opportunity. Sudarshanam took him to the AVM owner Meiyappa Chettiar. T.M.S. sang a keerthanai with all its flourishes. Though Chettiar did not display any reaction he asked TMS to sing a comedy song. He sang a comedy song ‘Nalla Kazhudai’ with all his hearty might. That clicked. TMS got the opportunity of singing two similar comedy songs for the film Chellappillai.

In between K.V.Mahadevan called him to sing in chorus for the film Koondukili. The film’s lyricist Thanjai Ramiah Das liked the voice and singing style of TMS and asked Mahadevan to give him a solo song in the film. That was how TMS got to sing the song ‘Konjum Killiyana Pennai’ in the film. This song in the film Koondukili, the only film in which Sivaji and MGR ever acted together is noticeable even today for TMS’ unique rendering style evoking high emotions.

One day as he was aimlessly walking through the streets a car came and stopped alongside. Lyricist Marudakasi got down from the car and accosted TMS. Marudakasi took him to the office of Aruna Films which was producing the movie Thookkuthookki starring Sivaji Ganesan. There were eight songs in the film with G.Ramanathan composing the music. Tiruchi Loganathan, the star singer of the day, was supposed to sing all the eight. Producers asked Loganathan to accept a lower package price as there were eight songs in the film. As he refused to accept the package deal the producers were in the frame of mind to get somebody else to sing the songs. T.M.S, who was in acute financial trouble and on a hungry lookout for a chance, grabbed the opportunity with both hands.

But his travails had a course to run. Sivaji Ganesan, who was basking in the glory of the success that the film Paraasakthi, felt that C.S.Jayaraman who sang for him in that film had the voice that suited him best. Therefore, he wanted that C.S.Jayaraman should sing his songs in Thookkuthookki as well. G.Ramanathan who was already aware of TMS’ talent argued his case. He was of the firm opinion that as most of the songs in the film was folksy in nature the songs will come out well if TMS sang them. But Sivaji was firm on C.S.Jayaraman’s behalf. The goings on depressed TMS who told them: “Just give me three songs. If you don’t like them, I will return to Madurai for ever.”

Thus three songs ‘Sundari Soundari Nirandariye’, ‘Yeraadha Malaithaniley’ and ‘Penngalai Nambaadhey’ came to be recorded. After Sivaji heard the songs he went straight to TMS and apologized. “When they told me that you are singing the song I thought just another singer is going to sing. But I had not expected the songs to come out so well. Please sing rest of the songs as well.” The songs of the film Thookkuthookki which was released in 1954 took TMS’ career in film music towards fame and set it on a firm path. TMS became Sivaji’s voice in films. His voice, pronunciation and rendering style became the talking point of Tamil world.

At that time Pakshiraja Studios of Coimbatore was producing the film Malaikkallan with MGR playing the protagonist. Having heard TMS songs in the film Koondukili MGR had specified that TMS alone should sing for him. Pakshiraja sent TMS a first class train ticket welcoming him to Coimbatore. On arrival he was accorded a grand welcome and treated like a king. In the same Pakshiraja Studios TMS had been insulted and rejected many times whenever he went there pleading for a singing opportunity! After Malaikkallan TMS became the singing voice of MGR as well.

Arrival of TMS saw Tamil film songs getting a permanent makeover. Whether traditional songs or folk songs or western songs, TMS placed emotions upfront in every song of all genres. TMS created in the songs of those times emotional dramas through his eloquently emotive singing style. The light songs, social songs or traditional songs every genre suited him so well. “I have sung all songs given to me with complete devotion of worshipping God.” Depending on the acting style of the actors and the requirements of the characters in the film TMS got his voice to over-emote or underplay in every song to suit the situation.

From the thousands of songs TMS sang I have a long and endless list of favourite songs like ‘Ninaithu Ninaithu Nenjam Urugudhey’, ‘Muthukkalo Kangal’, ‘Kallellam Manikka Kallaguma’, ‘Yennai Yaarendru Enni Enni’, ‘Madhavippon Mayilaal’, ‘Solladi Abiraami’, ‘Poomaalaiyil Oar Malligai’, ‘Thottal Poo Malarum’, ‘Paattum Naaney Bhaavamum Naaney’, ‘Isai Kettal Bhuvi Asaindaadum’, ‘Mullai Malar Meley’, ‘Oaraayiram Paarvaiyiley’, ‘ Maasila Nilavey Nam’, ‘Yaarukkaaga’, ‘Anbae Vaa’, Yaen Pirandhaai Maganey’, ‘Vasantha Mullai Poley’, ‘Yaaradi Nee Moginee’, ‘Paar Magaley Paar’, ‘Muthaitharu Pathithiru Nagai’, ‘Mella Mella Arugil Vandhu’, ‘Naan Yaen Pirandhen’, ‘Malargallaippol Thangai’, ‘Yaar Andha Nilavu’……This is not a list that I can easily complete.

The middle of Seventies signified the end to the highs of TMS’ career, especially after the arrival of Ilaiyaraja. Though TMS-Ilaiyaraja duo had given hit songs like ‘Andhapurathil Oru Maharani’, ‘Nallavarkellam Satchigal Rendu’, ‘Amma Nee Sumandha Pillai’ and ‘Sindhu Nadhikkaraiyoram’, their combination did not last long. It is said that their relation was fraught with misunderstandings and differences. Be that as it may Ilaiyaraja’s arrival signaled the end of TMS era. It was contended that TMS’ voice did not suit the action of new emerging stars like Rajnikant and Kamal Hasan. In no time at all TMS passed from singing a few oracle songs to no songs at all. It was perhaps coincidental that his last few songs were songs of self-pity like ‘Naan Oru Raasiyilla Raja’ and ‘Enn Kadhai Mudiyum Neramidhu’.

I have been hearing since many years diverse criticisms on TMS songs. That TMS was not able to sing as per the requirements of composers like M.S.Viswanathan is one such criticism. I have only heard that no singer has rendered hundred percent the compositions of M.S.Viswanathan. I think TMS sang those songs in his own inimitable style to gain the attention of listeners. Another criticism is that his classical music-based rendering is flawed. TMS answers this criticism in this fashion: “I was born with music in my blood. I have been singing from a very young age. I have my strong base in carnatic music. That serves me to sing in cinema.” Classical or not, the truth is that his singing style was attractive for his die-hard fans. We must also take note of the fact that he learnt Carnatic music for just one year.

When asked about his songs being classified as MGR songs and Sivaji songs, TMS is humble enough to answer in these words: “Brother, I came here to sing for survival. But I did it with total dedication. When I sing for a hero, I sit for hours noting his talk, pronunciation and style. When I sing I imitate the hero by acting with my voice. That is why my songs are seen as MGR songs and Sivaji songs. There is nothing wrong in it.” This unique rendering style of TMS enchanted simple fans in the belief that actors themselves rendered the songs.

A few people believe that a TMS song involves voice calisthenics and mere mimicry. But as a person who has listened to TMS without seeing most of the films in which the songs were picturised, it does not appear that he changed his voice wholesale for any actor. Regardless of who he sang for, his songs were TMS songs hundred percent. He might have changed the tonal effect by the use of nasal twang, roll of tongue or throat-flexing. But I have never accepted TMS’ claim that he sang for one actor from his midriff, for another from his heart and for someone else from his throat. Voice is that which is produced by air that comes from lungs through the vocal chord.

But this is not a big deal for me. As already mentioned I have not seen most of the films that TMS sang for. I do not lose much sleep over whether his voice suits the actors or not. I have been enjoying his songs without the benefit of those visuals. In fact later when I saw some of those the song scenes on television, I was extremely disappointed with most of them. The visuals those songs evoked in my mind were far superior to the actual visuals in the films. Even though film music is a part of cinema, I have always believed that film music is something that can stand on its own merits as another genre of music without the support of visuals.

In my assessment the most important feature of TMS songs is the clarity and consistency of the way the emotions are expressed. If a song has exaggerated emotions, it is uniform exaggeration over the entire length of the song. If the song portrays soft sensitivity, the entire song will display that pleasant under-stated elegance. TMS as a singer had never emoted more or less than what was required of the song.

TMS has been living now in Chennai for many years in practical oblivion. There was news that he was appointed as the President of Tamilnadu Music and Drama Academy in 2002. Then came the shocking news that on 22^nd June of 2003 he attempted suicide by drinking acid. It was said that he made the attempt suddenly because of acute mental depression. But this was denied by his family. They explained that he drank floor cleaning acid under the impression that it was cough syrup!

TMS used to say: “Brother, I sing with the mien of a lion.” As I write this, I am watching on YouTube a home video somebody had taken that shows TMS attempting to sing his ‘Deivam Iruppadhu Yenge’ in a high pitch. He could not sing any of the notes properly. That disappointment showed on his face. He was in considerable pain as he accepts the present reality that he is unable to sing. “I still have the voice. I have the desire to sing. The spirit is there. But the flesh is weak. I am old now.” TMS made a stubborn effort to sing at least one line of the high pitched song properly. Breathless, the face reddened and eyes clouded.

A lot of loud chatter could be heard in that house. Nobody seemed to be paying any attention to him. Nobody cared that a star singer who touched millions and stayed with exalted fame and felicity was now struggling with the lows of disappointment, at the loss of his art to his old age. I could not suppress my own tears. As I closed my eyes, the faces of Annachi, Dennis and Mani came floating in on my mental screen. Those were the faces of millions of people who drew their hopes to live from the songs of T M Soundararajan.

Shammi Kapoor – Actor of Songs. Lover of Life

2011-09-18T04:16:00.000-07:00

Time flies. Our present disappears even before we can comprehend its colours. In a fleeting moment it becomes a black and white memory of our past. It is only the future that appears colourful but it never comes! It is said that the nostalgia about the past is a cliché. But then life itself is decaying every passing moment and therefore a cliché. Thoughts of the past haunt us like a black and white classic movie. In reality, we keep living in the memories of our black and white past. In one such scene from the sixteenth year of my life it is eight 'o' clock in the night. I am eagerly peeping through the window into the living room of a rich home in my native village. There is this black and white television showing Hindi film songs in the Chitrahaar programme. But soon I am getting humiliated and chased away after being accused as my peeping through was an attempt to seduce a girl of the family.

Black and white televisions were the ones that brought the idea that songs are for ‘viewing’ to the far flung villages. The houses that had them sported on their roofs something in white metal looked like the skeleton of a large fish. I could watch the songs through the windows of these houses, of course only if there were no young girls. When crows or other birds sat on these new breed trees called antennae the pictures on the television screen will dance like waves. At such times the owner of the television set, who till then was watching with pride the magical scenes appearing on his priceless possession, will come out with his pot belly ahead of him, look up in irritation at the birds sitting on the antenna tree and chase them away in abusive language.

Even after the birds had been chased away most of the time the pictures on the screen would still be dancing like waves. That is when his abusive attention will turn to me standing by his window like “I knew this will happen when I saw your ugly face”. Then he would climb to the roof in an aggrieved mood to set the antenna right. As he did that it was my duty to give a running commentary on how the pictures appeared on the screen, to get the antenna position right. By the time he finished getting the antenna right and came down to watch the television, Malayalam programme would have ended and some Hindi film song programme like Rangoli would be on. Seeing me watch those old Hindi film songs joyfully, he will be even more infuriated. With the choicest abuses on me and the Hindi songs he will shut down the television and slam the window on my face. But insulting an ardent music lover like me was not all that easy!

By then, I had become more an avid fan of Hindi songs than Malayalam or Tamil songs. I started going to the houses and shops that had television even in the near by villages and managed to watch Rangoli and Chitrahaar without fail. Emson Andrews who was eighteen years older than me became my friend then because he enlightened me with the names of actors who appeared in those songs. He was a daily wage labourer studied only up to seventh but he was my source of information on Hindi films. He would search, beg and borrow old copies of film magazines like Filmfare, Screen, Cine Blitz and Star Dust from somewhere that carried the reportage on Hindi films and read them avidly. He would also lend them for me to read. My very first view of the stars of Hindi films was through those songs I saw on television and what I saw and read in those magazines.

Among those stars I saw, Shammi Kapoor was the one I hated to the core. My first problem was his look. I was accustomed to regard the round face of Prem Nazir the Malayalam film hero as the most handsome feature of an actor. Shammi Kapoor’s long face looked to me more like that of a water melon. His uncombed hair looked unkempt to me. One side of his face looked puffed up and the other side flattened. Lower lip looked full, but the middle of upper lip looked drawn in. For me the only redeeming features of the face shining on the magazine pages were his baby pink complexion like that of a white man and his deep emerald eyes.

Watching his exaggerated body movements and the dancing style he made his own in the song scenes, I felt amused on one hand and ridiculous on the other. His dance movements, as he jumped in the hills, leaped on the trees, dived into the waters, rolled on the ground, shook his head with strange mannerism and lifted his arms with funny involuntary tremors, were appeared to me more like a dancing chimpanzee. But undeniable facts of his songs were that they pulled my mind and the tunes stayed in there undimmed.

It was during my days in Hyderabad where I could watch Hindi television to my heart’s content and I realized that there were no other film actor in India quite like Shammi Kapoor. I was watching all the actors and comparing them with each other. There Shammi Kapoor appeared totally unique to me. It is not that he could be described as a great actor. His films were made entirely for entertainment. But I have watched most of them many times. In Ferozeguda of Hyderabad there was an open air movie theatre owned by Indian Air Force. Shammi Kapoor’s films were regularly shown there. I watched Teesri Manzil alone at least ten times for all its great songs one better than the other and the visual pleasures of those song scenes.

Shammi Kapoor never shrank from wearing over coloured dresses that other actors dreaded, outlandish footwear or the absurd headwear that hardly sat well on his head. But his admirers were never put off but lapped them up gleefully. They accepted him because that was the image he had created for himself. Rebellion and non-conformity were the very bases of his image. Shammi Kapoor is the eternal ‘Rebel’ Hero of the Indian Cinema.

Social problems brought by lack of progress even after ten years of independence, the attendant anger of the youth of the time and their repressed yearnings of love found a channel of release in Shammi Kapoor’s image of rebelliousness and non-conformity. Youth of the time were intoxicated by the energy and frenzy that he created with his strange cries of ‘Yahoo…’, ‘Tally Ho…’, ‘Aiyaiyaa Sookku Sookku…’ and so on. His characters wooed and won lovers at will. His films always concluded on a happy note. What else does a teenager need to be elated!

The extra energy and vigour that Shammi Kapoor portrayed, which was not to be seen in other heroes of the time was his unique proposition. It was much later that somebody like Jitendra tried to pattern himself after Shammi Kapoor. Shammi created his own exclusive space in Indian film screen with his trade mark springiness of youth and presentation of self as a ‘grand show piece’. ‘His energetic and lively presence in every frame of his films was something which nobody else could achieve’ is the unanimous view of his ardent fans and today’s superstars like Aamir Khan, Salman Khan and Ranbir Kapoor.

I once barely escaped from the wrath of my North Indian girlfriend in Hyderabad for remarking that Shammi Kapoor was not all handsome. According to her simply watching him on the screen itself was a great experience. When I showed her a photograph of Prem Nazir once she made fun of my sense of handsomeness by calling both Nazir and me effeminate! Most Hindi film fans are of the opinion that Shammi Kapoor was very handsome. Though I still find it difficult to accept him as handsome, I have to admit that all his 120 films had great songs and that his song scenes combined impossibly creative energy and sense of beauty to drive away all possibilities of boredom.

Alright! Are not the film songs created by composers and lyricists? Are not the song scenes conceived by the directors and choreographers? In this where does an actor figure? We are familiar with many actors who cannot distinguish between music and noise and who are unaccustomed to even bathroom singing, making drowsy efforts of singing their own songs and synchronizing their lips wrongly to it on screen! This is where we need to see how Shammi Kapoor left all other actors languishing far behind him.

I believe that India has not seen a super star actor with Shammi Kapoor’s extraordinary sense and grasp of music. He himself was a great singer. He was duly trained in Hindustani music at a very young age. He had both the interest and concert level singing ability in the various Indian musical forms like Khayal, Ghazal, Dadra, Thumri, Pahadi Dhun, Bhajan and Qawwali. He had the immaculate sense of musicality to explore and listen Western Classical music, Jazz, American pop and Rock & Roll. Popular singer Abhijit had said that he was astonished by the ease and professional competence with which Shammi Kapoor had rendered difficult Ghazals and Qawwalis. Lata Mangeshkar had mentioned that Shammi Kapoor was that rare singer who could easily render all types of songs with elegance.

In the early days of his film career he had even sung one or two of his own songs. But he was very clear in his mind that his songs should be rendered by those with better professional and musical competence than himself. Later when he made intense efforts to evolve as a uniquely different actor, he chose for his role model a singer and not any other actor! It was the King of Rock & Roll Elvis Presley. Shammi Kapoor made constant efforts to be the Indian version of Elvis.

Shammi Kapoor had involved wholeheartedly in the creation of tunes and lyrics of the songs in his films. He himself chose his scores and his lyrics. Even Mohammad Rafi, who became his permanent voice, rendered his songs heeding to his suggestions. Rafi was able to rear a unique rendering style for Shammi Kapoor. That is why Mohammad Rafi’s Shammi Kapoor songs are regarded as a separate genre in Hindi Film Music. His repertoire had everything like the slow dance numbers, the fast dance numbers, love songs that move us and the sad songs that touch our hearts.

Shammi Kapoor would plan his act and dance on his own mental screen even as the song was being recorded. He would get incorporated the cues both in the music and the rendering style to create the opportunities for the expressions, steps and moves that he had vision in his mind. Only those directors, composers, lyricists and singers who could agree to this and coordinate with him could work in his films. But it is a great surprise that all of the most important composers and directors of those days had worked with him!

The famous duo of Shankar and Jaikishan were practically the composers at his court. Jaikishan was his best friend. Still the composer stars of the pantheon of Hindi film music like S.D.Burman, R.D.Burman, O.P.Nayyar, Salil Chowdhury, Sardar Mallick, Roshan, Ghulam Mohammad, Madan Mohan, Khayyam, Ravi, Laxmikant Pyarelal, Kalyanji Anandji et all worked with him. He had introduced the woman composer Usha Khanna in his superhit film Dil De Ke Dekho. Mohammad Rafi is the singer who had more or less sung all his great hit numbers. When Rafi passed away Shammi Kapoor wept inconsolably and said: “My voice is gone. What is the need for songs in my films now?” Now and then singers like Manna Dey, Talat Mahmood and Mukesh had also sung for him. Even Kishore Kumar in his last days had sung a song for him.

Deewana Hua Baadal, Yeh Duniya Usiki, Kisi Na Kisi Se (Kashmir Ki Kali), Dil Ke Jharokon Mein, Main Gaoon Tum So Jao, Chakke Pe Chakka, Aaj Kal Tere Mere Pyar Ke (Brahmachari), Aaja Aaja Main Hoon Pyar Tera, Oh Haseena Zulfonwali, Tumne Mujhe Dekha, Deewana Mujhsa Nahin , Oh Mere Sona Re (Teesri Manzil), Gham E Hasti Se ( Vallaha Kya Baat Hai), Is Rang Badalti Duniya Mein, Tum Ne Kisi Ki Jaan Ko, Jaane Walon Zara Hoshiyar (Raajkumar), Baar Baar Dekho (China Town), Ehsaan Tera Hoga Mujh Par, Yahoo, Sukkoo Sukkoo (Junglee), Jawaaniya Yeh Mast Bin Piye, Chupne Wale Saamne Aa, Sar Par Topi Lal, Tumsa Nahin Dekha (Tumsa Nahin Dekha), Dil De Ke Dekho (Dil De Ke Dekho), Yeh Gulbadan, Khuli Palak Mein, Awaaz De Kar (Professor), Jhoomta Mousam Mast Mahina (Ujala), Lal Chhadi Maidan Khadi, Tum Se Accha Kaun Hai, Meri Mohabbath Jawan Rahegi, Badtameez Kaho (Janwar), Savere Wali Gaadi Se (Lat Saheb), Akele Akele Kahan Ja Rahe Ho, Aasman Se Aaya Farishta, Raat Ke Humsafar, An Evening In Paris (An Evening In Paris), Kiss Kis Ko Pyar, Janam Janam Ka Saath Hain (Tum Se Accha Kaun Hain) and countless other Shammi Kapoor songs are evergreen and ever fresh.

While playing instruments like Saxophone, Piano, Drum or Bag Pipe in the song scenes, he took utmost care to learn and play those notes right exactly how a musician plays it. He used to direct his movements while picturising the songs. He certainly needed no choreographers. His movements in group dances never conformed to the movements of the group. Even his movements while dancing with the heroines were different. Shammi Kapoor would concentrate on his body language even as the group and the heroine dance conforming to the beat. He used movements of his head, eyes, lips, hands and the torso in his dances rather than his feet.

He had a way of sliding down the snowed paths of mountains with high pitched shouts like‘Yahoo’ in his love songs. He would romance his heroin wearing only bath robes and hanging from small planes. Anything unusual was par for his course. We would have heard of actors getting injured or even dying in stunt sequences. But Shammi Kapoor was probably the only actor in the world who faced countless accidents during the shoots of love song sequences! ‘My body has no bones unbroken and no parts that were not injured during film shoots. I have often danced with bones in both legs broken. But I was able to bear utmost of pains and hide it well from the cameras’ were his words. Shammi Kapoor attained huge success and great fame not easily but by shedding his own blood and bearing utmost pains.

Shamsher Kapoor alias Shammi Kapoor was born in Bombay in 1931, the second son of Prithviraj Kapoor, the great grand father of the Kapoor clan that has ruled the roost in the Indian film industry for five generations now. Raj Kapoor was his elder brother and Shashi Kapoor the younger one. Not being inclined towards studies, Shammi Kapoor stopped with eleventh standard and became an actor in his father Prithviraj Kapoor’s drama company, the Prithvi Theatres. He entered films in 1952 as a hero following in the footsteps of his brother Raj Kapoor who had by then become a star. The film was Jeevan Jyothi, a Raj Kapoor styled family story. S.D.Burman was the composer. The film was a big flop.

In the following six years Shammi Kapoor acted in almost twenty films opposite such big heroines of those years as Suraiya, Madhubala, Nutan, Shyama, Nalini Jaywant and Geeta Bali. He tried all types of plots like family, social, political, mythological, traditional and Arabian themes. He kept changing the composers. But nothing succeeded. Those were the heydays of Raj Kapoor, Dilip Kumar and Dev Anand. All that Shammi Kapoor was left with was a bad name that he made futile efforts to become another Raj Kapoor. That most of his films were small budget films and that Thokar (1953) with Sardar Mallik as composer and Taangewaali (1955) with Salil Chowdhury as composer were well spoken of for their songs were the only consolations he had at that critical time.

Shammi Kapoor was in love with Geeta Bali, a popular heroine of the time. Geeta Bali came from a poor family background and became a film actress overcoming many difficulties. Shammi Kapoor had a secret wedding with her fearing the opposition of his family as she had acted with both his father and elder brother. Geeta Bali was then a top star. Shammi Kapoor was a failed hero. After the birth of their first child, Geeta Bali completely left acting and took to shaping the acting career of her husband. It was during this time that they strategized with utmost care on song selection, following Elvis Presley, reconstructing a unique hero image and selecting only very beautiful debutante actresses opposite him avoiding popular actresses. This strategy paid off immediately. Tumsa Nahin Dekha released in 1957 was a huge success.

From there on, Shammi’s film career zoomed up from one success to greater success. It went on like Ujala, Singapore, Preet Na Jaane Reet…. His first colour film Junglee was released in 1961. With this, Shammi Kapoor ascended the throne of a Superstar he had crafted for himself. The same year his daughter was born. He became a serial success with a procession of hits like China Town, Raath Ke Rahi, Dil Tera Deewana, Pyaar Kiya To Darna Kya, Kashmir Ki Kali, Bluff Master, Janwar, Rajkumar and so on. A string of star heroines of future were introduced through these films. The prominent names that come to mind are Asha Parekh, Ameeta, Saira Banu and Sharmila Tagore. And then in 1965 even as the shooting of Teesri Manzil was progressing, came the shock of the sudden death of Geeta Bali due to small pox.

Unable to bear the loss of his loved wife, Shammi Kapoor shut himself up in his home in isolation for months. Finally he decided to complete Teesri Manzil and then leave the film world. But the film turned out to be one of the biggest hits of his career. He continued acting and films like Budtameez, An Evening in Paris, Tum Se Acha Kaun Hai, Jawan Mohabbath, Pagla Kahin Ka, Andaz and Brahmachari were followed. He won the Filmfare award for Best Actor in 1968 for Brahmachari. At about this time he wedded Neela Devi of Bhavnagar royal family. Neela Devi was an ardent fan of both Shammi Kapoor and Geeta Bali. She brought up their children as her own. For this reason she decided not to have a biological child of her own!

Shammi Kapoor began putting on excess weight because of the after effects of medicines and pain killers that he took after all those accidents during shootings. His drinking habit added to it. He could not control his weight problem with all his valiant efforts. It came to pass that he could no more act as the hero of a film. He shifted to doing character roles. He acted the roles of fathers to his former heroines and even as the father of male protagonists much older than him! He won the Filmfare Award for the best male actor in a supporting role in 1982. In 1995 he won the Filmfare award for Lifetime Achievement. He kept on acting in support roles that came now and then. He appeared for well over a year in an important role in the very successful television serial ‘Chattan'. He directed two flopped films. He even ran a failed film magazine for some time.

It is said that the name Yahoo on the internet was taken up from his trademark ‘Yahoo’ cry! Shammi Kapoor, who was a great aficionado of internet and computer from the day they came to India. He was the President of Indian Internet Users Association for over twenty years. Designing web sites and browsing the net were his favourite pastimes. Greatly interested in books, he was supposed to have read Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged with thousand plus pages in 38 hours flat without putting it down.

Shammi Kapoor was connoisseur of luxury cars that were not easily available in India and loved driving them around for hours at a stretch. But at the same time he never hesitated to travel in cycle rickshaws even. He enjoyed meeting his fans and never found them a bother. He interacted openly with everyone and people came away impressed with his candour and humility. He never acted in real life and lived with a transparent honesty. He had many Indian and foreign girl friends even though his wife was his life. He had definite opinions on the distinctions between love, lust and friendship as different human emotions. He loved his drink and was partial to good Scotch whisky. Shammi Kapoor celebrated discerning drinking and eating.

Shammi Kapoor lost both his kidneys to dysfunction when he was seventy. He never lost his zest for life even as he progressed from dialysis twice a month to thrice a week. He had been practically living in the nursing home three days a week for the last seven years of his life. Even then his sunny outlook was that he had four days a week to celebrate his life. This was the philosophy and attitude that informed his entire life.

To the last he lived his life busy as a bee with his own channel on YouTube, net life and car drives. On 7^th August 2011 he was seized by a worst bout of breathing trouble and was admitted to a hospital where he breathed his last after seven days of struggle. His body was consigned to flames on the Indian Independence Day at Banganga Crematorium, quite close to the temple where he had secretly married Geeta Bali. Both the President of India and the Prime Minister while conveying their condolences stated themselves as Shammi Kapoor’s big fans. A man who celebrated life, music and even his failures and pains by living colourfully for seventy nine years had at last become a black and white classic of past. I see him looking in through the peep window of my memories with a broad smile on his lips as he sings: Tum Mujhe Yun Bhulaa Na Paoge.....

You will never be able to forget me

You will never be able to hold it from humming with me

When you hear my songs...

Ritwik Ghatak – An Unwanted Film Maker

2011-07-12T09:02:00.000-07:00

It was suggested by a few film viewers to Andrei Tarkovsky, the Russian director considered to be directors’ director today that he may hand out head ache pills along with admission tickets for his films. Some of the viewers who had come to watch Jean Renoir’s film Rules of the Game were so incited that they set out to burn down the theatre. Critics count this film today among the best ten films ever made in the world. It is a matter of history that the avant garde French genius, Director Francois Truffaut, had commented that Satyajit Ray’s Pather Panjali was so difficult to sit through.

The famous Bengali poet and film director, Buddhadeb Dasgupta, had once said: “It may take some time for the fantasy and the reality of some films, hiding behind the rolls of films, to reach us. Some of the time, certain films may need slightly more attention from the viewers. Viewers may easily reject such films if they do not have the patience and the mindset to watch them.” It has indeed been found to be true. Many films that are regarded today as great creative works of art were colossal financial disasters at the time of their release. Mostly, this is the fate reserved for sensitive art films that enter emotions in the depths of our mind ever so slowly.

In the same article, Buddhadeb Dasgupta emphasizes one point in particular. “Cultural background of a film largely determines the manner of its expression. It may affect proper appreciation capacity of a viewer who has no familiarity with the culture depicted in the film.” Is that true?

I have been accused that in debates about music I ignore cultural factors. It has been my experience that while an understanding of cultural sensitivities helps in detailed analysis of a work of art lack of it is not an impediment to enjoyment of any work of art. I am a complete stranger to Nepalese language and culture, but I am a fan of Nepalese folk music. Music is a separate language that has universal appeal. Every work of high art is a similar creation of a unique universal language.

It was while speaking on the works of the Bengali film director Ritwik Ghatak that Buddhadeb Dasgupta had said that the uninformed, illiterate and culturally novice fan is likely to reject any great work of art. It was his contention that as Ghatak’s films are deeply rooted in Bengali culture and history, any viewer who is unaware of these will not be able to understand and internalize Ghatak’s films. But does any viewer really require such information beyond artistic sensitivities to appreciate any work of art?

I remember Thadathil Vijayan who was my neighbour in my childhood. He used to get assignments to draw a few political party banners or placards once in a while though he was a good artist and sculptor. Hence he lived as a farm labourer in dire poverty. He was an active member of a film club in the nearby town. With barely five years of schooling, he could not even read English sentences. But I first heard of the term ‘Art Film’ from him. I learnt of greats like Eisenstein, Kurasova and Satyajit Ray from him. It was he who told me about Ritwik Ghatak first. He was Ghatak’s ardent admirer.

It was many years later that I saw the films of Ghatak. I deeply appreciated his films without the benefit of any understanding of Bengali language, culture or history. A good film serves as a medium of emotional expressions transcending cultures. Most of Ritwik Ghatak films were such expressions of rare sensitivities that remain eternally with us. He places before the viewer complex thoughts and sensitive moments of life through the lives of ordinary and simple people in films that run at a sedate pace in simple style. His films are seen as poems in celluloid as he allows emotions, traditions and antiquities of Indian way of life to flow in his cinematic narration.

Ritwik Ghatak, considered a classical hero among serious fans of cinema today, was little appreciated in his days and understood even less. Most of his films ran to empty theatres in Bengal. Naagarik was his first film. Completed in 1953, this film was not released in his life-time. 24 years later it was first screened in 1977, a year after his passing away. Satyajit Ray had opined that had Naagarik been released before Pather Panjali, it would have been recognized as the maiden effort of the Indian alternate cinema.

Naagarik remains a model for the modern Indian film even though it was somewhat influenced by Jean Renoir. Its unique narration style and direction makes this film an important landmark in Indian films. One of its highlights was the brief but emotional background score by Hariprasanna Das. The film’s form was the herald of the later films of Ghatak, especially its sense of melodrama.

Ghatak was not the one to ever consider melodrama as anything less than realistic narration. As far as the Indian cinema is concerned melodrama with the touch of realism begins and ends with Ghatak. In Ghatak films melodrama is a form of alternate realism. Ghatak takes his thoughts and emotions to the viewer through conscious use of repeated narrations and coincidences.

Ghatak, as a person who trained in both folk art forms and theatre and as somebody who had a conscience with traditional value base, chose melodrama as the medium of his expression. His melodrama has been woven with Indian folk and classical elements and Bertolt Brecht’s stage devices of the west.

Ghatak had already perfected this form during his days as actor, director and dramatist with Indian People’s Theatre Association. He mentions this in his article ‘Cinema and I’ in 1963: “Melodrama is a much criticized narrative form. But from that alone the truly national film will emerge.” He had elaborated further in an interview in 1974: “I am not afraid of melodrama. Using it as a device is the birthright of the artiste. It is a very important form of expression in art.”

Ghatak was truly a cinema maker without peer. His art believes in celebrating it with all branches of life. He created his fluent style of picturisation incorporating hope, disappointment, curiosity, laughter and tears. He declared: “I do not believe in the label ‘entertainment’, nor do I accept sloganeering. I would like to deeply meditate on this universe, this world, international situation, my country and my own people. I would like to make films for them. I might have failed in it today. But Time and people alone have to decide”

Ritwik Kumar Ghatak was born in Dhaka on 4^th November of 1925. Dhaka was, like Calcutta, the centre of multi-faceted cultural activities in the beginning of 19^th century. Many civil movements took form there. Following Independence and Partition, along with lakhs of people who migrated out of fear of riots and famine, Ghatak and his family arrived in Calcutta. Ghatak grieved over the partition of Bengal to the last. Considering himself a refugee was, to his mind, a metaphor for alienation from the basic culture and boycott of one’s own identity. Most of the characters of his films were people who lost their land and livelihood.

Ghatak joined the Communist movement and took active part in its cultural organ, IPTA. Before he plunged into drama, Ghatak wanted to be a litterateur but found it to be a form of expression without wider public participation. This search for the form with wider participation of public brought him to cinema. This is what he had to say: “I want to narrate the reality around me. I want to shout out to the people. Today, cinema alone appears to be the suitable medium for this. The reason is that as soon as I finish my work it can reach out to millions of people. I make films for my people.” But Ghatak had to confess on many occasions that cinema was not, for him, a natural medium. His films suffer from many mistakes of carelessness and in particular technical errors in picturisation. In spite of that, they grow on our mindscape like the sorrows and elations we experience from raw forms of music.

Ritwik Ghatak entered the world of cinema as an Assistant Director and Actor in the film Chinaamul (The Uprooted) made by Nimai Ghosh in 1950. Heavily in debt after being unable to release his maiden film Naagarik, Ghatak went to Bombay and worked for some time in Filmistan Studios there. In Bombay, he worked on the screenplays of Musafir (1957) directed by Hrishikesh Mukherji and Madhumathi (1958) directed by Bimal Roy. His comrade from IPTA, Salil Chowdhury, composed the music of both these films. Later in 1959, Salilda composed the music for Ghatak’s film Baari Theke Paaliye (Deserter).

After his return to Calcutta, Ghatak directed Ajantrik (Non machine) in 1958. It was the story of a driver of rented car in love with his old and dented car to the point of infatuation. The film placed before the viewer a very broad canvas story covering different types of people from different walks of life who travelled in that car. The famous Bengali sarod maestro, Ustad Bahadur Khan, had composed sensitive but penetrating music for Ajantrik, as he had done for many Ghatak films.

Meghe Daake Thaara, Ghatak’s much acclaimed and biggest and lone commercial success was released in 1960. Social and economic problems related to partition of Bengal is the basic theme of the film. Meghe Daake Thaara is an important musical film. It has many Hindustani raga based songs like the famous Hansadhwani raga number ‘Laagi Lagan Pathi Sakhi’. The film is enriched by many bits of Rabindra Sangeet including Tagore’s famous ‘Je Raathe More Dwaar Khuli’ (My Doors Are Open This Stormy Night) rendered by Hemant Kumar.

Film Komal Gandhar was released in 1961. It is the word for a music note. Gandhar refers to Ga, the third note in the music scale. Komal Gandhar refers to the softer Ga among the two ‘Ga’s. It is more or less the equivalent of the western music note ‘E-flat’. But Komal Gandhar is not a music-related film. It is a film on drama troupes and stage dramas.

But the Ghatak film I loved most was Subarnarekha (Line of Gold). It is the name of a river in Bengal with waters of a golden hue. It is a rare film that used melodrama in place of mechanical realism with great élan. This film too, like other great Ghatak films, was totally rejected by the viewing public. Today it is considered a classic poem in celluloid and a turning point in the history of Indian films.

The songs of the film Subarnarekha lent the film a dramatic pace and pseudo-realism. Though there were seven songs in the film, all the emotional moments in the film were held together by one song. The female lead of the film Sita singing that song from her childhood days. Whether she is sitting among hills or she is walking on the banks of Subarnarekha ‘Aaj Daaner Khethe Roudra Chaayai Luko Choorie Kela’is always on her lips. Based on a simple tune, the song describes the natural beauty of the rural landscape of Bengal.

Today the sunshine and shadows play hide and seek on the paddy fields

Today in the blue skies somebody has set afloat the boats of white clouds

Today the bees are foregoing the honey in flowers to mob the beams of morning sun

Today we would rather stay out to drink of nature to our heart’s content

Today we would not go home

After the commercial disaster of Subarnarekha, Ghatak could not find a producer. Undaunted he produced two films on his own. Both films, Titash Ekti Nadir Naam (Titash is Name of a River) and Jukti, Thakko Aar Gappo (Device, Logic and Story) were never properly released. Around this time, he joined the faculty at Film Institute, Poona. Later, he was to recall these years as the ‘most beautiful years’ of his life.

But he came out soon, unable to fit himself into the discipline and authoritarian ways of the Film Institute. However, during the time he was there, he left his indelible stamp on some of the students who trained there. They emerged as important creators in the Indian cinema world of seventies and eighties. Kumar Sahni, Mani Kaul, Syed Mirza, Adoor Gopalakrishnan, Ketan Mehta and John Abraham were some of his important students.

Ghatak lived with a sharp intellect bent on breaking establishments, an inquiring mind and a very restless honesty. He was a very direct person, impossible to second-guess and difficult to live with. He always argued against all established premises. He strongly criticized Film Festival circuits and Film Awards.

He saw his films as instruments of social change. But his society did not understand his work. He was ignored by the majority of film-goers. He was rejected by film producers. He was ignored during his life-time by important film critics. He died penniless as an alcoholic and a TB patient.

John Abraham, known as one of the first eminences of the alternate Malayalam cinema, was one who followed Ghatak to the hilt, from his nihilism to his drunken ways. This is what he wrote of his guru

Ritwik Ghatak

Refugee

Alien

Unwanted

Insufferable

For him life was holier

Than His holy worship

Death of a Ritwik Ghatak

Is a Happening very unusual

I rise in pride to reminisce on my Ghatak-da

He will live eternally

In my thoughts

In my senses and in my soul

The Screen Sound of Silence

2011-07-11T08:25:00.000-07:00

When Director Bala’s Tamil film Naan Kadavul was released last year, major criticisms were that background music was more of a cacophony and that sound mixing was particularly bad. Many had raised the point that this carelessness with the sound had resulted in making the dialogues at important points of the film inaudible.

As a person who had worked in this movie, my reactions to these criticisms will not be appropriate. But from this background I believe I can certainly talk generally about sound mixing in films and its technology.

We can truly be proud of the Oscar Award that Rasool Pookkutty won for sound mixing. This is particularly so as this department has been one in which India had remained backward for decades together. To cite an example I can mention the fact that the songs recorded in India in 1980s never had the sound standards that we heard in the songs of a Judy Garland or a Nat King Cole released in 1950s. The pathetic inference is that we were at least 30 years behind the norm in sound quality. It was only after the arrival of A.R.Rahman that we developed a tone of our own in the recording of our music.

We know that sound has no border lines. We can hear any sound coming from all directions around us. Without turning around we can judge what is happening behind our back from the sounds that we hear. But the extent of our sight is a limiting factor for the scene. Through sound we can reach many levels of experience that scenes cannot give us. That is why the possibilities of sound mixing in media like cinema are boundless. They do not merely support scenes; they can enhance their meaning and beauty.

At times the sounds take us near the reality and at times it totally diverts us from it. Our experience of seeing becomes complete only through the process of unconscious hearing. Directing sounds thus to change the emotions of scenes is called the Sound Design of a cinema. Sound track of a film is created by appropriately mixing dialogue, music, other sounds, songs if necessary and silence. Dialogue includes the talk among characters at different tonal levels, murmuring to one’s own self and voice over. We can add to these also human sounds like crying, laughter and moaning.

Background music is used to highlight a particular moment in the film or change of emotion in characters. Though film songs are an art form beyond cinema, within commercial cinema they are used to enhance the enjoyability of cinema’s narrative in totality and thus ensure its success at box office.

All other sounds are used to convey the general environment of what ever is being narrated. With this flow of audio from the surrounding environment the noise of the crowd, the cries and sounds of animals and birds, engine roars and hums of vehicles, the sounds of windows and doors being shut or opened and natural sounds of the patter of rain, noise of winds, the roar of the thunder, flowing of the river the viewer gets the sense of time and place from the way they combine with visuals to render meanings unto them.

It is an important part of the work of a sound mixer to select in advance the appropriate sounds that are needed along with the main audio track and background audio track to help the narration. Sound recording, sound compilation and sound mixing take place in that order. In films that gives importance to music and songs, the work of a Sound Mixer doubles.

Recording of dialogues and other sounds simultaneously with the picturisation of the narration is called Sync Sound or Synchronized Sound. This is essential to synchronize the audio with the visuals and to establish the authenticity and naturalness of the dialogues. The entire unit has to maintain the discipline of complete silence for recording the Sync Sound. Even the use of any device that produces extraneous or intrusive noise is done away with. In spite of the difficulties that these restrictions entail, now-a-days the Sync Sound recording is becoming the norm. People like Manas Choudhury, Indrajit Neogi and Rasool Pookkutty have proved their expertise in this field and have become star technicians.

Iyan Tapp and Richard Pryke who shared the Oscar for Sound Mixing with Rasool Pookkutty were the technicians who did the Sound Mixing for the film Slumdog Millionaire. Rasool Pookkutty did the recording of dialogues and other sounds on the shooting floors. Sound compilation of other sounds created in the studio along the ones already recorded on the shooting floors is a highly challenging task. Carefully extracting the sounds from hundreds of tracks without mixing them up and synchronizing them with visuals is a task that demands technical competence and creativity of the highest order. The success of the process involves separation of sounds that cannot be easily recognized and making them ‘heard’ distinctly.

It is only after every sound is synchronized in their most natural tone in their different tracks that final mix down starts. Multiple tracks are mixed down to final one or two or five or six separate tracks depending on the system of sound reproduction. The final audio will be unified into Mono, Stereo, Dolby Digital or DTS formats. What are the specialties of these formats? How do they ‘sound’ clearly from the speakers of the theatres after reaching the Projection Room from the Studios?

The sound that comes out of a single speaker kept at midpoint behind the screen is called mono-phonic. This is the oldest sound technology in cinema exhibition industry. The sound coming out of two speakers kept on the left and right of the screen is called stereo-phonic. Raj Kapoor’s Hindi film Around the World released in 1967 is India’s first film with stereo-phonic sound.

Hindi film Sholay released in 1975 was India’s first film with 4-track Stereo-phonic sound. Sholay which had sounds in four separated tracks ‘resounding’ through 4 speakers in theatres became one among India’s all-time super-hit films. The director of the film Ramesh Sippy was to later remark that the sound mixing done for the film in London had greatly helped in the success of the film. The sound of the coin tossed by Amitabh Bachhan and the metallic sound of the old swing in Sanjeev Kumar’s home echoes in the minds of fans who saw the film then, even today.

Malayalam film Padayottam released in 1982 was the first Indian film to use the latest sound technology to great effect. In this film we heard the magnificent vista of six-track stereo-phonic sound. As the number of tracks increase the sounds separate as per the requirements of scene and reach the ears of viewers with all the glory of events taking place around us. Padayottam was also the first such film with the sound mixing done entirely in India.

Dolby Laboratory established in Britain by Ray Dolby in 1965 invented many new innovations in sound technology. Their continuous efforts to increase the clarity and fidelity of sounds yielded new systems of sound technology like Dolby A, B, C and Dolby SR. Hindi film 1942 A Love Story that was released in 1994 used the Dolby SR sound technology for the first time in India.

The sound technology named Dolby Digital that came in early 1990s is Dolby’s most famous creation. This 5.1 track sound technology has been installed in over 50,000 theatres all over the world. In this system sound emerges from 5 speakers and one sub-woofer. This gives the viewers an audio experience as close to reality as possible.

In the early days audio was printed on one edge of the film as Light Waves. This was called optical transfer. Later the system of printing the sound on the specially made edges of the film which acted as magnetic tape came into use. It was through this technology that it became possible to have more than one track in cinema audio. In Dolby Digital system also the audio is printed on the edge of the film. But the difference is that a special technique called Dolby Printing is used for this.

Digital Theatre System or DTS introduced in America in 1993 has practically wiped out the Dolby Digital system from theaters. We saw in films like Jurassic Park how in this system the sounds are separated into six tracks and reach our ears with great clarity and high fidelity. The sound track of the film in DTS system is not printed on the film. It comes in a specially made CD which synchronizes itself with the film during projection. DTS sound technology reached India through the Tamil films Karuppu Roja and Indian released in 1996. Today there are very few theatres without this technology.

Thus Indian cinema has reached the level of Western nations as far as the use of audio technology is concerned. We have also ensured a place for ourselves in the world of audio creation through the likes of Rasool Pookkutty. But, unfortunately, in the majority of Indian films the background scores are just noisy! Even in our realistically conceived films background music sounds over-dramatic. Looking at the farther shore, in completely commercial films of Hollywood we are unlikely to hear this kind of melodramatic music today. In 90% of the scenes of our films rather than having natural background sounds we get to hear an overwhelming kind of background music. Therefore, the depressing fact is that our Audio Directors do not get the opportunity to show their true creativity or undertake experimental innovations.

In the darkness of the studio, the sound mixing of a film is reaching its climax….some sounds are being raised….some are being toned down….Loud sounds become soft audio and faint sounds evolve into roars….sounds of distant bells….the lonely cry of a bird flying from foreground into the distance….the pleasantly flowing sounds of a mountain brook nearing us…. An entire new world is being created through sounds. They touch all levels of human consciousness and leave us awakened. And as all sounds mingle finally into the silence and disperse the theatre emerges into light.

Minmini – Times of a Firefly

2011-07-01T08:22:00.000-07:00

Firefly

So small

Yet for one moment in the twilight

Its sparkle triumphs over all stars

To disappear forever

It is unlikely that there will be an Indian who has not heard the song ‘Chinna Chinna Aasai’ from Mani Ratnam’s film Roja even once. It garnered hitherto unheard of popularity among film music buffs because of its new format, its simple tune that got everyone’s ears at the very first hearing, its fine music score and the quality of recording that brought out every note with a clarity which never heard before in Indian film music. But not only that, the lilt in that female singer’s voice that embraced you in its desires and the lively rendering style so impacted the listeners that it remains a much appreciated song about the last twenty years.

Everyone knows that Minmini sang ‘Chinna Chinna Aasai’ which was the first song of A R Rahman who is today considered among towering personalities of world film music. When Rahman became famous all over the world, the song ‘Chinna Chinna Aasai’ as his debut song which is still among his most important songs became world famous as well. Today it has become a song that is most enthusiastically rendered even by Americans and Chinese, albeit with their quaint pronunciation. Many may even know that Minmini sang the equally famous Hindi and Telugu versions of the song as well. But today no one pauses to ponder what happened to the once famous singer who with just one song had garnered fame equal to that of A R Rahman. That is fame for you, here today and gone tomorrow.

Many thought ‘Chinna Chinna Aasai’ to be the first song of Minmini because of the immense attention it drew. But Minmini had been singing in films for five years before the film Roja was released. Her first film song was for the Malayalam film ‘Swagatham’ released in 1988. But her name was not Minmini, then. It was just Mini. Contrary to what many believed, it was not A R Rahman who introduced her to Tamil films, it was Ilayaraja. And it was he who changed her name to Minmini from Mini. Minmini’s first Tamil song found a place in the film Meera that was released at the beginning of the year 1992.

Minmini sang songs of diverse genres but the way she sang some of her songs in classical Carnatic ragas is unbelievable. She had never learnt Carnatic music! Leave alone Classical music she never even learnt the basic notes starting with sa, ri, ga, ma. Without knowing the positions of any note on the scale, she sang raga-based songs flawlessly. Apart from her many songs in Malayalam, songs in Tamil like ‘Manamagale Manamagale’ in Raga Shuddha Saaveri and ‘Maasaru Ponne Varuga’ in Raga Maayamalava Gowla composed by Ilayaraja for the film Devar Magan are great examples of her felicitous rendering. Even today, after all her experience of singing raga-based songs, Minmini cannot sing any classical piece of music. Nor can she identify any raga!

Before she became well-known, the Malayalam composer Vidhyadharan had once called Minmini to render the track of a devotional song to be sung by S.Janaki. Before instructing her on the tune of the track, the composer asked her whether she knew Classical music. When she said ‘No’ he was beside himself with anger and shouted at his assistant for bringing her in spite of his clear instruction to bring a singer who had trained in Carnatic music. He asked Minmini to leave. But musicians present there were already aware of what Minmini was capable of. They convinced Vidhyadharan sufficiently to give her a chance to rehearse. But when he heard Minmini sing he maintained that it was a lie to say that Minmini did not know Carnatic music!

Like this the music and life of Minmini was stranger than fiction. She quickly gained the attention of people like a firefly (Minmini in Tamil means firefly) shining and gaining attention with a scintillating brilliance and then disappeared from the scene even faster. The birth place of Rosily called as Mini was a village called Keezhmaadu in Aluva area near Kochi. Mini had at the age of five displayed a rare singing talent and before long had won many state-wide awards. She became famous through stage shows and devotional tapes. But her home was without electricity, radio, a cassette player or a phone!

Mini was born last of four girls in a poor family in 1970. All the four girls had the singing talent. Her father Joseph was a part-time employee in an Aluminium company. But it was not often that he attended his work. He was a music-lover. Mother was Theresa. She had that rare singing felicity that enabled her to recollect the film songs that she had learnt in Hindi, Tamil and Malayalam from her childhood and to impart them to her four girls.

Mini started singing at church functions and soon graduated to the position of prime stage singer of such famous music troupes of Kochi as Kala Bhavan and C.A.C. As many of her cassettes became famous she became, by eighties, quite a popular singer in Kerala. She used to receive her invitations for stage shows and recordings at a phone in the nearby panchayat office! In spite of the pay being poor, she kept singing day and night.

Mini was having Asha Bhonsle and S.Janaki as her idols and following their rendering styles. Philip Francis, an extraordinary musician living in Trichur at that time, introduced to Mini the world of Ghazals. Mehdi Hasan, Ghulam Ali and Jagjit Singh sang to her from the cassettes gifted by him and both enriched and mellowed her singing style. Tours undertaken for her endless music programs in Kerala, other parts of India and abroad and continuous music recording engagements affected her school studies. In spite of getting admission to study classical music at Kerala’s famous R.L.V. Music College she could not find the time to join there.

She sang her first film song at the age of eighteen. During this time she sang with Yesudas, Jayachandran and S.P.Balasubramaniam on music shows. One day Ilayaraja expressed his concern on the scarcity of good new female singers to singer Jayachandran, he strongly suggested that he should try Mini. Ilayaraja bade Jayachandran to bring her immediately. Jayachandran then left this message for Mini at the office of C.A.C, the music troupe with which Mini was singing at the time. Not wanting to lose their best singer, they never told Mini about it!

When a few months later Mini learned of this, she could not believe that a great opportunity was hers. Finally when Mini entered Ilayaraja’s recording studio at Prasad studios, Chennai ,her idol Asha Bhonsle was singing, standing amidst hundreds of music instruments and musicians, the song ‘Panivizhum Maalayil Pazhamudhir Cholayil’ for the film Meera. A clearly flustered Mini, who pinched herself to see if it was all for real, was asked by Ilayaraja to sing a song to demonstrate her ability. Within the hour Mini had become Minmini and was standing at the same spot stood on earlier by her idol Asha Bhonsle .She sang a song for the same film: ‘Love Enna Lovvu’.

Ilaiyaraja continued to give Minmini some very sweet numbers. ‘Oru Maalai Chandran Malarai Theduthu Malai Adivaarathile’ is a good example. This was picturised in the film Unnai Vaazhthi Paadukiren. Minmini sang this song with S.P.B. with finer expressions. This was especially evident in the way she had rendered lines like ‘Kulir Veesum Maasiyile…Oru Degam Vendhadhu Mogatheeyinile’.

Minmini has sung many such songs for Ilayaraja with great felicity. One such honeyed rendering with Ilayaraja composing is ‘Raathriyil Paadum Paattu’ sung with Malaysia Vasudevan and Arulmozhi for the film Aranmanai Kili. Minmini was able match Malaysia Vasudevan note for note in bringing out the fine and tender sentiments of the song. One can see Minmini’s standout talent in the song ‘Adi Poonkuyile Poonkuyile Kaelu’ of the same film when she renders the line ‘Kukkoo Kukkoo Paattu Sokki Sokki Poachu’ in the charanam portion set over a complex beat. Then there is the duet song ‘Muthaalamma Muthaalamma’ in the film Maappillai Vandhaachu where her rendering stands head and shoulders above that of co-singer Mano.

Minmini was great when she rendered for the film Chinna Maappillai with clarity and felicity the song ‘Kannmanikkul Chinna Chinna Minminigal Minna Minna’, which includes her name also in the lyric, a song that was so totally western. The same Minmini went on to sing for the film Enga Thambi the song ‘Malaiyoram Maankuruvi Maavilaiyil Paattezhudhi’ set to Kiravani Raga with flawless fidelity to the Raga strains in the composition. While she conveyed the yearnings of love so well in the high pitched song ‘Anbe Anbe Vaa’ in the film Yezhai Jaadhi she expressed a sensuality in the folksy dance number ‘Kurrukku Paathaiyilay Marrichi Vazhiyil Ninnu’ for the film I Love India that speaks of her versatility. Just listen to the line ‘Onna Paarkarrappo Ullaara Onnu Varudhayya, Neeyum Parisam Pottu Orasi Paarka Varuviya’ to feel the heat of the sensuality!

Minmini has sung the song ‘Kuthaala Kaaththukku Maththaalam Ethukku' with Malaysia Vasudevan in the film Chinna Devan. At the end of the first charanam Malaysia Vasudevan had woven magic with an extraordinary rendering of the word ‘Maane’ at the end of the line ‘Ini Thaangaadhamma Maane’. Minmini riposted with a brilliant enumeration of Malaysia Vasudevan’s bit in the last line of next charanam ‘Adhu Pola Yogam Yedhu’ with the word ‘Yedhu’. ‘Kothumani Muthumani’ number of the same film was a brilliant illustration of possibilities of Minmini’s voice and her unique ability in imparting unique sensuality to songs. 'Kuthaalakkuyile Kuthaalakkuyile Ukkaandhu Pesalaama’ from Thirumathi Planisamy is another brilliant song from the Minmini Malaysia duo.

Minmini has sung less than ten songs under A R Rahman’s baton. After the path breaking ‘Chinna Chinna Aasai’ she sang ‘Chithirai Nilavu Chelaiyil Vandhadhu’ with Jayachandran for the film Vandicholai Chinnaraasu. Sensuality conveyed in a subdued tone was the song’s undertone. Minmini had barely a couple of lines in the emotional number ‘Yeduda Andha Sooriya Melam’ of the film Pudhiya Mannargal but her lively rendering made her stand out. This song, which she sang with SPB and others, is a gem from among A R Rahman’s great creations. There is a very special pitch shift at the end of this song but it went unnoticed. It was only when he very demonstratively resorted to pitch shift in the ‘Humma Humma’ number of Mani Ratnam’s film Bombay that everyone noticed it.

Minmini sang with Sunanda the female version of the hit number ‘Ennavale Adi Ennavale’ for the film Kaadhalan, ‘Indiraiyo Ival Sundariyo’. The lively Karuthamma number ‘Pachaikkilli Paadum Ooru’ became famous both because of the unique beat that consisted of cocks’ crowing sound and Minmini’s ability to render a song well in husky tone. The arrangement of backing vocals of the song ‘Raasaathee Enn Usiru Ennadhilla’ from the film Thiruda Thiruda is a great example fine backing vocal arrangements. It was rendered by Minmini. The ‘Sambo Sambo’ number set in Spanish music mode for the film Pudhiya Mugam and the sensuous number from the film Gentleman, ‘Paarkaadhe Paarkaadhe Panchaangathai Paarkaadhe’ (an adaptation from Osibisa number ‘Kilelay Kilelay’) were the last songs that Minmini sang for A R Rahman.

Even though she had sung in many languages, it was only in Tamil that Minmini was given maximum singing opportunities. She received only a few chances to sing in her own mother tongue. Even among these few chances a few of the more popular numbers were under Ilaiyaraja’s composition. The ‘Kaakkaa Poocha’ number from the film Pappayude Swantham Appoos is an example. The same song in the Tamil film Enn Poove Pon Poove, ‘Kaakkaa Poonai’, was also sung by Minmini.

‘Ee Vazhiyay Nila Villakkum Yendhi’ under Mohan Sithara’s composition is one of those rare songs that brought out so well the ability of Minmini’s rendering style to expressive singing. ‘Sowparnikamrutha Veechigal’ for the film Kizhakku Unarum Pakshi with Ravindran as composer, ‘Neela Raavil Innu Ninte’ and ‘Oonnjaalurangi’ for Lohitha Das film Kudumbasametham with Johnson as composer, ‘Kannaadiyatril Avall Kanaga Nilaavu’ for the film Vaachaalam again with Johnson as composer and ‘Paadhiraavaaya Neram’ for the film Vietnam Colony with S.Balakrishnan as composer about sums up Minmini’s Malayalam film songs worth mention!

After the huge success of ‘Chinna Chinna Aasai’ Minmini became a very busy playback singer recording furiously at about eight songs a day on average days, going up to twelve songs on some days. She was participating practically non-stop on the stage music shows and recording of devotionals. Then one day, in a Tamil Film Star Nite held in London where many stars of Tamil Film world took part, as Minmini was singing her voice suddenly ceased altogether. She was not even able to speak for many months after that!

Minmini’s voice was more or less cultured to resemble that of S.Janaki. Her voice got patterned unconsciously from her childhood by singing songs of S.Janaki. Apparently such voices do not have the recuperative ability of one’s own natural voice, when subjected to the strain of continuous singing. It is possible that excessive pressure exerted on vocal chords by years of continuous singing had caused a sudden snap in her voice. Expert treatment and therapy restored her speech and to some extend her singing ability. But that old magic was gone from Minmini’s voice and singing.

Minmini’s wedding with the keyboard artiste Joy had been fixed when she was working furiously shuttling between recording theatres and music shows. Joy married Minmini who was slipping into depression because of her inability to sing. Composers who loved her singing came forward to book her and record her song line by line and word by word, if necessary. But Minmini stopped singing on her own as she had lost confidence in her own capacity to sing. She spent all her money on treatments and therapies. Years rolled by. But when she regained the confidence to sing again, there was nobody to call her.

Having lost her all, with no means of living in Chennai, Minmini had gone back to Kerala many years ago. Today, with her own two teenagers to raise, Minmini is living with her husband in Kochi, running her own school of music. She claims that all her problems with the voice are now past and that she can sing like before. But, now there is none to invite her for recordings.

Dr. Thambiah (1924 – 2011) - A Humane Doctor and Scientist

2011-07-01T06:41:00.000-07:00

Last year October I went on a trek with my reader friends Senthil, Babu, Shiva and Arumugham from Kookkal, a place in Kodaikanal hills of Tamilnadu to Kudiraiyar, a place near Pazhani through untrekked hill forests. We lost our way in the dense forest and in the darkness of the night we slept on a rock amidst frightening calls of wild animals. We somehow came out of the adventure alive. During the trek a whole population of leaches stuck to my legs sucking my blood. In the heat of the moment, I just tore them out one by one. It was only later that I learnt that I should not have done that.

In a few days, the places where leaches had bitten had turned black and formed swollen patches. The urge to itch was absolutely uncontrollable. With every passing day, the area of itching urge rose up from legs to torso and hands and then right up to the neck. I first approached a ‘highly rated’ dermatologist who charged Rs.750/- for consultation. His treatment had an immediate effect! The urge to itch now spread to the entire body. As I was moving around not knowing what to do, I suddenly remembered the name of the dermatologist a Bengali friend had mentioned many years ago to me. The name of that redeemer was Dr.A.S.Thambiah.

It was in Kolkata that I had first heard of him some fifteen years ago. I had allergy-related lesions in both the wrists that went on to become a big black mole-like patch. When Sujit Guha, who was a friend and a Doctor as well, saw it he said: “Why did you not see Dr.Thambiah in your own Chennai? He is India’s best Dermatologist.”

After searching the Internet for hours I was able to get a phone number. It was not his number. It was of a nearby medical shop. I was able to get considerable information from them. Dr.Thambiah will see patients from 8.00 in the morning to 12.00 noon. Consultation cannot be reserved in advance. There is no token system. However high or low a person may be in terms of station in life, he or she will have to stand in queue to see him. They will be seen by Dr.Thambiah on a first come first served basis without exception. He had his residence on the Flowers Road off Poonamalle High Road. His clinic was also run from there.

Next day I reached the area at 6.30. There was no name plate and certainly nothing to inform of India’s greatest dermatologist. A grand old iron gate was kept swung wide open. Fairly wide pathway going in was practically deserted. I could not espy a single person. Ahem! I am the first patient! There was a wall at the end of the path. If you turn left and go inside, you get into a big courtyard. And there was an ancient building that looked like it was hundreds of years old. At first sight there were not less than 50 persons standing in an orderly queue. Having first been comforted by absence of patients, I now ran to find the end of the queue. To my shock I found the line long and snaking behind the building to a point that made it a queue of nothing less than a hundred persons.

I realized that if I stood at the end of that queue, I could stand all night and not see the doctor. Before I returned home disappointed, I took a good look at the queue. It was democracy at work. There were persons who looked like beggars, street women and the rich who drove in their Benzes and BMWs. I inquired from the lady first in the queue as to when she arrived to get the blessed spot and she was kind enough to tell me that she came at four in the morning.

Two days later, I set the alarm clock at 2.30 am and rushed to arrive at the clinic by 3.30 in the morning. I found the gate closed. A person was snoring away on a two-wheeler. Two probable patients were standing aside. Another person, who was doing brisk business selling tea and snacks off his cycle, was speaking to them in a loud voice. When the gate opened at 5.30 am a crowd of 50 persons had gathered there. That was a moment of each to himself and we ran a no-holds-barred race to be at the head of the queue. I ended up eighth in the queue.

The courtyard was full of tall trees. There were quite a few cannon ball trees. These trees brought to India by the Portuguese but worshipped here as Naagalinga trees. The trees had plenty of flowers and when squirrels played around them, flowers fell to the ground continuously spreading fragrance. I had to wait another two and half hours. There were wooden benches to seat the first 15 persons. Others had no go but to stand. By the time Dr.Thambiah climbed down to the clinic at eight with the dodder of an 86 years old person, some 150 persons had gathered in the shade of the trees.

There were two other Doctors with Dr.Thambiah to assist him. He saw me for two minutes. It was a case of skin allergy and the leach-bite acted as a trigger. That was it. He wrote a month’s prescription. There were quite a few tablets to be taken whole or in halves. Unusually for an allopathic practitioner he prescribed food restrictions as in Ayurveda. He asked me to keep away from tomatoes, all tangy fruits like lemon, sweet lime, orange and all aerated drinks. He asked me to use baby soaps alone for some time.

In two days, I found considerable relief from itches. In about a week I was cured. For this he had charged me all of Rs.30/-. Till about ten years back he was charging the patients just Rs.2/-. That was who our Dr.Thambiah was.

Born to a Sri Lankan Tamil father and a Keralite mother in 1924, he was named Arthur Sharavanamuthu Thambiah. He qualified as a doctor from Madras Medical College and later went to Royal College of Physicians in London for post graduate study in Dermatology. He was the first South Indian to successfully obtain a MRCP in Dermatology. He had plenty of openings to work as Dermatologist abroad but instead chose to return to India. He joined as Professor of Dermatology in Madras Medical College. It was his unstinted efforts that led to initiation of post graduate studies in Dermatology at MMC.

He used his great intellect, research experience and impressive memory to serve poor patients through his 32 years of service at Government General Hospital at Madras. He worked without a holiday or Sunday starting his classes for students at 6 am, treating all patients rich or poor alike, conducting his research on dermatology without a sense of day or night.

An entire generation of physicians grew up knowing him as a great scientist and teacher of Dermatology. He has submitted over 150 research papers on Dermatological subjects. The three fungal growths discovered by him are kept for demonstration and research at Centre for Tropical Fungi and Bacteria in Atlanta, USA. All awards and memberships of distinctions were conferred on him like the FRCP, FIAM, and special membership of Dermatological Society of England. All India Medical Council conferred B.C.Roy award on him. He was made the Doctor of Sciences by Madras University and Dr.M.G.R. University. He was a silent crusader against Nuclear Power Reactors and had held high offices with Physicians for World Peace.

After he retired from Government service in 1982, he converted the ground floor of his residence into a clinic and continued his great service to the patients suffering from skin diseases. He was seeing patients till two months ago. He was admitted to Hospital on 10^th May this year with breathing difficulties. He passed away the next day, at 8 in the morning, when normally he would have started consulting patients. Huge crowd of common people, members of medical fraternity and medical college students paid their last respects. This great grandfather of dermatology in India was laid to rest at Kilpauk Garden Cemetery.

Honesty, fearlessness and an absolute refusal to recommend or be recommended marked his entire life of dedication to service of the poor and friendless. Being wedded to medical service he shunned marriage and served people with skin infections for almost seven decades. Dr.Thambiah who left us after a life devoid of any desire for wealth, a life that was lived with humility, simplicity and utmost compassion defines a true physician. He was a silent but peerless example of how a human being should aspire to live.

A Silent Tear Drop for Malaysia Vasudevan - Written for Ananda Vikatan

2011-04-01T07:17:00.000-07:00

One day I received a phone call from Vasu Anna. “I am Vasu speaking. Where are you? Is everything okay? Please do come here if you are free.” I told him that I was leaving station and that I will be back after ten days. He wished me a happy journey and bade me to come back in good health. I assured him that I would come and see him on my return. But he had left for that unknown world everyone should ultimately go to, on the same day that I came back. Where should I go to meet him now?

I have always been a steadfast fan of the marvelously natural singing of Malaysia Vasudevan. Without an iota of doubt I will assert that he was the greatest singer of his time. There were plenty of reactions to an article that I wrote on him a few months ago. Many who read the article regretted their ignorance in not recognizing his genius all this while.

In an interview with Ananda Vikatan that followed my article, Malaysia Vasudevan had spoken that he had been living for many years with failing health and much mental agony, totally ignored by all those who had known him in a three-decade-long career. A.R.Rahman had e-mailed to me that he had learned of Malaysia Vasudevan’s dire health and financial conditions and that it was Malaysia Vasudevan who had first identified his talent and helped him with the opportunity of his first music album!

This was followed up by many English and Tamil periodicals with their own write-ups on him. It also happened that Director Maniratnam honoured him at a function held for the release of my book on 18th September, 2010. When Malaysia Vasudevan had come for the cremation of the singer Swarnalatha, media people mobbed him as though he were a popular contemporary star. I think he felt consoled by such small recognitions that came after 20 years of rejection and neglect.

He had once told me: “I had not expected anything from anybody. I had never expected that I should get an opportunity by denying it to others. I arrived in India from Malaysia with a dream of singing just one or two songs in films. But I have already sung more or less five thousand songs. I have even acted in over 85 films. Success, fame and wealth, I have seen them all.” In 2003 he suffered a stroke that left him paralysed on one side. He lost his ability to speak and walk. He had to stay in the Intensive Care Unit for months together. In the film industry that he served for three decades there was not a single voice of support. None of the beneficiaries of his generosity came forward to enquire after him. The towering personality of Malaysia Vasudevan was lost in oblivion.

Continued treatment and exercise therapy restored speech and ability to walk with some difficulty. But he could not sing a single line. What can be more sorrowful to a person who had dedicated his entire life to music? He could have achieved a complete recovery with more and better medical treatment. But he did not have the money for it. And nobody came forward to help him. But his memory remained undimmed by the stroke and its after-effects. He remembered almost every song he had sung. He remembered even the smallest details of his life. I think that it was this phenomenal memory serving as a backdrop to the neglect by people he thought were friends and colleagues that tormented him.

When I called to greet him on the occasion of last Deepavali, he was bitter as he said: “What Deepavali? Life is now a complete vacuum.” Immediately after his death masters of music and superstar actors who lip-synched to his songs rushed in an unseemly melee to pay their ‘last respects’ to him! They were the same persons who totally set their faces against him for the last two decades. He had expected nothing more than an occasional casual meet or a kind word over the telephone from them.

Malaysia Vasudevan was a great singer who rendered his songs in wondrous ways without exaggerated emotions and with a total passion for music. He is a marvel of music that ought to have been celebrated at all times by our people so steeped in the culture of listening film songs at every turn. But we never celebrated him when he was alive.

He once told me “Nobody has anything big enough to be overly proud of in this life”. I did not pay my ‘last respects’ to his body nor did I attend his cremation. I did not have the heart to see his lifeless body. He will always fill my heart with his child-like smile and talk. His marvelously rendered songs will soothe me like the summer breeze in my moments of sorrow. I only have a silent tear to place at the feet of my dearly loved Vasu Anna.

Can We Forget Malaysia Vasudevan? - Written for India Today

2011-04-01T06:42:00.000-07:00

It was past midnight. A friends’ gathering was on in the front lawn of a farm house in the foot hills of Tiruvannamalai. My writer friend Bava Chelladurai suddenly suggested to me that we speak a few words to honour the memory of Malaysia Vasudevan who had passed away three days back. For a moment I was left groping for words and unable to make up my mind on what to say.

Was I to speak of his naturally unique singing? Should I speak of the long relationship that I had with many of his songs? Was I to speak of those few but rare film songs which he had composed himself? Or better still, was I to speak of his innocent and child-like character? Above all, was I to express the pain I felt by telling how I missed meeting him one last time in spite of being in regular touch with him?

He had rendered over five thousand songs. He had acted in over eighty five films. He was for many years a super star singer of Tamil film music. But he had been living these last many years totally ignored and forgotten.

Changes in the Tamil cinema world towards the end of eighties left him with diminishing singing opportunities. He did not have acting assignments to speak of either. As his finances declined he produced the film Nee Sirithal Deepavali. The film was a total disaster. He lost everything including his bungalow. He never recovered from this loss.

In 2003 he suffered a stroke that left him paralysed on one side. He lost his ability to speak. He had to stay in the Intensive Care Unit for months together. Neither the film industry that he served for three decades nor the beneficiaries of his generosity cared for him. The towering personality that Malaysia Vasudevan was, lost in oblivion.

Continued treatment and exercise therapy restored his speech and walking with some difficulty. But he could not sing a single line. What can be more sorrowful to a person who had dedicated his entire life to music? He could have achieved a complete recovery with more and better medical treatment. But he did not have the money for it. And nobody came forward to help him.

The article that I wrote on him a few months back produced many reactions. Many who read the article regretted their ignorance in not recognizing his genius all this while. Director Maniratnam, who attended the function to release my book on 18th September of 2010, honoured Malaysia Vasudevan there. This was followed up by other articles and interviews about him in many Tamil and English magazines. When Malaysia Vasudevan had come for the cremation of the singer Swarnalatha, media people mobbed him as though he were a popular contemporary star. He felt consoled by such small recognitions that came after 20 years of neglect. But apart from the fan mail and phone calls that he received from those who admired his singing, he did not receive any material help that could make a difference.

I think he had lost all hopes in life after living many years of sorrow-filled life that was both physically and emotionally draining. At last on 20th February 2011, Malaysia Vasudevan was permanently released from all the vexing difficulties of his mortal life.

The master composers, super star actors and star singers who hastened to pay their final respects moments after his death were people who had ignored him during the many years that he struggled to live. Malaysia Vasudevan had expected nothing more than a courteous telephone call or a cordial meeting from them.

As I concluded my brief account in memory of the natural most singer Tamil film music ever had, film director Mishkin who was there affirmed that Malaysia Vasudevan was the only true Tamil singer to emerge after T.M.S. He began to sing ‘Poongaatru Thirumbuma Yaen Patte Virumbuma’. The haunting song of Malaysia Vasudevan appeared to resound everywhere in the deep silence of that late night.

Do We Listen to Music Right?

2011-03-09T02:52:00.000-08:00

It was a few years ago. A Hindustani music concert was in progress at Naradha Gana Sabha of Chennai. Sanjeev Abhayankar, a younger generation singer was performing. The concert was good. Though great emotional highs were fewer, Sanjeev could sing accurately keeping to his pitch in a well-trained voice. His singing style had the free flow of an unhindered river.

Sitting by my side was a writer friend who was supposed to be devoted to Hindustani music. He had brought along a friend of him. During the interval of the concert I was discussing with him about the bad sound system in the auditorium. We were talking about how the snags of sound system made that pleasant rendering into an irritating experience.

It was then that my friend told me that he had bought a new CD player for Rs.2,500/- and that his friend who had come along with him for the concert was the one who helped him with the selection. My experience was that in those days any CD player retailing for Rs.2,500/- would certainly be a low quality local make. Listening to music in such players would be an excruciating experience for persons with refined taste in music and sound. So what was the point in taking a ‘friend’s help’ to buy such a player, I thought.

I had then suggested that he had bought a mini music system for five six thousand and he could have heard different types of CDs in it. This must have annoyed my friend’s companion. He said with a disdain that I was probably referring to a compact combo music system and that listening to music in it will be torturous, killing the very life of the music played.

I was surprised. Here was a man speaking authoritatively on listening to music on high fidelity audio systems. I then asked him the name of the player he had bought wondering why he would buy a cheap player. He said it was Marantz. Now I was truly astounded.

Marantz was among world’s best manufacturers of great audio CD players. Many of its CD players cost a bomb and then some. I asked my friend how he managed such a superb CD player for a mere Rs.2500/-. He said he bought it second-hand. I understood! You do, on occasions, get these great audio equipments second hand. There you can then buy players as Marantz at low cost with the guidance of a home audio expert.

So that was how my friend made his fortunate buy! It was I who had spoken without a thought of such a possibility. I sheepishly told him that I too am constantly in search of better and better ways of listening of music and that I keep searching for good audio systems to buy. But a stony silence was their response!

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I tried explaining that I know a bit about Hi-Fi Home audio systems that you install at home for better listening experience and that I have written many articles on the sound of music in AV Max, an English magazine writing on the technology of Hi-Fi audio and video systems. But I could sense that they were disinterested. Perhaps they must have thought that I am an ignorant person because of my suggestion of the purchase of a combo system.

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What is Hi-Fi (High Fidelity) audio? Though it is an interesting subject for people interested in better and better listening, explaining it is impossible without use of a lot of technical words and jargons. I trust that you too can familiarize yourself with Hi-Fi sound if you can see how I got into the world of music listening with quality sound. Like everyone else, I too was listening to music on a Walkman or ordinary cassette/CD player for a long long time. I too had the mindset that it makes no difference how or where we hear so long as it is music!

However, in my heart of hearts, seeing music systems advertised as 3000 watts PMPO, 5000 watts PMPO, Extra Bass, Dynamic Sound, etc. there was this feeling that it must be something great and that somehow I must buy one of them. But those days these were priced way beyond my purse. Somehow, in 1997 I managed to buy a three CD Sony music system. At a time I could place three CDs and two cassettes in them. You could play and see video CDs in them as well. It had a big bright sticker on it proclaiming 3000 watts PMPO. I bought it in Burma Bazaar paying Rs.19,000/- for it. It was then a huge amount for me.

In the elation of having bought a great music system, I got into an auto rickshaw with the system without bargaining about the fare to quickly reach home. As usual, the policeman waiting for such purchases to be made stopped the auto saying that since it is a foreign product I should produce a proper bill. I felt like telling him that it was not his line of duty. Instead in my happiness of having bought a dream music system, I left the policeman with a fifty rupee note as the ‘proper’ bill to hurry home without further delay.

I readied a high platform just to keep the new music system. Just seeing the system so placed was a big delight for me. I kept scrubbing and polishing it so as not to allow dust to settle on it. For a few days I did not even go out, spending my days just listening to music on the system. Three CDs and two cassettes kept on playing turn by turn endlessly. However, all too soon its loud and booming sound started sounding to me both flat and imprecise. The ardour to listen to music on it waned. The audio from my old small portable player started to sound better than the audio of this much costlier system!

Slowly I shifted to my old player. In about two months I was totally done with my ‘3000 watts’ music system. Even an occasional watching of VCD on it was turning out to be a distasteful experience. I sold off the by now dusted up system before even a six months at a throw-away price.

I used to regularly visit recording studios for the work of the music company I was working for. I was always amazed by the sound quality that you get to experience in studios and my regret was that I could not get even one percent of that experience at home. I had realized that the design of the recording theatres, their sound-proofing wall and roof-claddings and above all the sophisticated Hi-Fi sound equipment were the reason for such thrillingly detailed audio quality. I had also seen how some indifferently put together recording studios were just harsh sounding.

As my interest in audio increased I started taking keen interest in the new music system that installed in our office. I noted that the system had a separate cassette player, CD player, amplifier and speakers and each one was from a different manufacturer specializing in its production. The audio from it’s two small speakers was so clear and sharp that listening to music on it was both enlivening and rejuvenating for me.

Then one day I happened to meet one Mr.Mahendra. He was selling and installing speakers and sound equipment in small time studios. While speaking to him I learnt that his favourite hobby and vocation was configuring, assembling and installing of Hi-Fi Home audio systems as well as being a consultant for such audio requirements. He invited me to his ‘Audio Lab’.

Soon I went to Mahendra’s home. His place was practically cluttered and littered with different audio equipments, speakers, connecters, cables and what not! There were speakers of different sizes, amplifiers and cassette players of different companies and various other audio instruments, the nature and use of which I could not make out. Most of them were ones which had come for sale after being used at least once. I had not heard most of the brand names on them before.

Mahendra took me into his main experiment room which had sound equipment everywhere with wires and cables hanging all around. Three types of audio equipment lines stacked in three stages were installed there. Each one had been connected to separate sets of speakers. He said that to find the system with best clarity we have to hear the music in two different audio systems back to back.

He placed a CD in the player that was first in the stack. As it played, pleasant streams of piano music flowed around us. I had never before heard music of such clarity and quality! When the same CD was played on the other two audio equipment lines, the audio quality of the music was even clearer and better. The many fine details and slight flourishes of the music recorded in the CD pleasantly played on my ears with very good separation and clarity that I had never experienced before. For the next many hours I kept on listening to many pieces of western and Indian music of my choice.

Long after I came back home, the experience of that sound of music was resonating within me. I immediately purchased the two speakers and a stereo amplifier recommended by Mahendra. They were indeed second-hand equipment but were expensive beyond my budget. But my craze to listen to music with quality and clarity won the day. I had by now realized that you can listen to music properly only with a quality audio system. From that day on I had become first a fan and then a searcher and seeker of quality audio equipment.

The standard of the recorded music that we hear at home on our usual systems does not reveal half the details of the recorded material. These systems simply lack the technical finesse to separate the many subtle bits and bytes of music which make the listening a highly enjoyable experience. Most are satisfied about their musical experience if they can hear the lines of lyrics in the songs clearly. They are unable to hear the finer flourishes of the tune and the musical arrangements.

But there are people who have very sharp ears. They can discern every small note and bit of sound and appreciate the separated layers of the music. They are capable of storing in their memory every bit of the sound they listen in the recorded material. They are capable of immediately identifying the clarity of the audio. Such people are called ‘Audiophiles’. They prefer to listen music only in the choicest of audio systems. They know the art of listening the sound of music and the science of enabling and enhancing it through different audio devices.

Achieving high sound standards in music listening requires some ‘must have’ audio equipments of high standards performing their individual roles to a finesse. The wires and cables that connect these various audio instruments are also should be of high quality and specialized as they too contribute to the total audio quality. Most of the different audio equipments in a professionally assembled system are made by different manufacturers. The products of well known companies popular among the mass are not up to the standards of Audiophiles most of the time.

The products preferred by Audiophiles are mostly not advertised in mass media or sold through regular stores. There are very specialized magazines for audiophiles all over the world which attracts both write-ups and advertisements of these specialized audio products. Magazines like Hi-Fi, Stereophile, What Hi-Fi, Home Sound News, Home Cinema, AV Max etc. are examples. Such equipments are only sold through very specialized stores.

These audio equipments could be graded into entry level, mid level and high end, depending on their price and sophistication. We can select our range of audio instruments based on our requirements and budget. It is common that some of the high end systems cost much more than a luxury car. Many systems often sport price tags running to many lakhs and even crores in rare cases.

An entry level audio range consisting of a source player, amplifier and speakers can cost up to Rs.50,000/-. If bought second-hand, a beginner’s audio system can be put together for around Rs.25,000/-. The medium range system can be assembled for upwards of Rs.1,00,000/-. A high end system can easily run up a figure around 5 lakhs. The home theatre audio equipment, which enables us to experience the theatre like sound costs many times more than a high technology high end television. All these instruments have stylish designs too.

I have had the pleasure of listening to music in many different audio ranges and high priced speakers. I have personally experienced the higher standards of listening pleasure matching their price. Still it is not always a given that the audio quality rises with higher prices. I have known instances of systems assembled for fifty thousand rupees giving better audio quality than the ones costing over five lakh rupees. It is more important than price to identify an audio system that goes well with the room where we listen to music and get it installed properly.

Sound sensitive persons love to listen to music only from such high resolution media as audio CD, FM Radio or Vinyl records. For them the idea of listening to music in MP3 is a rubbish to be avoided like a plague. They even look out for high tech recorded audio medias like Super Audio CD and Audio DVD for a higher standard of listening experience.

Some still prefer to listen to music in the old technology product, the vinyl music record. Today the Audiophile market puts out latest technology record players for such lovers of vinyl disc sound. But they do not come low-priced. A medium range Roksan Xerxes record player costs just two lakh rupees. However, if that is still cheap for you there are record players available at well over five lakh rupees!

We can still hear music from DVD players as well. Though audio quality that we receive with the video is still good in them, audio CDs to not play well in these DVD players. That is why lovers of audio quality in music do not play their music on video players. They only use dedicated audio CD players to listen to music. Such CD players are also expensive. For example the cost of a Marantz, NAD or Cambridge brand entry level CD player is well above twenty five thousand rupees.

An appropriate amplifier is a must for good quality music as they amplify and separate the audio signals emerging from players and present it in a proper stereo or multi- channel mode through the speakers. The electrical power of sound in operation in such amplifiers is rated in terms of RMS (Root Mean Square). Higher RMS signifies greater pressure, depth and clarity of sound. As already indicated before, you would have seen advertisements shouting PMPO (Peak Music Power Output). This denotes the loudness of sound and does not carry any value among Audiophiles. This is merely a marketing gimmick to gain attention.

The two-channel stereo amplifiers suffice for listening to music. But multi-channel amplifiers with 5.1 and 7.1 channels or more are needed for seeing films on the TV or a screen with theatre like sound. Even after the arrival of digital technology, old style valve audio amplifiers still enjoy dedicated fans. In their opinion, the warmth of the sound produced by them is incomparable.

Speakers have a very special place in producing high quality sound. Speakers are available in Audiophile market with different levels of sophistication and price range. Though ordinarily their prices range from twenty thousand to five lakh rupees, I remember seeing an advertisement where rupees forty-five lakhs was quoted for two bare speaker drivers!

When we install speakers at home, it is important to take the size of the room, the height at which it is fixed and the place where it is to be fixed into account. The reason for this is the fact that sound waves are absorbed and echoed by articles obstructing on the ground or the wall. Therefore, proper dimensions of the room and design are important for a music experience with the finest audio quality. Therefore, serious listeners of music specially design the room where they listen to music.

Some of these music lovers go to any extend in search of better audio equipment. Their fervor and search for perfect audio quality are beyond belief. For certain kind of persons among them music is only a product to test different audio equipment! All their thoughts are focused on
enhancing the sound producing capabilities of their audio systems. Therefore, they keep testing newer and newer configurations and attachments to see if they make a difference to the sound quality.

As a person who has continued on a journey of listening to music, I find it is important to listen to music with the best audio quality. Today I can say that I too have an audio system of reasonably good quality as a result of all the search, experiments and expeditions I had gone through. But I am not totally satisfied with my audio system. The mind is always on a search for an audio instrument even better, a new attachment that does even more to enhance the sound quality of the music that I always love to listen to. The search for perfect sound quality in music is a never ending one. Such search is often frustrating. But even such frustration is an emotion generated by music that we so love.

In Memory of Malaysia Vasudevan

2011-03-03T19:29:00.000-08:00

“What is left in this life for me to celebrate? My life has become totally bleak my friend” was what Vasu Anna told me when I called on the phone to greet him on last Deepavali. He has been living a painful life physically and mentally for last many years. Many times I felt that he has lost the will to live.

Within minutes of his passing away news flashed, many who had ignored him for years hastened to pay their customary farewell to him. In this crowd of celebrity grievers there were master composers, prominent singers and super star actors. None of them were to be seen when Malaysia Vasudevan, who lived and worked with them for over 30 years, yearned for nothing more than a courteous telephone call, a friendly meet or a caring word.

Readers know of the great welcome that my recent article on Malaysia Vasudevan received. Immediately after the article the attention of popular media of Tamilnadu turned to him. Both Ananda Vikatan and Kumudham competed to publish his interviews in the same week. This was followed up by other English and Tamil periodicals with their write-ups on him.

It also happened that Director Maniratnam honoured him at a function held for the release of my book. A.R.Rahman had e-mailed to me that he had learned of Malaysia Vasudevan’s dire health and financial conditions and it was Malaysia Vasudevan who had helped him with the opportunity of his first music album. When Malaysia Vasudevan had come for the cremation of the singer Swarnalatha, media people mobbed him as though he were a popular contemporary star. He might have felt consoled a bit by such small recognitions that came after 20 years of neglect. But apart from some fan mail and telephone calls he did not receive any material help that could have made a difference.

Years ago a brain stroke had paralysed his limbs leaving him unable to move around on his own. But his mind remained sharp. He remembered most of his songs with the lines. His memory had preserved even the smallest of incidents from the time he was three. But these memories also pushed him to grieve. It was his memory that put in perspective the slights he experienced in his later life and made them unbearable to him.

He was struggling with his loneliness in the constricting atmosphere of a small rented house in a narrow lane behind Saligram bus stand in Chennai. His wife was his only companion. His days were very long and his moments passed ever so slowly. He spent time speaking to and playing with street dogs around his house.

“What did he do with all the money that he earned?” This is a question commonly asked when the rich and famous persons fall into financially strained circumstances. It is not an easily answered question. Being a great artiste is one kind of talent. Collecting the remuneration and rewards duly for his art is another talent. Spending that money carefully is a different talent. Saving a good deal of it and investing wisely is a completely different talent. Persons who have all these talents are a rare few.

Most of the artistes are extremely emotional and sensitive. They are not the stable persons who can plan carefully. They are extremely gullible and commit the kind of horrendous financial mistakes that ordinary people find difficult to believe. Their errors of judgement often lead them to trust fraudsters and alienate their real well-wishers. The list of such emotional fools is very long starting from Mozarts of the West to our own M.K.Thyagaraja Bhagavathar and T.R.Mahalingam.

This leads us to the next question. “How do you explain the great and famous artistes who lived well?” There are indeed many such persons. But these are people who were willing to be guided by other non-artistic persons on their assignments, finances and investment plans. They are people who have no problems in being guided by their wives, friends and knowledgeable and reliable managers or assistants. But it is rare to find such people in the world of cinema and entertainment.---

Many of the artistes in the film industry, on finding their fortunes and career sliding, begin to think that they can restore their finances and fame by producing a film. Most of such foolish attempts have ended in disasters. Film production is world’s biggest gambling arena. Chance of a financial success in film production is less than 5%. A film production by a person already in trouble is most of the time a sure-shot loser of everything he has.

There was a time when Malaysia Vasudevan had everything like name, fame, swank cars and a big bungalow. As the trends in cinema changed drastically towards the end of eighties, he found his singing opportunities getting scarce. His acting career did not reach any great heights. His financial position was declining. At that adverse point he produced the film Nee Sirithal Deepavali. The film was a disaster. Bad planning of production meant borrowing of money at appalling interest rates. He lost everything including his house in the deal. He never recovered from that loss.

I believe that he suffered a stroke because of his continuous disappointments. The paralytic attack led to loss of speech. He stayed in intensive care unit for months. Neither the industry that he served for decades nor those who were beneficiaries of his help enquired after him. At the height of his fame, his residence was swamped by relatives, guests and fans and the celebrations and feasts were endless there. With his decline they all simply vanished leaving him in the endless space of loneliness. Nobody cared enough to enquire after the once-a-superstar-singer Malaysia Vasudevan.

He achieved a semi-recovery in his health with the money raised from whatever could be sold and borrowing from wherever feasible. Continued treatment and exercise therapy restored his speech and walking with some difficulty. But he could not sing a single note. What can be more sorrowful to a person who had dedicated his entire life to music? He could have achieved a complete recovery with more and better medical treatment. But he did not have the money for it. And nobody came forward to help him.

A singer who is famous today asked me: “Why should Rajnikant help Malaysia Vasudevan? Why should Ilayaraja or A.R.Rahman help him? It is Malaysia Vasudevan who has benefited from them and not the other way around.” One can go a step further and ask questions like: Why should anyone help anyone? Is it not just one life for everyone to earn wealth, name and fame? We hardly have enough time to amass more and more. We live a life of ultra luxury and have earned the keep for the next five generations dose not mean that we have to help others. We can go ahead and delete such irritating words as ‘compassion’, ‘kindness’, ‘help’ ‘empathy’ et all from our dictionaries.

Vasu Anna had once told me: “I had always followed my heart. I had not expected anything from anybody. I had never agreed for an opportunity snatched from others. I arrived in India with a dream of singing just one or two songs in films. But I have sung more or less five thousand songs. I have acted in over 85 films. Success, fame, money, I have seen them all. I have never counted the money given to me for recordings or stage shows. I believed in people. May be it was my biggest mistake. Nobody has anything great to be highly proud of in this life because there is nothing very great about human life.”

Two weeks ago as I was preparing to go out of station, I received a call from Vasu Anna. He asked me to meet him if I were otherwise free. I assured him that I will definitely meet him after I come back from the trip. I received the message that he was admitted to hospital when I was out of state. When his admirers went to see him in the hospital they were not allowed in as he was in ICU. On the same day that I came back to Chennai, he had departed for that unknown world where he will not need the help of anyone.

I have not gone to see his dead body. I did not have the heart to see him lifeless. His child-like smile and talk will always stay in my heart. His soulful songs will console me in my moments of sorrow. I only have a silent tear drop to place at the feet of my dearly loved Vasu Anna.

P B Srinivas – From the Springtime of Film Music

2011-01-21T12:01:00.000-08:00

It was a pleasant afternoon. A comforting breeze was playing on the tree leaves. The wide frontage of Woodlands Drive-in Restaurant was a broad canvas of shadows cast by the trees. While sitting there it felt as if the entire Chennai city was sheathed in peace. I had already dealt with two plates of Channa Baturas and sipped countless cups of steaming filter coffees. But the person I was expecting had not yet arrived. A person who had regularly met him there over the past 45 years assured me: “He always arrives by this time. For some reason he is late today. But he will definitely come.” I kept watching the cars arriving by the road inside. At last, the person I was eagerly waiting for got down from a car and walked towards me in a tired way of walking, typical of the aged. He was playback singer P.B.Srinivas.

Even though his physique and walk betrayed the fatigue of eighty years he was meticulously dressed in a colourful attire. The pocket of his shirt sported almost ten pens of diverse colours. The folded honour scarf with shining zari work in light red and green tossed on his shoulder dropped almost to his white pants. Though his oval face had wrinkled with age the eyes behind his specs were bright. On his head he had a golden coloured Mysore turban. His forehead was almost bifurcated by the saffron mark, starting from between his brows to scalp-line. I walked towards him and touched his feet in respectful salutation. When I introduced myself, he conveyed his regret for being late and making me wait. We sat in a convenient corner and I handed over my book to him.

I had gone there to invite him to be the honoured guest at the release function of my first Tamil book ‘Sollil Adangaadha Isai’ meaning ‘Music beyond words’. As he leafed through the book with his kindly look in his face, PBS made short comments appropriate to every article in the book. “Salil Chowdhury…What a great composer!”. “Mehdi Hassan…Like your caption he is indeed the God of Ghazals.” “Rajkumar…Marvelous singer…Great Man!” “S.Janaki…What can I say about her! Great!” “A.M.Rajah…What an impossibly great singer!” and so on..

As he completed leafing through the book, he said: “It is a great effort.” I felt that there was a tinge of disappointment on his face that there was no article on him in the book. But he readily agreed to come to the function. He graciously said it was enough if someone is sent to escort him to the function from the same Woodlands Drive-in. But the Woodlands Drive-in was closed down for ever on the same day of the function, 12th April 2008, by the order of Court!

When I contacted him over the phone his voice was sad, obviously mourning the demise of Woodlands Drive-in, his home away from home that he used to visit daily for 46 years long years. He regretted that he may not be able to attend the function. But as I kept calling him on the phone requesting his presence, at last he consented to be escorted from another restaurant on the same road.

It was past the time for starting the function. The person who had gone to escort him from the designated place was waiting there patiently. PBS was busy writing something with his multiple pens of diverse colours, ignoring the reminders that it was getting late for the function. In my restlessness to start the function without a huge delay I implored him to come at the earliest. But in his own unflustered fashion he told me that he was writing a personal accolade that he wanted to present to me at the function. This presentation of a personally written accolade is something he does without fail at all the functions he attends.

PBS presented the accolade to me on the stage. He was effusive in his praise of my book. M.S.Viswanathan had graced the function as the Chief Guest. Both the veterans spent their time at the function pleasantly reminiscing on their past. PBS started to leave immediately after delivering his speech. All of a sudden young singer Kartik, who was sitting on the dais, sang a few lines from that eternal PBS song ‘Kaalangalil Aval Vasantham’ in his honour. Enthused by this, he happily left the dais that day.

Many songs like ‘Kaalangalil Aval Vasantham’ sung by P.B.Srinivas are the kind of evergreen feelings that live on in our collective memory as the spring time of our film music. His voice and his singing style are even today an inseparable part of our film music experience. He sang following the North Indian style of light music which placed more emphasis on the little musical details and subtle elaborations than on upfront expressions and emotional heights. He mostly concentrated on bringing out the soft feelings underlined by both the music and the lyrics. That was how P.B.Srinivas emerged as the singer of choice for the many melody numbers of composers like M.S.Viswanathan.

Though born and brought up in a family and an environment steeped in Carnatic music he was always fonder of the Hindusthani light music forms like Ghazal and thumri besides the Hindi film songs of those days sung by Mohammed Rafi, Manna Dey, Talat Mehmood and Lata Mangeshkar. Their influence is reflected in his singing style. Because of this distinctive singing style PBS remained a favourite of South Indian film music fans from 1950s to 1970s. He was an indispensable part of Indian film music during this period, referred to as the Golden Age of our film music.

P.B.Srinivas used to humourously claim that he alone was the true ‘Play Back Singer’ since its abbreviation PBS represents his name P.B.Srinivas. His full name was Pratiwadi Bhayankara Srinivas. He was born on 22nd September of 1930 in Kakinada in Andhra Pradesh. His father Phanindra Swami was a middle class Government servant. His mother Seshagiriyamma was a housewife deeply interested in music. PBS’ interest in music grew steadily as he listened to his mother’s attractive rendering of simple classical ragas and bhajans.

P.B.Srinivas grew to hate Carnatic music form seeing how it was taught mechanically to a girl living in the neighbourhood without any musical sensitivity by a music teacher. The impression that Carnatic music was a mechanical and unemotional form of music stuck to his mind. His mind turned to North Indian music because of this. PBS reverentially treated the many great Hindi film songs of the time as his teachers. He devoutly listened to every one of them with undivided attention and diligently practiced every musical bit from them. He did not receive any tuition or instruction in music beyond his own total diligence. His maternal uncle, Krishnamachari, used to direct dramas and act in them as well. On his encouragement, PBS got his opportunity to sing on stage at the age of 12.

But his father was very concerned about his interest in music. As if to fuel his worries, a famous astrologer predicted after reading his horoscope that PBS’ life will be totally ruined if he takes to music as a career. But irrepressible Srinivas challenged him to confirm that all his astrological predictions had come true. Astrologer was left with no convincing answer. It was a happy coincidence that PBS set off towards the peak of his career in music in later years by singing in a film called Jaathaka Phalam (Result of Horoscope)!

His father had wanted him to become an advocate or a government servant. A few years later he completed his B.Com degree and came to Chennai to join Law College. He paid less attention to his study of law and was more interested in frequenting Gemini Studio where his family friend Emani Shankara Shastri, a Veena exponent was head of the music department. Before completing his first year of study in Law, PBS left his studies to join Emani as his assistant. S.S.Vasan, the owner of Gemini Studio, appreciating the voice and the singing style of Srinivas promised to give him an opportunity to sing. It may be pointed out that it was S.S.Vasan who introduced A.M.Rajah too to film music.

PBS sang a few lines individually and sang in chorus as well for the first time in Mr.Sampat, a Hindi film released by Gemini in 1952. The songs ‘Aji Hum Bharat ki Naari’ and ‘Chalo Pania Baran Ko’ gave importance to female voices but the point to be noted was that he sang in the company of Geeta Dutt, Shamshad Begum and Jikki who were all top star singers of the time. Though he hailed from Andhra which was in no way connected to Hindi language, the Hindi pronunciation of PBS was top notch.

The very next year he got the opportunity of singing two songs in each of the trilingual film released as Jathakam (Tamil), Jathaka Phalam(Telugu) and Jathaka Phala(Kannada). The two songs in Tamil were ‘Sinthanai En Selvame’ and ‘Mooda Nambikkaiyaale’ and through these songs PBS attained the important status of a playback singer.

Next year he got the opportunity to sing the Tamil song ‘Anbodu Inbamaga’ in the film Viduthalai. This song had all the makings of what was to emerge later as his unique style and rendering mode. The same year he entered Malayalam film through the film Puthra Dharmam with music composed by P.S.Diwakar. In no time at all, he was able to create a niche for himself in Malayalam. Some of his songs that stood the test of times and beyond in Malayalam were ‘Mahal Thyagame’ from Harichandra, ‘Katha Parrayaam’ from Umma, ‘Paavana Bharatha’ from Sita, ‘Mannavanaayaalum’ from Satyabhama, ‘Iniyoru Janmamundo’ and ‘Baliyalla Enikku Vaendathu’ from Rebecca, ‘Yaatrakkara Povuka Povuka’ from the film Ayisha which had music by R.K.Shekhar, A.R.Rahman’s father, and his songs for Baburaj, a composer of undying fame, ‘Geethe Hrudhaya Sakhi’ from Poochchakkanni and ‘Inakkuyile Inakkuyile’ from Kaattuthulasi.

The only song sung by PBS under Salil Chowdhury’s baton ‘Raathri Raathri’ in the film Yezhu Raathrigal fully exploited the possibilities of his deep voice. But his most famous song in Malayalam ‘Maamalakalkkappurrathu’ came under Baburaj’s music direction in the film Ninnamanninjna Kaalppadugal. Even today it is practically the anthem of Malayalees living away from their motherland. It is a song on Malayalees living away from Kerala longing to go back and living in dreams contemplating its many graces.

PBS sang his first hit song in Telugu in 1956, in a film world where Ghantasala was reigning unopposed. The song was ‘Bhayamela O Manasa’ for the film Bhale Ramudu with music scored by S.Rajeswara Rao. PBS also sang its Tamil version ‘Avanallaal Puvimele’ in the film Prema Paasam. Rajeswara Rao, who was one of the great composers in Telugu films, had once remarked: “Many asked me why I brought in PBS when Ghantasala is there. I had liked the deep voice of Srinivas and its soft movements. I thought it will be something novel and a great change from Ghantasala.”

But PBS could not achieve any kind of great success in his own mother tongue. He was given very few opportunities to sing there. Still, these songs like ‘Manasuloni Korika’(Bhishma), ‘Oho Ghulaabi Baala’(Manchi Manishi), ‘Bujji Bujji Paappaayi’ (Aada Bharthulu), ‘Vennala Reyi’(Preminchi Choodu), ‘Oho Chittemma’(Asaadhyudu) and ‘Andhaala O Chilaka’(Letha Manasulu) – TMS sang its Tamil version ‘Anbulla Maanvizhiye’ – are popular to this day.

In 1956, PBS sang an important song composed by G.K.Venkatesh for Kannada Superstar Raj Kumar in the film Oahileshwara. Till then Ghantasala was the play back voice of Raj Kumar. Raj Kumar also sang a song in the film. In spite of that, everyone including Raj Kumar considered the voice of PBS matched so well with Raj Kumar’s domination of the screen. After that PBS became the most important play back singer of Kannada screen. In his career PBS was acknowledged as a Superstar Singer only in Kannada films. This status lasted till Raj Kumar started singing full-fledged for himself in 1974. PBS had sung in more or less 200 films for Raj Kumar alone.

If you have not heard the Kannada songs of PBS you have not heard or understood him well as a singer. A few examples of the great Kannada songs sung by PBS are ‘Akashadha Lokadhi Dhoora’ and ‘Aadiuthiruva Modagale’ from Bettadha Huli, ‘Dhoni Saagali’ from Miss Leelavathi, ‘Baara Chandrama’ and ‘Baare Nee Cheluve’ from Swarna Gowri, ‘Apara Keerthi Galisi’ from Vijayanagaradha Veeraputra, ‘Gopura Kandu’ from Arishina Kumkuma, ‘ Bande Nee Bande’ from Gandondu Hennaru, ‘Aha Idhenu Nade’ from Dhoomaketu, ‘Deena Naa Bandiruve’ from Sandhyaa Raaga, ‘Baredhe Neenu Nanna Hesara’ from Seetha, ‘Baagilanu Teredu’ from Kanakadasa, ‘Olumeya Huve’ from Punarjanma, Anuragadhi Nee Paadaleke and Dhina Dhina Olumeyu Kandaaga etc.

In Tamil, the music career of PBS took its first big step in 1957. ‘Gamagamavena’, a duet with Jikki for the film Samaya Sanjeevi, ‘Ondru Sernda Anbu Maaruma’ for the film Makkalai Petra Magaraasi and the song ‘Kannukku Nere Minnidum Thaarai’ for the film Magdalanattu Mary were all released this year. Then in 1959, he sang playback for Gemini Ganesan for the first time. Till then A.M.Rajah was the playback voice for Gemini Ganesan. The credit for this breakthrough went to composer G.Ramanathan who offered him the song ‘Inbam Pongum Vennila Veesuthe’ from the film Veerapandiya Kattabomman.

He sang three very important songs for the composer Aadhinarayana Rao for the film Adutha Veettu Penn released in 1960. While his two songs in the film ‘Vaadaatha Pushpamay (Vanitha Maniye)’ and ‘Kannaale Pesi Pesi’ were immensely liked, my favourite PBS song from this film is the song ‘Maalayil Malarcholaiyil”. However, PBS really became popular in Tamil only after the release of the film Paavamannippu in 1961. It was in this film that he had sung his evergreen number ‘Kaalangalil Aval Vasantham’ composed by Viswanathan-Ramamurty duo.

This is what M.S.Viswanathan said about this: “In those days many believed firmly that only the voice of TMS suited Sivaji and MGR and that A.M.Rajah alone was the voice of Gemini Ganesan. I wanted to change this. I got PBS to sing for Gemini Ganesan. Though he had already sung for me and other composers that was the first time he sang for a big hero. Later, he also sang for Sivaji and MGR. I also made him sing for N.T.Rama Rao in Telugu. Many opposed my move saying that only the voice of Ghantasala suited N.T.Rama Rao. But I resolutely went on to make PBS sing for NTR. The song ‘Bujji Bujji Paappaayi’ was widely appreciated and became very famous.”

M.S.V. went on to add that PBS’ biggest strength was his complete understanding of swaras (notes). “He could sing immediately after listening to the score and the lyrics. He was a much disciplined person and very dignified in his conduct. His deep voice and unique tone easily blends into his songs” were his further comments on PBS.

But PBS attributes his successes entirely to composers. Then he goes on to diplomatically add: “Great shot composition and top notch cinematography are absolutely necessary for a song to become a success. However much a singer renders the song well, however great the lyrics and tunes are, these are not enough for the success of a song.” Since I have not seen most of the films where his songs were picturised and since I have heard his immensely popular songs from badly made films, I can say that these views expressed by him are not correct really.

S.P.Balasubramaniam is on record pouring out his emotions on PBS: “I am a devout fan of PBS. I have had the good fortune of singing his many songs on stage. The first song recording that I ever saw was that of PBS. When I met MSV seeking an opportunity to sing, I sang the PBS song ‘Nilave Ennidam Nerungadhe’ for the voice test. PBS is also a great poet and writer. He has written over two lakh poems in eight languages.”

Fans of PBS have derived much pleasure over the years listening to his great numbers like ‘Udalukku Uyir Kaaval’(Manappandhal), ‘Paadaadha Paattellam Paada Vandhal’(Veerathirumagan), ‘Manidhan Enbhavan Deivamaagalaam’ and ‘Mayakkama Kalakkama’(Sumaithaangi), ‘Mouname Paarvaiyal’(Kodimalar), ‘Indha Mandrathil Oadivarum’(Policekaran Magal), ‘Poojaikku Vandha Malare Vaa’(Paadha Kaannikkai), ‘Kanpadume Pirar Kanpadume’(Kaathirundha Kanngal), ‘Pon Ondru Kannden’(Padithaal Mattum Podhuma), ‘Aval Parandhu Ponaale’(Paar Magale Paar) ‘Anubhavam Pudhumai’(Kaadhalikka Naeramillai) etc.

‘Yaar Sirithal Yenna?’ conveying the sorrow of hopelessness, ‘Kanngale Kanngale’ expressing disappointment, ‘Malarodu Vilaiyaadum’ picturing the soft feelings of love, ‘Nilave Ennidam’ and ‘Thennangeetru Oonjalile’ portraying the sad yearnings, ‘Netruvarai Nee Yaaro’ expressing subtle changes of emotions, ‘Ennai Paarthal Parigaasam’ evoking pity, ‘Mayakkama Kalakkama’, ‘Vellippanathukkum Nalla Gunathukkum’ and ‘Aatru Vellam Ponapinnaley’ so evocative of philosophy, ‘Roja Malarey Rajakumaari’ so expressive of love, ‘Pogappoga Theriyum’ and ‘Thaamaraikkannangal’ that conveys the elation of being in love, ‘Chinna Chinna Kannanukku’ conveying the affection for a child, ‘Yennarugey Neeyirundhal’ and ‘Endhan Paruvathin Kellvikku’ that portrays the finer emotions of longing in love, ‘Kaatru Velliyidai Kannamma’ waxing poetically and ‘Pon Enbaen’ and ‘Paarthaen Sirithaen’ expounding classical music ragas are all extraordinary PBS songs.

PBS generally loves to express only positive comments about others. But I have witnessed an occasion when female singer Anuradha Sriram after a particularly bad performance on stage approached PBS for his comments. But he refused to comment. And he steadfastly remained silent in spite of all pleadings from her. It is certain that he had approached her singing critically. I think the critic in PBS stood up on that occasion.

On a similar note, if we critically approach the singing of P.B.Srinivas, we will find that there were no great magic, endless elation or the mind-blowing heights in his songs. One can say that he diligently reproduced to specifications of composers without getting too seriously involved. It is not far wrong to say that he concentrated on rendering exactly, but with a soft touch, to composer’s notes rather than on exerting to leap to the emotional heights.

This particular aspect of his singing attitude meant that many of his songs sounded clinical more of the same. This may even be attributable to the ordinary and predictable life he lead right from childhood without great highs or searing lows. Artistic expressions of a great artist are often, directly or indirectly, reflective of his life. If his life is ordinary or average in its course with nothing to cause an emotional upheaval, then his artistic expressions too will run a similar average course.

An excellent example of PBS style of calm rendering is the song ‘Kavalaigal Kidakkattum Marrandhuvidu’ which he sang with TMS for the film Bandhapaasam. In the same song TMS is quite upfront about the expressions. Even as TMS was belting out through his songs an entire range of emotions from ferocity to depression, PBS was happy rendering songs expressing love in an underdone style and indirect tone. The song ‘Chithiram Paesudhadi’ in the film Sabhash Meena sung under the baton of T.G.Lingappa is a great illustration of how TMS is very direct and open in his expressions of even subtle love. If further comparison is needed we need to look no further than ‘Andhaala O Chilaka’ sung by PBS in Telugu and its Tamil version ‘Anbulla Maanvizhiye’ sung by TMS.

In terms of flawless rendering, PBS is leagues ahead of Raj Kumar. But there was an emotional richness and liveliness in Raj Kumar’s singing that was lacking in PBS. Many of Raj Kumar’s songs had displayed his knack of expressing diverse emotions with a great finesse. If there is any doubt, just listen to his songs ‘Belathingalaagi Baa’ (Huliya Haalina Mevu) or ‘Baanigondhu Elle Ellidhe’ (Premadha Kaanike). Similarly, PBS had a deeper and more complete voice than A.M.Rajah, but A.M.Rajah’s singing style was more natural and lively. I am sure PBS himself will have no problem in acknowledging this.

However, this critique has to be with the qualification that PBS never attempted or pretended to sing at emotional levels which were not natural to him. Unlike some of the singers who came after him pretending to worship him, he never brought into his rendering style exaggerated expressions of emotions in the name of proving his versatility. Songs of PBS may not have taken us to emotional heights but it did let us feel some of the finer, quieter sensitivities of human life. One can cite his famous number ‘Chanda Se Hoga Woh Pyaara’, his only famous Hindi song, as an example. This song sung by him with Lata Mangeshkar was for the film Main Bhi Ladki Hoon released in 1961. The Tamil version of this song ‘Poopola Poopola Pirakkum’ for the film Naanum Oru Penn was sung by TMS and the Telugu version ‘Chinnari Ponnari Poovvu’ for the film Needi Aada Janma was sung by Ghantasala. On comparison, we will see that PBS’ rendering of the Hindi song is far superior to the Tamil and Telugu versions.

When towards the end of 1970s MSV practically retired, the career of PBS too ended. In 1979 he sang ‘Maalai Mayanginal Iravaagum’ for the film Inikkum Ilamai with Shankar Ganesh duo as the composers. It was a rhythmic song different from the usual PBS styled songs. Ilayaraja did not offer him any remarkable opportunity. All that can be said is that he sang ‘Thendrale Nee Pesu’ for Ilayaraja for the film Kadavul Amaitha Medai released in 1979. A.R.Rahman too ignored him totally. PBS sang two lines in 7G Rainbow Colony in 2004 with Yuvan Shankar Raja scoring the music. Recently he was asked to sing a few lines in the film Aayirathil Oruvan which had music by G.V.Prakash. Probably the director of these two films Selvaraghavan was the reason.

After the singing opportunities dried up, PBS has been introducing himself as a poet and a writer. But here he has not had anything worthy of mention. He has written a few Hindi songs in Ilayaraja’s film Nandu and the Malayalam film Thadaagam. Other than that, it is not clear where his ‘over two lakh poems’ in 8 languages including Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Malayalam were used. Apparently he continues to write for his own satisfaction.

Recently, the Government of Karnataka had presented him with a 2500 square feet plot in an important locality in Bangalore in honour of his service to Kannada film music. This must have been the highest recognition PBS ever got in his life. Speaking on this occasion of honouring PBS, Chief Minister of Karnataka had regretfully noted: “This honour is being accorded very late. But it is better late than never.”

The Government of Tamilnadu gave him the worthless Kalai Maamani award and once the Presidency of Iyal Isai Nataka Mandram. Apart from these PBS had never received anything befitting his achievement or standing. Neither of the Governments at the Centre or states considered him for any awards. Leave alone titles like Padmashri or Padmabhushan, he was not even nominated for things like Filmfare award or Cinema Express award. Even as many Universities fell over themselves awarding Doctorates to worthless busybodies in the field of music, nobody noticed P B Srinivas.

Even now, PBS can be seen attending many stage music shows in Chennai. Uninvited, he will attend as ordinary spectator and take leave after, unfailingly, saying a few kind words. It appears to me that he is disregarded and ignored even there. When these ignoramuses come to know that Tamil film music has seen over 1300 singers, will they at least then recognize who P.B.Srinivas is? Tough to say!

Last September, the function of my second Tamil book ‘Isaiyin Thanimai’ (Music of Solitude) was held at Chennai Film Chamber. After the event as I was coming out of Film Chamber, I saw PBS going into the hall all alone with the tremor of old age in his tired walk. A Telugu film was to be screened there as night show. At his ripe old age how is he able to sit through a night show? I felt sad just to think whether he does this because of sleeplessness at nights or because he has nowhere else to go. The new ‘Government Park’ across the road was sleeping in darkness. The once Woodlands Drive-in was located there.

Swarnalatha – The Lonely Voice That Faded Away

2010-12-23T10:09:00.000-08:00

In last July, a friend from Kerala, who coordinates music programs, had consulted me on the choice of female singers for a Special Music program of Ilayaraja’s songs he was organizing in Trivandrum for the ensuing Onam Festival. He wanted singers who had sung songs under Ilayaraja’s music direction. Immediately, without any hesitation, I suggested the name of Swarnalatha. He was extremely happy with my suggestion and requested me to coordinate with her for the program.

I contacted a few of my friends in the field of film music as I was neither personally familiar with her nor was I in touch with her. But nobody knew of her whereabouts. Nobody had heard of her participation either in song recordings or stage shows over a lengthy period of time. Whenever she was contacted over the phone at her residence either for song recording or stage shows the only information conveyed again and again was that she will not sing for some time to come as she had throat related problems.

Nobody had any clear idea of what had indeed happened to her. Only unconfirmed rumours floated around that she was secretly married and had stopped singing. Some information even conveyed that she had left Chennai and settled abroad. Whatever the status of her position, it remained a closely guarded secret.

I was astounded how a person as famous as Swarnalatha could be in such a state of non-being. She was a rare phenomenon with many things special about her singing. In her time, she alone was the singer who brilliantly rendered every emotional dimension that is there to her songs. She had this great rendering ability to sing any type of song given to her brilliantly with her distinctive voice. I have marveled at her magical singing of the song ‘Hai Rama Yeh Kya Hua’ from the Hindi film Rangeela (1995). It was the first Hindi film of A.R.Rahman. It was songs like ‘Hai Rama’ that laid the foundation of his big successes in Hindi films that came later. It was a song where Swarnalatha scintillatingly brought out the deep emotions of yearning for love far better than her co singer Hariharan. Swarnalatha’s accent and pronunciation was so exact that nobody suspected her of being a South Indian. Another brilliant testimony to Swarnalatha’s rendering style is ‘Jannath Hain Yeh Zameen’ from Rakth (2004) with Anand Raj Anand scoring the music. It was a solo song expressing the pangs of desire with a moving depth. It is said that composers like Anu Mallik who heard her voice and the singing style in such Hindi songs thought Swarnalatha was a stunning looker!

Swarnalatha who had an illustrious career in film music from 1987 to 2006 sang the compositions of diverse music composers during this period. Many among these composers were unique in their selection of their singing voices. Swarnalatha was barely 14 when she was introduced by M.S.Viswanathan in 1987 in the film Neethikku Dhandanai. That first song, Bharatiar’s ‘Chinnanjiru Kiliye Kannamma’ was an immaculate classic set to a modern arrangement. The way Swarnalatha sang this song with self-confidence and maturity far beyond her age in spite of it being a first song sung with a veteran genius like Yesudas was unbelievable. If you were to hear this song, you will be spell-bound in wondrous disbelief, even today. That a 14 year old girl, still a child, could sing to express the depth of a mother’s love so touchingly. M.S.V. had once remarked: “Swarnalatha is a gift. She is great among the rare singers I have met. I am proud to have introduced her.”

Everyone thought that Swarnalatha must be a Tamilian from her accurate pronunciation of Tamil that was evident in her very first song. In exactly the same way whether she sang in Hindi, Kannada, Telugu or Malayalam, people of these respective languages thought that their language was her mother tongue. She sang with accurate pronunciation in Bengali as well! There is not an iota of doubt that, among singers, after S Janaki, Swarnalatha alone sang without pronunciation mistakes grasping the nuances of the language, whichever the language she sang in. Many had concluded that she was from Karnataka as her family had migrated from Karnataka and she chose to write down her lyrics in Kannada before singing. Kannada was her preferred language as she had grown up in Karnataka and had her education through Kannada medium as well.

She was, in fact, like P.Leela, Chithra and Sujatha, a Malayalee born in Kerala. She was born in 1973 in the village Kizhakkaepparra near Athikkode in Chittur Taluk of Palakkad District. M.S.V., Malaysia Vasudevan and P.Leela, too, hailed from these parts. Swarnalatha with many brothers and sisters was the last born of a big family of music lovers. Her father Cherukkutty was a singer and a harmonium player. Her mother Kalyani was also musically inclined. She was taught to sing and play the harmonium by her father and her elder sister Saroja. Later, her family migrated to Shimoga in Karnataka.

Music came like magic to young Swarna. All who heard her sing were dumbstruck by her singing and music sense. All were unanimous in their opinion that she should sing for films. Members of her family realized that she was a singing prodigy and migrated to Chennai to seek film opportunities for her singing talent. The first opportunity came from M.S.V. without any struggle. When they had gone to M.S.V’s house, he had asked her to sing a song of her choice. She chose ‘Naalai Indha Velai Paarthu’ composed by M.S.V. for the film Uyarndha Manidhan and won her chance to sing under M.S.V’s baton there and then.

Soon Ilayaraja, too, hearing about Swarnalatha gave her a chance to sing for the film Guru Sishyan (1988). The song was ‘Uthama Puthiri Naan’, a cabaret dance like number where the actress, evidently under the influence of liquor, explicitly expresses physical desire. One cannot help wondering, after listening to the sexy number, how a 15 year old girl can bring out the desire for sex in her rendering so professionally. Swarnalatha who exemplified mother’s love in her rendering of ‘Chinnanjiru Kiliye Kannamma’ brought out an emotion so totally different in this dance number!

Later, Ilayaraja asked her to sing the song ‘Maalayil Yaaro Manadhodu Pesa’ for the film Kshathiriyan produced by Maniratnam. This was a landmark song that revealed another dimension of Swarnalatha’s singing felicity. It is an attractive number that comes to mind whenever you think of Swarnalatha. Here her mesmerizing voice weaves magic expressing subtly the yearnings for love of a lonely woman. It was the success of this song which made Swarnalatha a full-time Playback singer.

In latter years she had sung many great songs under Ilayaraja’s music direction. The numbers based on the same tune ‘Povoema Oorkolam’ and ‘Nee Yengae Enn Anbae’ from the film Chinnathambi were huge hits. Songs like these made Swarnalatha the singing voice of Khushbu who was ruling the roost as a Super Star for whom fans had built a temple. One might even say that a good percentage the temple built for Khushbu should belong to Swarnalatha. Government of Tamilnadu honoured her with the award of Best Singer for the song ‘Povoema Oorkolam’.

With her song ‘Aattama Therottama’ in the film Captain Prabhakaran she proved that she was incomparable in singing peppy dance numbers as well. Many songs, one different from the other, from Ilayaraja-Swarnalatha combine like ‘Maasi Maasam Aalana Ponnu’ from Dharmadurai, ‘Malliye Chinna Mullaye’ and ‘Kaana Karunkuyile’ from Paandidurai, ‘Kuyil Paattu Vandhadenna’ from En Rasaavin Manasile, ‘Malligai Mottu Manasa Thottu’ from Shakthivel, ‘Ennulle Ennulle’ from film Valli, ‘Vedalappulla Nesathukku’ from film Periya Marudhu and ‘Rajaadhi Raja Un Thandhirangal’ from film Mannan went on to become big hits. Their song ‘Raakkamma Kayyathattu’ from the film Thalapathi figured in BBC’s Hits List of world songs. Swarnalatha’s song from the film Veera, ‘Malaikkoyil Vaasalil Kaarthigai Deepam Minnuthe’, is a rare and nostalgic song.

Swarnalatha was not given any song in A.R.Rahman’s first film in spite of being the prominent singer of the time. But the very next year he gave her to sing ‘Raakkozhi Rendum’ for Uzhavan and ‘Usilampatti Pennkutty’ for the film Gentleman, two very big hit songs of the year. A.R.Rahman gave her many songs for the films for which he composed music in 1994. Though not exactly great songs ‘Madrasa Suthi Paarka’ of May Maadham and ‘Ye Muthu Paappa’ of Vandicholai Chinnaraasu were illustrative of the many dimensions of Swarnalatha’s singing style.

There is no doubt that no other song released during that period found the kind of popularity which the dance number ‘Mukkala Muqabala’ from the film Kaadhalan achieved. Similarly the song ‘Porale Ponnuthayi’ from the film Karuthamma reigned in everyone’s heart leaving an indelible sadness with its manner of rendition. These two songs at the two emotional extremes suffice as testimony to the uncommon singing felicity of Swarnalatha. The way she had rendered ‘Mukkala Muqabala’, a number meant to please the mass, was amazing. It is doubtful if any of her contemporaries could have brought out the lines like ‘Badhil Nee Sollu Kaadhala’ with the kind of élan she brought to them.

The same way, it is difficult to imagine ‘Porale Ponnuthayi’ number in the voice of any other singer. I do not believe that any other singer could have brought to the song either in quality or degree anything like the penetrating pain and sadness that Swarnalatha was able to bestow on it. Swarnalatha had said that she wept uncontrollably in many places while recording the song. Swarnalatha swept both the National Award and the State Award as the Best Singer for this song.

In the years that followed A.R.Rahman gave her all genres of songs. The same voice that drowned us in sorrow with ‘Evano Oruvan Vaasikkiran’ from the film Alai Paayuthe also reminded us of our childhood pranks and playfulness with the song ‘Kuchi Kuchi Raakkamma’ from the film Bombay. Both Urmila Matondkar’s seductive and teasing lip-play in the film Indian and the ‘Maayaa Machindra’ dance movements of sexy Manisha Koirala pouting love that titillated the fans in the same film had the giant advantage of Swarnalatha’s captivating voice.

Swarnalatha’s infinite singing ability can be found in ‘Anjathe Jeeva (Jodi), Kaadhalenum Thervezhudhi (Kaadhalar Dinam), ‘Mellisaiye’ (Mister Romeo), ‘Ulundu Vidhaikkayile’ (Mudhalvan), ‘Mercury Pookkal’ (Ratchakan) and the few lines in ‘Poonkatrile Unn Suvasathai’ (Uyire). Swarnalatha has given hit numbers working with composers like Deva, Vidhyasagar, Harris Jayaraj, Anu Mallik, Shankar-Ehsan-Loy, Kiravani, Hamsalekha and Raj Koti.

Swarnalatha had even sung for the famous Hindi composer Naushad! The legendary Hindi film Mughal-e-Azam which was released in 1960 with Naushad’s score was reconstructed in colour and released in 2004. It was also released in Tamil as Anaarkali. Swarnalatha was the female voice for the songs in the film. Swarnalatha created a stir by singing in two different voices the song ‘Kana Neram Unadharuge’ which was the Tamil version of the Hindi song ‘Mehfil Mein Kismat’. In the original song Lata Mangeshkar and Shamshad Begum had sung the song to which Madhubhala and Nigar Sultana had danced. But in Tamil, Swarnalatha sang for both the dancers in two voices that brilliantly matched them. Naushad who came to Chennai for the Audio release for this film blessed Swarnalatha praising her amazing feat.

Swarnalatha had sung most of the songs in other language versions as well of the Tamil films for which she had sung. Many of the songs that she sang in Telugu were also hits. Government of Andhra Pradesh had honoured Swarnalatha by giving her the Nandi Award in 1995. She has sung only less than twenty songs in Malayalam. She did not find any recognition in her mother tongue though all her songs were widely appreciated.

She got Kalai Maamani by Government of Tamilnadu before she was 20 years old. She won the Filmfare Award in Hindi for the year 1996 for ‘Hai Rama’. She won a Filmfare Award in Tamil as well for ‘Mukkala Muqabala’. She won Cinema Express Awards four times. Though it is difficult to make out a case that she was overlooked by the film world, the Governments or the social organizations, it must be mentioned that many good compositions that should have come her way, went to other less deserving singers.

Her singing opportunities went on dwindling from the year 2000 onwards. It remains an enigma that year by year the singing offers that came her way became scarcer and scarcer even when the fact remained that none could outshine the singing merit of Swarnalatha, the singer prodigy. It was a period when Television started dominating film songs and singers. As she was extremely camera-shy, she could not confidently appear in the new, now popular medium. Her Television appearances were extremely rare. It was said that she avoided even the stage music shows because of her stage-fright. To add insult to injury, it was said, she was always in a struggle to avoid air travel because of acute air sickness. This effectively put a stop to all music shows in other states or abroad. Song recording remained her only medium of expression. And that too dwindled to nothing for unknown reasons.

Her last significant song appeared in 2006. She sang ‘Kummiyadi’ in the film Jillendru Oru Kaadhal for A.R.Rahman. Though there were other voices in the song, Swarnalatha’s portions stood out. In the same film ‘Munbe Vaa En Anbe Vaa’ was a tailor made-for-Swarnalatha number, but it was Shreya Ghosal who rendered it.

Though she always put in an appearance in colourful clothes with ornaments in chunks and heavy makeup, she always was a silent and lonely sight. Swarnalatha rarely spoke and certainly not to every one. She used to arrive for the song recording only with her brothers in tow or more. Once in the studio she will straight away write down her lyrics in Kannada letters. Then she will proceed to listen carefully to the tune and train singing her lines to the tune. She had the ear to grasp the music notes quickly and the discipline to impart the exact emotions to the song with a high amount of finesse. During the recording she never allowed her attention to move away from the song. She had an approach to the nuances of the score that was totally different from that of other singers. Those singers who have sung with her had always marveled at her capacity to impart to the song’s every fine nuance, some explicit and many implicit. Once the recording was over she will attentively listen to her lines of the song and depart quietly.

Since she was ever an introvert, many believed that she had some deep mental agonies that were suppressed. There is nothing to show that she had ever frankly opened up her mind to anybody connected to film music. It appeared that she had no friends at all. A few had felt that she loved being alone probably because of a complex about her looks that stopped her from coming out. There were people who opined that she was a naturally introverted person and that there was no particular reason behind her preference for being alone. But as far as her felicity in music was concerned, she was supremely confident and believed in high standards of rendering. It appears that she was well aware of the strength of her rendering and the difference it made.

She had lost her parents long ago. At 37 she was still unmarried. Her recording and stage assignments and her income were all entirely managed by her brothers. They were the ones who ever spoke on Swarnalatha’s behalf. Her elder brother is on record as saying that she was always on music practice and that apart from eating and sleeping, she had no interest other than music. But singer Pushpavanam Kuppuswamy had a different take. These are the lines, roughly translated from Tamil, he sang in a Television show titled ‘Tearful Tribute to Swarnalatha’:

Your singing warmed our hearts here Oh Lark
Why did you hasten to warm the hearts in heaven?
Had your parents not hastened to leave
You would have found a fate better to live
And a wedding of your mother’s choice
With her blessings of longevity to your voice!

Is this true? Swarnalatha is not with us today to answer this.

Swarnalatha was suffering from breathing related problems since many years. She had trouble climbing stairs and any small effort left her breathless. In the early stages of her breathing problem, she still continued to sing well. Later the problem became serious and she was not even able to speak. She went from hospital to hospital in Chennai seeking remedy but doctors struggled to diagnose the root cause of her problem. Some doctors even said that there was nothing serious.

In the end, it was diagnosed that she suffered from a rare condition called Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis. The disease makes breathing difficult by choking off air from going to Lungs. For a singer, a fate worse than this cannot be imagined! Till now the specific reason causing this condition has not been found. Hence Medical Science has given the appellation ‘Idiopathic’ for such diseases. No final solution for curing this disease has been found by the medical world.

Swarnalatha’s brothers say that they made all possible efforts to save her. But, they say, the disease was beyond the capabilities of doctors attending Swarnalatha, in spite of the best efforts put in by them. They also say that they kept details of her condition secret as they believed that she will be cured and will come back to her singing career. But her condition only grew worse. She was repeatedly admitted in hospitals and then taken back home the moment she found a little relief. Her health broke down completely both because of the severity of the attacks and excessive medicines she was administered to treat them. By now the purpose of medicines was only to prolong her tragic life for some more days. Finally, on 12th of September, at the age of 37 Swarnalatha bid goodbye to her sufferings and unbearable pain.

In the year 2003, after singing ‘Porale Ponnuthayi’ number in her out-of-this-world performance one more time at A.R.Rahman’s music show ‘Unity of Lights’, Swarnalatha said: “I am proud to have participated in this event conducted for the cause of poor children suffering from Cancer. I am happy to have done my small bit for them.” She had indeed done her bit for our sensitivities too. But when she was struggling to draw her breath nobody could do anything to help her. We had actually forgotten her even as her life’s song was ebbing. Today we are still listening to the many songs sung by her. But we can never again hear the rest of the magical song called Swarnalatha that faded out unfinished.

Mysskin’s NANDALALA

2010-11-22T22:26:00.000-08:00

Unusual Scripting

Powerful Direction

and

Path Breaking Acting

by Mysskin..

Stunningly Natural

and Inspiring visuals

by Mahesh Muthusamy..

Excellent Aesthetics Direction

by Trotsky Maruthu..

&
Music

by Ilayaraja..

NANDALALA

is a totally different film

from whatever I have seen so far in Indian Cinema..

See it for yourself and draw your own conclusions…

From the depths of my heart

2010-09-21T04:43:00.000-07:00

From the depths of my heart I thank all my readers, friends and well wishers
for making my Book Meeting a huge success.
I am grateful to Malaysia Vasudevan, Mani Ratnam, Bala, Prapanchan, Jeyamohan,
S Ramakrishnan and Manushya Puthran for their friendship and unstinted support.

Malaysia Vasudevan - A Great Playback Singer

2010-09-08T07:18:00.000-07:00

It was an afternoon about sixteen years ago. A recording studio in Alwarpet, Chennai was brimming with activity. A music album titled ‘Indrum Puthithu’ was being recorded. It was an effort to re record some of the famous golden oldies of Tamil film music, in the voices of popular current-day singers with the new recording technology. The album was being produced by the music label I was working for. Therefore, I was there to oversee the proceedings. Malaysia Vasudevan was coming there to sing a few songs originally sung by T M Sounderarajan. All were waiting for Malaysia Vasudevan’s arrival. I was standing outside the studio, anxious to meet him as he entered. I had not met him in person before.

A white color luxury car entered the lane in front of the studio and Malaysia Vasudevan alighted from it. He was about fifty years in age, stoutly built with oval face and sharp eyes. His glasses reflected the evening sun. As he entered everyone greeted him with folded hands. As he was replying to their greetings, I too conveyed my greetings. But I was a new face to him among the many familiar persons. He went into the studio without paying attention to me!

Since it was already late, Malaysia Vasudevan went straight to the singing booth and put on the head-phone. After the initial preparations, as the track rolled, the voice of Malaysia Vasudevan boomed over the speakers: ‘Neerodum Vaigaiyile Nindraadum Meeney..’. The same voice that had entranced me as a child! The same voice that had emanated from thatched cinema hall of the neighbouring village and echoed off the hillsides we resided on. It took me to the nostalgic memories of the Malaysia Vasudevan songs that I had loved to listen to again and again. And my mind was instantly transported to my childhood days.

I was twelve then. The thatched cinema hall used to have an afternoon show on weekend days at three o’clock. I used to start early from home without letting anyone know. It used to take an hour for the tiny me to reach near the theatre trudging the hilly terrain. I used to wait at the gate in anticipation of the songs that were played over the long grey colored reflex horns fixed over the roof corner of the theatre. ‘Aye..Muthu Muthaa Mottu Vitta Vaasamulley..’. Soon the high pitched powerful voice of Malaysia Vasudevan will echo off the surrounding hills and spread over the plains. It used to mesmerize me and transport me to a dream world, forgetting all my miseries.

As my favourite songs from Tamil, Hindi and Malayalam films were played; the winding paths around the theatre would bring in people from surrounding villages into the theatre. They would pay the ticket price into semi-circular cubby holes marked ‘Kasera’ – Rs.4, ‘Charu Bench’ – Rs.3, ‘Bench’ – Rs.2 and ‘Thara’ – Re.1 and obtain the entry tickets. Soon the reflex horns outside the theatre would fall silent and the songs would be heard only inside the theatre. I would go as close as possible to hear the now muted music. There was this fierce desire to go inside and listen to the music in the film and the songs that would be played during the intervals. But almost always I had no money with me. So, as songs stopped and film started running, I would start my trudge back home. Even that was a pleasurable experience for me as I played the songs in my mind as my body swayed to the beat of the songs!

In the days that I could not manage the trip to the theatre, I would stand on the highest hillock near my home and listen to the songs as they wafted across the valleys to me. Blowing wind on top of the hill would at times carry away portions of the songs here and there. Still, the experience of listening to songs as they are wafted across distances was a wonderful thing that defies description.

I was strangely enchanted in a peculiar manner whenever I used to listen to the songs of Malaysia Vasudevan. Just listening to his songs like ‘Othha Roopa Onakku Thaaren’, ‘Aattukkutti Muttaiyittu’, ‘Vethala Vethala Vethalayo’, ‘Pattuvanna Rosavaam’, ‘Koodayile Karuvaadu’ etc keyed me up and made me overjoyed. I was virtually infatuated with the manner of his singing. I remember even now the indefinable elation that possessed me whenever I listened to his ‘Thanni Karuthiruchi’ song. Even today listening to that song gives me goose bumps.

I loved even his ordinary dance songs like ‘Chevvandhi Poomudichha’ and ‘Podhuvaaga Emmanasu Thangam’ for the sheer springiness his peppy voice brought to my steps. The energy in his songs like ‘Nila Kaayudhu Neram Nalla Neram’, ‘Kanne Thorakkanum Saami’, ‘Vaa Vaa Vaathiyare Vaa’ and ‘Aasai Nooru Vagai’ made my love affair complete with his style of singing. It was only much later I realized that this fascination of mine to his songs was due to his natural felicity and honesty in singing.

Most of his songs that became popular in Kerala were common lore type of songs with a fast beat and simple tune. Therefore, I did not have much chance of listening to his melodies and other genres of songs. Later after listening to his songs like ‘Inda Minminikku Kannil Oru Minnal Vandhadhu’(Sigappu Rojakkal), ‘Malargale Nadha Swarangal’ and ‘Kovil Mani Osai Thannai Kettadharo’(Kizhakke Pogum Rayil), ‘Vaanmegangale Vaarungal’(Pudhiya Vaarpugal), ‘Malargalilay Aaraadhanai’(Karumbu Vill), ‘Poove Ilaya Poove’(Kozhi Koovudhu), ‘Paruva Kaalangalin Kanavu’(Moodupani), ‘Adi Aadu Poongodiye’(Kaali), ‘Pattuvanna Chelaikkari’(Engeyo Ketta Kural) and ‘Kanngal Rendum Sandam Solla’(Unakkaagave Vaazhgiren) I came to the conclusion that it was Malaysia Vasudevan alone who is the most talented Tamil playback singer of our times. He had this ability of naturally rendering diverse emotions without even the slightest of excess. Decades have passed but across all these years, every time when I listen to his songs my conviction on this has only become stronger.

Malaysia Vasudevan, like T.M.S was a singer who achieved great popularity in Tamil alone. Singing in other languages was not his forte. He knew well that he could not grasp the pronunciation and nuances of other languages including his mother tongue Malayalam. That was why he kept refusing invitations to sing in other languages. But compulsions being what they are in this industry he had to sing a few, less than ten, songs in Malayalam, about twenty songs in Kannada and one or two in Telugu. Pronunciation mistakes notwithstanding, most of his Malayalam and Kannada songs were big hits. A fast fun song ‘Naale Baruve Nanna Koduve’ from the Kannada film Pralayanthaka is a good example. The natural peppiness and the madness his voice had infused into this song tell us how far ahead, by leagues, he was of singers ruling the roost in Kannada at that time!

Malaysia Vasudevan’s career in film music started with philosophical songs dripping in pathos and moved on to delicately essayed love duets, assertive folk songs, heart-stopping love songs, songs rich in affection, songs conveying humour and laughter, songs mimicking the likes of T.M.S. and C.S. Jayaraman and continued on to a song of hit songs based on Western melodies. Under the circumstances, it was both mystifying and unfortunate that the film industry decided that his voice suited only for fast folk based songs which are known as ‘Dappankuthu’ songs. More than his delicately rendered extraordinary songs, it was such songs of him which became popular. This only served to type-cast him as a ‘Dappankuthu’ singer.

Many film music listeners still remains ignorant of his diverse and multi-dimensional singing abilities. Even serious fans of Tamil film music consider him, to this day, only as 6-8 singer. 6-8 is the musical description of the beat of such songs. Shankar-Ganesh type of music directors continued to offer him only this type of songs that were low both on creativity and depth. But it was a different matter that Malaysia Vasudevan rendered all the songs given to him with dedication that made these songs listenable. Unfortunately, this only reinforced his reputation as a ‘Dappankuthu’ singer. Some of the compositions mentioned in this article may not represent high standards of music but are cited only to bring to the notice of music lovers the simple honesty and energy that Malaysia Vasudevan with his singing style instill these lackluster and routine compositions.

Many thousands of songs in film and non-film genres have imparted, in a career spanning over thirty years, Malaysia Vasudevan was innocent of the crass commercial ways of the world, particularly the ways of the film world. He always remained a soft spoken and loving person. He never marketed himself to achieve anything or to reach any position. That allowed many to withhold their praise for the many parts he played in Tamil film industry. It is my contention that his role was not even properly evaluated and if at all, it was conveniently underestimated.

Like his music, Malaysia Vasudevan’s life too is unusual. In the early days of 20th century when poor people had very little means of livelihood, many families from the Palakkad areas of Kerala migrated to Malaysia in search of livelihood. Seventeen years old Chathu Nair of Ottappalam and twelve years old Ammalu of Polpulli along with their respective families were a part of the group that emigrated to Malaysia. Their families found employment in the rubber estates of Klang Valley. A few years later with the blessings of their families, Chathu Nair and Ammalu were joined in wedlock. Vasudevan was born on 15th June of 1944 as their 8th child.

Klang Valley had a predominantly Tamil population and Tamil had become the language of communication of Vasudevan’s family. Naturally Tamil was the language he grew up with and became his favourite language as well. Even his school education was through Tamil medium. Chathu Nair was musically inclined and had some knowledge of music. He taught all his children what he knew in Music. All his children grew with a natural ability to sing and appreciate music. Vasudevan in particular was keen about music and acting from a very young age. He had started singing before an audience from the age of eight.

The rubber estates had an arrangement where touring talkies used to go from estate to estate screening Tamil films. Estate workers will go to these movies with their beddings. Vasudevan with his friends used to cycle to far off estates to watch the films screened. This greatly impacted on his already latent desire and his ambition to sing and act just grew and grew. He became a serious fan of Actor Sivaji Ganesan and Singer T.M. Soundararajan. M.S.Viswanathan was his favourite composer. Meeting all the three at least once was his burning ambition at that point of time.

After he grew up he attached himself to a few Tamil drama troupes in Malaysia as an actor - singer. In this way, we can call him truly a part of the acting -singing traditions of Tamil drama and cinema. In 1967 when he was 23, a Malaysian Production company came forward to make the drama Ratha Peiy in which he had acted. They had planned to produce the film in Chennai, the then called Madras. Thus in 1968 Vasudevan stepped on the soil of his motherland for the first time arriving as a part of the filming unit. This gave him the opportunity of acting in the film and singing under the baton of G.K. Venkatesh.

Once the film was done and the unit returned to Malaysia, Vasudevan decided to stay on in Madras and seek singing opportunities. From then on it was one long decade of travails and struggles seeking opportunity to sing. It was a scenario of a strange town, a strange people, no place to turn to and none to help either. He knocked on the doors of music composers for opportunities to sing and met film producers to see if that will not open the doors of the film industry for him.

He was too naïve to project himself properly and nothing was happening. Many on hearing that he came from a prosperous Malaysia, advised him to return saying that people already here did not have any opportunity. Whenever he reached a point where it became totally difficult to stay on, the thought of returning to Malaysia. But he was determined that before returning he should sing at least one song in a good film.

Vasudevan met Ilayaraja on one of his visits to the office of composer G.K. Venkatesh. Ilayaraja was working as the assistant of G.K. Venkatesh then. Raja and Vasudevan became friends. ‘Paavalar Brothers’ was a music troupe run by Ilayaraja and his brothers Gangai Amaran and R.D. Bhaskar. Vasudevan joined the troupe as the voice of T.M.S. That was how Vasudevan got to be a member of the friend’s group of Bharatiraja, Ilayaraja, Gangai Amaran, R.D. Bhaskar and S.P. Balasubramaniam.

SPB too was singing for the music troupe of Ilayaraja brothers and around that time in 1969 his debut released song, acted by MGR in the film Adimai Penn had become a super hit. SPB’s first recorded song from the film Santhi Nilayam acted by another huge star of the days Gemini Ganesan also released soon and he was rising to stardom.

It is no surprise that when a singer’s first songs are for very big films and the songs picturised on superstars like MGR, there is only one way to go that is up and up. S.P.B’s growth to stardom illustrates this. That he was introduced by MGR and patronized by him was undoubtedly the reason for S.P.B’s instant and huge commercial success compared to Malaysia Vasudevan’s very hard-earned and success which frugally measured by many.

Malaysia Vasudevan’s date with MGR, undoubtedly the top star of Tamil Cinema of all times was never to come to light. An MGR film, Unnai Vidamaatten, was planned with Ilayaraja to compose the music. This film had a song recorded with Vasudevan but true to form, neither the film nor the song got released.

Vasudevan’s first singing opportunities came from singing jingles for Ad films. He sang in the ad films made by people like A.V. Ramanan. This, then, became his training field to sing before the studio recording mikes. He learnt to sing for recording by listening repeatedly to his own jingles and correcting his mistakes.

MSV who saw the stage show of Ilayaraja troupe praised Vasudevan’s style of singing and promised to give him an opportunity. But nothing came of it. In spite of directly asking him for opportunity time and again there was no call from MSV. Elappulli, from where MSV hailed, was a village next to Vasudevan’s mother’s village, Polpulli. Why MSV, of all people, could not see the genius of singers like Vasudevan and S. Janaki and persisted with singers like S.P.B and Vani Jayaram is a mystery that remains to be unraveled.

Vasudevan had his debut opportunity to sing for cinema in 1972. At that point of time, he was close to a film producer Pollachi Ratnam. It was because of him that he got to sing his first song, a comedy song in the film Delhi to Madras with Jai Shankar as its hero. V. Kumar had composed music for the film and song was ‘Paalu Vikkira Padma Un Paalu Romba Suthhama?

TMS sang ‘India Naadu En Veedu’, a popular song of the time, for the film Bharathavilas in 1973. Vasudevan rendered a few lines in it that were sung in Hindi and Punjabi. MSV was the benevolent composer. The same year, Vasudevan sang the song ‘Maalayittu Poomuditha’ composed by MSV again for Thalai Prasavam. But again it was an opportunity that came his way because of the insistence of Pollachi Ratnam.

Vasudevan was a nameless and faceless singer till Violin Maestro and composer Kunnakudi Vaidyanathan called him to sing the song ‘Kaalam Seyyum Vilaiyattu’ for the movie Gumaasthavin Magal in 1974. The Director of the film, A.P. Nagarajan, changed his name as Malaysia Vasudevan and it appeared thus in credits. It was a film in which Shivakumar was the hero and Kamal Hasan, the villain.

Malaysia Vasudevan’s ambition to sing many great songs under the baton of his favourite composer MSV remained largely unfulfilled. He sang fewer than 15 songs for MSV in his entire illustrious singing career. Of this, his song ‘Vethhalaya Pottendi’ in Billa in 1980 was the only mass hit. Even though a 6-8 song, Vasudevan had rendered the song with a rare verve.

In the recently remade Billa, singer Shankar Mahadevan had sung the re-mixed version of this song. When we listen and compare, we will realize the difference between the renderings of a fairly good singer and a rare genius. Malaysia Vasudevan is that rare singer who is difficult to mimic. These singers make a laughing stock of themselves by trying to recreate the quintessential Malaysia Vasudevan songs.

MSV – Vasudevan duo’s ‘Ezhudhugiral Oru Pudhukkavithai’ for the film Saranaalayam is a wonderful music experience. Those who have not heard this song should do so now. One can see that this great song proves Malaysia Vasudevan’s incomparable felicity in melody singing. ‘Enniyirundhadhu Eadera’ from Andha Yezhu Naatkal is another brilliant song. ‘Muthu Maanikka Kanngal’ from Thunaivi is yet another great Malaysia Vasudevan song under MSV’s baton. MSV conceded to Vasudevan that: “Nobody else could have sung these songs with such wonderful élan!.”

In the years 1975 and 1976 Vasudevan passed time with no opportunities to sing. In the year 1976 Ilayaraja made his bow as composer with Annakkilli. It is only natural for Vasudevan to have believed that with his close friend wielding the baton he too will get an opportunity to sing. Whatever the reason, no such opportunity came. But, thankfully, Ilayaraja called him to sing ‘Othha Roopa Onakku Thaaren’ in his second film Bhadrakali. This is a song highly evocative of the emotions of rural Tamil soil winning the appreciation of Tamils even today.

When Ilayaraja started his innings as a composer, Malaysia Vasudevan was there with him throughout and assisted him. In the songs of Ilayaraja’s first 14 films there was a situational song ‘Dear Uncle’ in the film Uravaadum Nenjam which came his way. Though it was a song sung with a group of children, he had rendered it in a touching manner. Ilayaraja had also made him sing the baila song ‘Surangani’ known to all. Ilayaraja gave him songs in his films Durgadevi and Thunaiyiruppal Meenatchi too.

Malaysia Vasudevan’s hopes would have been raised when Ilayaraja was called upon to compose songs for Rajnikanth-starrer Bhuvana Oru Kellvikkuri and Sivaji Ganesan’s film Deepam. But nothing came his way again. His dream of singing for his idol Sivaji Ganesan remained unfulfilled yet. But soon came a time when Sivaji Ganesan insisted that Malaysia Vasudevan should alone sing all his songs! In the same vein, later it was found by all that all the songs sung by Malaysia Vasudevan for Rajnikanth were a brilliant match for his voice and his style of acting.

1978 was a landmark year for Malaysia Vasudevan. Another close friend, Bharatiraja, made his debut with the film 16 Vayadhiniley. All the songs of the film, Malaysia Vasudevan songs ‘Aattukkutti Muttaiyittu’ and ‘Chevvandhippoo Mudichha Chinnakka’ in particular, ruled the roost in Tamilnadu for years thereafter. If truth be told, the songs ‘Aattukkutti Muttaiyittu’ and ‘Chevvandhippoo Mudichha’ were to be sung by Jayachandran and SPB respectively. But, at last, through these songs Malaysia Vasudevan became a dominant voice of Tamil cinema songs. Later, Malaysia Vasudevan was to confess that till the success of 16 Vayadhiniley came about he never believed that he could succeed as a playback singer!

This is what Malaysia Vasudevan says of Ilayaraja with emotions welling up his throat: “Ilayaraja had helped me greatly. He was the one who made me a famous singer. He backed me all the way till I became a star singer. It was Ilayaraja alone who strongly recommended me even when producers and directors repeatedly questioned my credentials. Ilayaraja was the reason behind all my successes in a struggle-filled career as a playback singer. He gave me the opportunities to sing all genres of songs. He gave me all the songs of Rajnikant-starrers like Maaveeran and Adhisayappiravi. He insisted on my voice in spite of the dictat that TMS alone should sing in Sivaji’s film Rajarishi.”

For the contention of “other singers have been given the songs of Ilayaraja even with the knowledge that these songs would have been rendered much better by you” Malaysia Vasudevan replied: “I too have been given songs that should have gone to SPB, viz. ‘Indha Minminikku’, ‘Vaan Megangalay’, ‘Kovil Maniyosai’ and ‘Vaa Vaa Vasanthamey”. Malaysia Vasudevan, who never blames others for his travails, may hail Ilayaraja for his own successes; still, lovers of Malaysia Vasudevan’s enchanting singing cannot help feeling disappointed that Ilayaraja could have given him many more important songs but that he did not. It is their firm opinion that he was the best singer found out by Ilayaraja.

Vasudevan brought out the colours and the heart beats of the sensitivities of village life in all his folksy village songs. We can clearly feel the emotions and peppiness of Tamil songs of rural milieu in his singing already mentioned songs and in the songs like ‘Yeraadha Malai Mele’(Mudhal Mariyaadhai), ‘Yethhamaiyah Yethham’(Ninaive Oru Sangeetham), ‘Thaalaatta Naan Pirandhen’(Thooral Nindru Pochhu), ‘Unnappartha Neram’(Adhisayappiravi), ‘Arisi Kuthhum Akka Magale’(Mann Vaasanai), ‘Sokkuppodi Kakkathhila’(Maaveeran), ‘Aappakkadai Annakkilli’(Paayum Puli) and ‘Aalanaalum Aallu’(Palaivana Cholai).

If you happen to hear the recent remix of the ‘Aalanaalum Aallu’ it will become crystal clear to you that you need a great singer like Malaysia Vasudevan to sing a peppy rustic song with its natural emotions. It is truly amazing that a person who grew up in the modern backgrounds of a nation like Malaysia had such a talent and felicity in singing the rustic songs of rural Tamilnadu. Vasudevan himself has given an account of his childhood listening experience of rural Tamil songs sung by laborers of the rubber estates and then being tutored in Chennai by Gangai Amaran and Ilayaraja on the dialects and folk song styles of the Madurai region. Be that as it may, but it is clear that he had an extraordinary ear and a rare genius to get into the soul of the emotions of a song and then to reproduce it with an unerringly apt creativity.

None of his contemporary singers could touch the emotional highs expressed in the sensitive songs on the folk mode like ‘Ponmaanai Thedi’(Enga Oor Rasaathi), ‘Pattuvanna Chelaikkari’(Engeyo Ketta Kural), ‘Kuyilukkoru Neram Irukku’(Cholla Thudikkudhu Manasu), ‘Aathu Mettile’(Graamathu Adhyayam), ‘Aagayam Bhoomi Yendrum Ondra’(Saamanthi Poo), ‘Kammakkarai Oram’(Raasaave Unnai Nambi), ‘Pethhu Eduthhavathan’(Velaikkaran), ‘Thanandhana Kummi Kotti’(Adhisayappiravi), ‘Thenkizhakku Seemaiyile’(Kizhakkuchheemaiyile, ‘Vettiveru Vaasam’(Mudhal Mariyaadhai)etc.

For a comparison, listen carefully to Malaysia Vasudevan’s rendering of ‘Pattuvanna Rosavaam’ (Kannipparuvathhile) under Shankar Ganesh’s baton and the SPB song ‘Uchhi Vagundheduthu’ in Rosaappu Ravikkaikkari composed by Ilayaraja. Both songs have the same folk tune and reflect more or less the same yearning emotions. Just listen to the emotional chords they strike and reach your own conclusions.

Malaysia Vasudevan has rendered with total sincerity and surprising ease the very few songs with a classical music based songs offered to him. The songs ‘Puyal Ena Ezhundhadhada’ and ‘Sankara Siva Sankara’ from Rajarishi, ‘Amma Amma’ from Maaveeran, ‘Isaiyale Naan Vasamaaginen’ in Paatukku Oru Thalaivan, ‘Malaiyoram Mayile’ in Oruvar Vaazhum Aalayam, ‘Aananda Then Katru’(mimicking C.S. Jayaraman) in Manipur Maamiyaar, ‘Alankaram Abhishekam’ in Marumagale Vaazhga, ‘Kadhiravan Ezhundaan’ in Shree Raghavendra, ‘Malargalilay Aaraadhanai’ in Karumbu Vill and ‘Poovay Nee Yaar Solli’ in Thaniyaadha Thaagam are all songs based on Carnatic ragas. He has rendered these songs without any difficulties but with a touch of élan. In the song ‘Poove Nee Yaar Solli’ composed by A.A. Raj there is a small but difficult to render Sangathi at the end of the word ‘Poove’. The ease with which he sails through it is truly a touch of genius.

He has rendered many a song in high pitch without any strain or a false note. Songs of Rajarishi and Maaveeran cited above, ‘Yezhugave’ again from Maaveeran, ‘Manithan Manithan from Manithan, ‘Oru Thendral Puyalaagi’ from Pudhumaippenn, ‘Maamaavukku Kudumaa from Punnagai Mannan and quite a few of his other songs have been sung at an unusually high pitch with effortless ease. Of these, ‘Maamaavukku Kudumaa Kuduma’ is a great fun song. The gusto and liveliness with which Malaysia Vasudevan had rendered every note of the song with such absolute ease is an amazing feat.

He was just as great in singing songs based on western music. Who else has given such a virtuoso singing of western-based songs like ‘Kodai Kaala Kaatray’(Panneer Pushpangal), ‘Thedinaen Pudhiya Sugam’(Shankarlal), ‘Indha Minminikku’(Sigappu Rojakkal), ‘Paattu Inge’(Poovizhi Vaasaliley), ‘Paruva Kaalangalin Ninaivu’(Moodupani) and ‘Yey Maina’(Maaveeran) without straying into Indian style of rendering at all! The ‘Thedinaen’ song is so quintessentially western that the brilliant rendering reminds one of Kishore Kumar’s style. To evaluate Malaysia Vasudevan’s felicity in rendering such songs, one should listen to Yesudas rendering the Malayalam song ‘Lola Raaga Kaatte’. This song is the Malayalam version of ‘Kodai Kala Kaatrey’.

Malaysia Vasudevan’s voice has a chameleon-like quality in adapting itself to moods. You can feel the strong voice of Malaysia Vasudevan imparting a velvety touch of love in the song ‘Kaalangal Mazhaikkaalangal’ in the film Idhayathil Oru Idam. The beat in the song ‘Kanngal Rendum Sandam Solla’ of Unakkaagave Vaazhgiren has a tough rhythm pattern to follow. Yet we find him rendering it with a soft emotional touch.

He brings out the sensuous feelings in songs like ‘Kanna Thorakkanum Saami’, ‘Vaa Vaa Vaadhyare Vaa’ and ‘Nila Kaayudhu’ so well that every word of the lyrics conveys a thousand pictures. But the same voice conveys the warmth of brotherly love in the song ‘Oru Thanga Rathathhil’(Dharma Yudhham). The emotions he conveys in the song ‘Allithhandha Bhoomi Annai Allava’(Nandu) is nothing less than the Mehdi Hasan style of Ghazal singing!

In the film Indru Poi Nalai Vaa film there is a song ‘Pala Naal Aasai’. The manner in which the lines ‘Idhu Maalai Choodum Naeram, Ini Kaanbom Raaja Yogam’ have been crooned to fill us with a pleasant sense of elation. The song ‘Pani Vizhum Poo Nilavey’ from the film Thaippongal is among the best of his love songs. In Carnatic raga-based song ‘Malargale Nadha Swarangal’ in Kizhakke Pogum Rayil, his manner of the soft rendering of the first word ‘Malargale’, is so magnetically attractive that we stay arrested on the word for days together. The song ‘Per Vachhalum Vaekkamal Ponalum’ from Michael Madhana Kama Rajan is such a perennial pleasure to listen to. In the concluding part of this song he touches such a rare height of musical titillation with lines ‘Mandaarai Chhediyoram Konjam Mallandu Neduneram’ that it is unlikely to suffer the indignity of remixes as it will burn any singer touching it. The song ‘Vettiveru Vaasam’ has a line ‘Verukku Vaasam Undo Maney’. The emotional outpouring conveyed by that soft lingering touch to ‘Maa..ney’ is a peerless rendering that will daunt the best of singers.

Another song that touches the heights of emotion is ‘Poonkatru Thirumbuma’ from the film Mudhal Mariyaadhai. Two different emotions are expressed in the same score. The song starts on a sad note but as the song reaches the last part it achieves a metamorphosis into a happy frame of mind. The tune remains the same, the change is achieved through change in lyrics and more so by Vasudevan’s rendering of it. The songs ‘Onna Paartha Naeram’ and ‘Thanandhana Kummi Kotti’ from the film Adhisayappiravi evokes elation throughout.

‘Then Kizhakku Seemaiyile’ is the only important song he has sung for A.R. Rahman. This is a gem of an example of how a great singer can take a song with an average melody to great heights of music experience. One can cite hundreds of examples like this. It will need a book to tell about Malaysia Vasudevan’s singing style in detail.

Malaysia Vasudevan had a great voice of his own. But he could brilliantly mimic the voices of TMS and others. But to mimic his unique singing style is a big task for any talented singer. In a recent Reality show on a TV channel, one saw the currently known singer Krish singing atrociously ‘Poove Ilaya Poove’ in the presence of Malaysia Vasudevan. If you are a singer, try singing the Malaysia Vasudevan song ‘Kodai Kaala Kaatrey’ conveying the emotions he stirred so brilliantly. If it is of any consolation to you, be informed that even Yesudas could not do it!

Malaysia Vasudevan never embellished his songs with a false fit or artificial sweetness. Unlike some of his contemporaries he avoided artifices like strainful elaborations, needless moans, laughs and cries between the lines. And he paid no attention to natural human errors that occurs while singing. But he never failed to reach the intended delicate heights as per the emotions needed of the song. We must note that this was the singing style great singers like Mehdi Hasan, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Kishore Kumar, Mohammad Rafi, T.R. Mahalingam, A.M. Raja et all stood for.

Malaysia Vasudevan mentions Lata Mangeshkar, Mohammad Rafi, Kishore Kumar, TMS, P. Suseela, S. Janaki and Yesudas as his favourite singers. If you listen to the duets he has sung with male or female voices, most of the times he would have rendered better than his counterparts. Barring S. Janaki, others have often failed to match him. Whether it is ‘Ennamma Kannu’ or ‘Nanbane Yenadhu Uyir Nanbane’ or any other song with any other male voice, the next time around make it a point to carefully listen. You will understand the point I am trying to make here.

As pointed out earlier, Malaysia Vasudevan has been the most mercilessly targeted by the re-mix culture. I had mentioned the examples of ‘Vethhalaya Pottendi’ and ‘Aalanaalum Aalu’. We all are aware how the new ‘Ennamma Kannu’ turned out with the music ‘dis’arrangement by D. Imaan. It almost appears that the current generation of Tamil Film Music believes music to be mere jumble of notes!

But of all the re-mix assaults, the most horrifying one has been that of the ‘Thanni Karuthiruchi’ song. A non-singer like Chimpu had stabbed, gouged and minced the magnificent song to its last helplessly pleading note. I felt that these new generation junkies had raped and murdered this all-time great song. To add insult to injury the voice of Malaysia Vasudevan had been taken from the original song and pasted as horrifying interludes after changing its very tone. Yuvan Shankar Raja too for his part borrowed Malaysia Vasudevan’s voice from his father’s collection for his remix of ‘Aasai Nooru Vagai’. Remix is a shameless and unjust assault masquerading as modernity on the songs that changed the course of film music in the past.

Malaysia Vasudevan has composed music for five films. Of these, I have been able to find only three songs of Saamanthippoo. If I assess his music composing abilities on the basis of these songs alone, I will rate him as a very good film music composer. I have already mentioned ‘Aagayam Bhoomi Rendum Ondra’ sung by him. SPB had sung ‘Maalai Velai’ and S. Janaki sang the ‘Kanavugale Oorkolam Engae’. All the three are great melodies. Malaysia Vasudevan has also acted in about 85 films. But for me it is the singer Malaysia Vasudevan who stands tall.

Towards the late Eighties with the discernible changes in the course of Tamil film music, his singing opportunities declined. In this background, in 1989 he produced the film Nee Sirithhal Deepavali. It was a big failure. He lost everything including his owned house. After that he sang only a few songs. ‘Thenkizhakku Seemaiyile’ song for A.R. Rahman was one such song. And in 1997 we saw him mouthing the background voice ‘Hilgoray...Hilgoray’ in the song ‘Poo Pookkum Osai’ in Rahman’s Minsaara Kanavu. After that nothing much was heard of him.

Malaysia Vasudevan had commented in an interview: “I have the highest regards for the composers of my time. But I had not gone to them seeking opportunities. I also had never thought that I should get opportunities by spoiling others’ opportunities. I never expected anything from anybody. Therefore, there are no regrets either. I landed in India with a dream of singing just one or two songs in films. But I have sung more or less 5000 songs. I have seen it all, victory, fame and money. So there are neither regrets nor claims. I do not have the dissatisfaction of not having ascended Mount Everest. I only have the satisfaction of climbing the Pazhani hill. That is sufficient. I have never counted the money given for recordings or for stage shows. I believed in men. Some were worthy of it. Many were not. There is nothing big in this life to boast of nor is there a place for regret. Life goes on.” This misplaced faith continued into the difficult days when he had to rely on stage shows for living. He continued to participate in the shows getting only part of the money or no money at all.

In 2003 when he was in Malaysia for a stage show, he suffered a stroke because of a clot in the brain and suffered a terrible paralysis even losing the ability to talk. Barring Gangai Amaran and SPB there was no call of support or consolation from the film world. The industry that he worked in for decades and where he was the benefactor of quite a few totally ignored him. At the height of his fame his home was brimming with relations, guests and fans and it was always a never ending party there. All of them disappeared with his financial decline and diminishing fame. And when his health was affected, they deserted him completely. He was left alone. Malaysia Vasudevan the super star singer was lost in oblivion. With no news of him, his fans also stopped thinking about him.

Spending what was left of his wealth, he was nursed back to partial health. With a stage show now and then, life was getting on. Unfortunately, further strokes in 2008 and 2009 left him unable to speak or walk. He was in emergency care for months. Continued treatment and exercises has restored reasonable capacity to speak and walk with difficulty. Left hand has been badly affected. Above all he cannot sing a single note now. How much worse can it get for a great singer, who dedicated his life to music? Better medical care may restore his health. But how? That must be the biggest question before him now.

A rare singer of modern Tamil cinema who expressed emotions in the natural most tones and lived his life with unbounded passion for music, Malaysia Vasudevan is a music festival that should always be celebrated by Tamil film music lovers. These are the lines of one of his songs…
.....We all were born here
Together we grown here
What do we take with us when we leave-
That we seek to keep with us?

A Discussion Meeting on My Book

2010-09-07T03:18:00.000-07:00

Shaji’s Book
Isaiyin Thanimai (The Music of Solitude)
A Discussion

2010 September 18th Saturday 6 pm

Film Chamber of Commerce Theatre
604, Anna Salai, Near Gemini Bridge, Chennai 06

Honorary Guests

Legendary Singer Malaysia Vasudevan
Cine Music Violin Maestro Rama Subbu

Special Guests

Film Director Mani Ratnam
Film Director Bala

Speakers

Writer Prapanchan
Writer Jeyamohan
Writer S. Ramakrishnan
Poet Manushya Puthran
Writer Shaji

All are Welcome

Times of India Report on Keni Meeting

2010-08-08T23:48:00.000-07:00

Read Keni Meeting Report from Times Of India

Speech in Keni Literary Meeting on 8th August, Sunday

2010-08-01T23:45:00.000-07:00

Hello friends
I will be participating as the speaker of the month in the
Keni Literary Meeting organized by writers Gnani and Bhaskar Shakti
at 4 pm on 8th August, Sunday.

The speakers so far in this meeting were:
S. Ramakrishnan
Prapanchan
Balu Mahendra
Mahendran
Ki. Rajanarayanan
Ashokamithran
Dileep Kumar
Sukumaran
Jeyamohan
Nanjil Nadan
Thamizh Chelvan
Bama

Venue:
Keni
39 Alagirisamy Road
K K Nagar
Chennai 78
Contact Person: Gnani
Mobile: 9444024947
gnanisankaran@gmail.com
http://www.gnani.net/

When I Listen to Yesudas - Nothing But Melancholy

2010-07-07T14:29:00.000-07:00

“Yesudas was in love with a very beautiful plump girl. A terrible man tried to rape her. Then Yesudas unsheathed his sword and in a swinging sword fight he killed him. You should watch that sword ‘flight’! What a ‘flight’! No one can beat Yesudas when he is with a sword”. Thankan was strikingly narrating the story of the first cinema that he watched. He was a sixteen years old boy doing odd jobs in our village. He had never attended a school. I was about 10 years old then and Thankan granted me an unhindered account of the village gossips and tidbits on sex. We were wandering around, catching the small fish in the paddy fields and plucking fruits in the wooded hills.

I used to be pleased about his interesting tidbits and stories but his narration of the film story on Yesudas totally disappointed me. Yesudas doing sword fight in films? Not a chance! But Thankan was absolutely certain that it was Yesudas because he sang all the songs in the film in the same voice that we hear Yesudas sing on the Radio. Thankan had mistaken Malayalam Cinema’s most handsome hero Prem Nazir to be Yesudas. And there is no point in blaming him. Yesudas’ voice matched Prem Nazir’s to a surprising degree. What else other than Yesudas’ voice can be the voice of the most handsome man on this earth?

Like many generations of Malayalees, my childhood too was filled with the songs of Yesudas. His was the male voice of most of the Malayalam film songs and devotional songs that filled the air waves of those days. From my early days as a listener of music, I was an ardent devotee of the voice of Yesudas and his singing style. We could not imagine a world that does not resound with the voice of Yesudas. Millions of Malayalees cannot even think of songs without the voice of Yesudas. They call Yesudas ‘the Gift of God’ in the same vein as they call Kerala ‘God’s own country’.

In the early 1950s Malayalam cinema songs were mostly rendered by the voices of the likes of Mehboob, Kozhikkode Abdul Khader and K.S. George. Then came Kamukara Purushothaman and K.P. Udayabanu as playback singers and they lasted many years. But none of them could become the Superstar singer. Then entered Telugu playback singers and their domination of Malayalam film industry started. A.M. Rajah, who entered Malayalam film industry as a playback singer in 1953, was accorded the recognition of being Malayalam films’ first star singer. P.B. Srinivas, who came later, also won a big recognition. But all this lasted only till Yesudas arrived on the scene. The reign of Yesudas which started in the early sixties lasted well over forty years. Now well past his seventy, nobody has arrived yet to fill Yesudas’ place.

Towards the end of 1940s, just as Malayalam film industry had begun to sprout, there was a singer- actor called Kattassery Augustin Joseph in Fort Cochin. He was an attractive drama personality who sang and acted in dramas with great panache. He had lived with a dream of becoming a star in the film world as an actor- singer. Though he came by a few chances now and then in films of the early fifties, he could not achieve anything worthwhile in the industry. And before he knew it the age of actor singers came to an end. He lived an impoverished life with his five children. His first son, Kattassery Joseph Yesudas, born in 1940, later became famous as K.J. Yesudas.

Augustin Joseph, who recognized his son’s unique singing talent when he was barely five years old, imparted the early lessons of music to him. He provided him training in music in the hope that his son will reach the heights he could never touch. Yesudas did not disappoint him. At his school, district level and state level, wherever a music competition was held, he was selected as the best singer. But he was nagged by ridicule that he was subjected to as a Christian who was trying to learn Carnatic music.

Yesudas grew up amidst dire poverty. In his later day recollections, he has disclosed that he was expelled from music schools as he was unable to pay the fees. In spite of all that he learnt his music lessons well passing his tests with record marks and multiple promotions. For higher studies he joined the Swathi Thirunal Music College in Thiruvananthapuram. It is said that he was the favourite student of famous teachers in this college like Semmangudi Srinivasa Iyer and Chembai Vaidyanatha Bhagavathar. But he left this college because of his father’s inability to provide for the expenses of his education. Since he did not have a place to stay in Thiruvananthapuram, according to Yesudas’ own later accounts, he had used the garage of Semmangudi for months as his sleeping quarters.

Yesudas is on record about roaming miles in Chennai scouting for opportunities on a diet of tap water and about being rejected by many composers on grounds of lack of talent. Trivandrum station of All India Radio had rejected his voice as not being broadcast-worthy. At last one glorious day in 1962 Director K.S. Antony gave him an opportunity to sing 4 lines of a sloka in his film Kaalpaadugal. K.P. Udayabhanu was the main playback singer of that film for which composer M.B. Srinivasan had scored the music. Noticing the mind-gripping voice of Yesudas M.B.Srinivasan made him sing a duet in the same film. Voice of Yesudas at once became the talk of film circles. That same year he was swamped with offers to sing in 7 more films! Augustin Joseph passed away in 1964 after seeing his son set well on the road to success.

Even though Yesudas sang more or less in all the Indian languages, after Malayalam it was in Tamil that he became a star singer. But acceptance in Tamil did not come as easily as in Malayalam. He got his first chance to sing in Tamil in 1963 in the film Bommai in which ‘Veenai’ S. Balachander had taken charge of both direction as well as composing music. The song he sang was ‘Neeyum Bommai Naanum Bommai’. He had to wait a whole year to get his next chance. He sang the duet ‘Enna Paarvai Unthan Paarvai’ with P. Suseela in the film Kadhalikka Neramillai in 1964. Another ten years passed without anything outstanding to show in Tamil. Yet this was the most creative singing phase of Yesudas in Malayalam.

In 1973, he sang the song ‘Thanga Thoniyile’ for MGR-starrer Ulagam Sutrum Vaaliban. But it was ‘Vizhiye Kathaiyezhudu’ number he sung for MGR in Urimaikkural in 1974 that became the first Tamil song of Yesudas to gain wide popularity. Thereafter, he sang all the songs of MGR’s next film Pallaandu Vaazhga (1975). Superhit songs like ‘Poivaa Nadhialaiye’, ‘Anbukku Naan Adimai’, and ‘Ondre Kulamendru Paaduvom’ were in this film. Yesudas also sang songs like ‘Ennai Vittaal Yarumillai’ for Naalai Namadhe (1975) and ‘Indha Patchai Kilikkoru’ for Needhikku Thalai Vanangu (1976) for MGR. He also sang many superhit songs for Sivaji Ganesan starrers. ‘Malare Kurinji Malare’ for Dr. Shiva and ‘Gangai Yamunai Ingudhan Sangamam’ for Imayam are good examples. But above all, his number ‘Deivam Thandha Veedu Veedhiyirukku’ for Aval Oru Thodarkathai made him a very popular singer in Tamil.

Ilayaraja continued to give him many chances that brought laurels to both of them. Many Ilayaraja compositions in the voice of Yesudas like ‘Poove Chempoove’, ‘Aaraariro Paadiyadharo’, ‘Raja Raja Chozhan Naan’, ‘Thendral Vandhu Ennai Thodum’, ‘Kanne Kalaimaane’, Poonkatru Pudhidhanathu’ and ‘Vellaippura Ondru’ became very popular. Yesudas has won the Best Playback Singer award of Government of Tamilnadu eight times. Yesudas has a long list of quality songs like ‘Athisaya Raagam’ (Apoorva Ragangal), ‘Chenthazham Poovil’ (Mullum Malarum), ‘Kalyana Thenila’ (Mounam Sammadham) and ‘Unnidam Mayangukiren’ (Then Sindhuthey Vaanam) which were widely appreciated.

Yesudas became a widely applauded singer in Telugu also. With many Telugu hit film songs to his credit, he has won the Best Playback Singer award of Government of Andhra Pradesh six times. He won the National Award for Best Playback Singer for the song sung by him for the Telugu film Meghasandhesham. He has won the Best Playback Singer award of the Government of Karnataka five times with a string of chart-buster songs in Kannada films in the late seventies and eighties. His song ‘Jo Jo Laali’ for the film Chinna Ninna Muddaaduve (1977) under Salil Chowdhury’s baton has been Kannada’s most famous and ever loved lullaby.

It was Salil Chowdhury who took Yesudas to Hindi films. The song ‘Ni Sa Ga Ma Pa Ni’, a Salilda composition for the film Anand Mahal (1977) was Yesudas’ first Hindi song. The song ‘Jan e Mann’ from the film Chhoti Si Baath, scored by Salilda, was his first Hindi song that became popular. Afterwards, composer Ravindra Jain created a fan following for Yesudas by giving him many hit songs. Songs like ‘Jab Deep Jale Aana’ and ‘Tu Jo Mere Sur Mein’ from Chit Chor released in 1976 were truly unforgettable numbers. Jaidev composed some marvelous numbers with Yesudas rendering them. Even Bhappi Lahiri composed some soft romantic numbers in the voice of Yesudas like ‘Zid Na Karo’ and ‘Maana Ho Tum’.

Salilda took Yesudas to Bengali as well. He gave him some fine songs there including Kamal Hasan starrer film ‘Kobitha’. Yesudas even won the Best Playback singer award of Government of West Bengal. Over forty thousand songs of Yesudas have been recorded in the last 48 years. He has won National Award for the Best Playback singer seven times and has been awarded with National honours like Padma Shri and then Padma Bhushan. He has won 34 State Government awards including 16 awards of Government of Kerala.

After becoming a Super Star in film songs as well as devotionals, Yesudas was also able to establish himself as a Carnatic concert singer. He gave many Carnatic concerts all over the world and his concerts continue to be held everywhere. His fans consider Yesudas a pioneer who has made efforts to popularize Carnatic music. Many devotees consider his devotionals as a very moving experience. Most of his fans consider him an evergreen singer with a mellifluous voice that defies age and time.

There is no doubt that Yesudas is among the best male voices to have risen in the starry firmament of Indian film music. Nobody doubts that achievements of Yesudas in the film music are great. But, as many Malayalees believe, is he the best singer in the world? It has not been easy for me, who has grown up with songs of Yesudas as an inseparable background to my life, to stand apart objectively and assess his songs and style of singing. But whenever I have done that I have only come to uneasy conclusions.

The songs of Yesudas dipped in pathos have almost become a culture of Kerala. You can even say that through his songs Yesudas grew the history of sad emotions in Kerala. The tinge of sadness in love, its pain, the pangs of separation, the failure in love and the consequent heart-breaks come out so wonderfully well in his songs in the way his rendering style emotes them. But all his songs have a strand of sorrow running through them. Probably the struggles, the disappointments and the sorrows of his childhood hold his songs in a permanent grip of sadness.

We can feel this innate sadness colouring even his songs meant to express joy and happiness or celebratory moods. Thus his singing style transforms songs meant to express happiness into songs with sad undertones. As examples one should carefully listen to songs like ‘Raja Raja Chozhan Naan’ (Rettaivaal Kuruvi) and ‘Un Paarvaiyil Oraayiram’ (Amman Koil Kizhakkaale). Even peppy folk numbers like ‘Adi Kaana Karunkuyile’ (Poonthotta Kavalkkaran) and ‘Vachchukkava Onna Mattum’ (Nallavanukku Nallavan) can be mentioned in this context. One can very definitely detect a strand of sad undertone running through these songs that are supposed to express happiness and celebration. It is said that saddest songs are the sweetest. But when film songs meant to express varying and diverse human emotions are all rendered in sad tones, is that not by itself a sad thing?

In the Tamil Film music world, at all times of its different eras, the tendency had been for one composer to dominate the industry. But the golden age of Malayalam film music was a period when many great composers had held the stage with distinction simultaneously. It is an irony that their diverse compositions were all mostly rendered by Yesudas. This meant that the many faces of creativity in the compositions were lost in the sadly uniform rendering.

The dominance that the voice of Yesudas had along with the mass adulation that he had from his fans cast a spell on the Malayalam film music that his was the only style of rendering that was the best. The majesty of his voice and the regal sadness of his rendering style became the yardstick by which all songs and singers were measured. This was the reason why not many singers were able to enter Malayalam film music and those who entered were not given the recognition that was their due. Malayalam film music fans were reduced to listening to more of Yesudas even from all the later entrants. Young singers did not attempt anything other than xeroxing Yesudas and failing. The songs with emotions other than that of sadness and pain became alien to Malayalam songs.

Songs of his early years, particularly those composed by the likes of Baburaj and Salilda, had soulfully modulated ups and downs of expressions of music. But gradually these finely nuanced dips and rises vanished from his songs. With passage of time his songs were reduced to a mere good voice that projected every note at the same level. The lilt in the rendering was gone. Notes that had to resonate up and down the volume scale appeared to stay rooted to a monotone and constricted.

Devarajan, a highly popular composer, was particular that every note of his composition had to resonate equally and there were other composers too who thought along similar lines. It may be that the requirements of such composers resulted in the deep throat rendering with equal projection of every note that drowned out all possible modulations. This form of rendering became his style with a vengeance once Yesudas started to pay extraordinary attention to Carnatic music concerts. Maybe he chose a wrong example to follow in Carnatic music rendition.

The real patrons and connoisseurs of Carnatic music never took to him. An ardent fan of Carnatic music R Ramakrishnan had this to say on Yesudas’ style of Carnatic music: “Yesudas has a great voice, but mere voice is not music. A good voice is like a good handwriting. But a person with good handwriting is not necessarily a person with facile expression in the language. The language has its own grammar and rules and its own modalities of expression. Literature is not something to be evaluated by primary school students. In exactly the same manner, classical music and the rendering style are things that can only be evaluated by persons with the knowledge and a deep understanding of classical music. People who do not know much about Carnatic music will alone call Yesudas ‘A great concert musician’.”

Yesudas himself was not appeared very confident of his rendering of Carnatic music style. He had even announced: “If you cannot accept my music as Carnatic Sangeetham you are free to call it ‘Bharatiya Sangeetham’.” Moreover, the exercise to make Carnatic Music popular is needless. Classical music can never really be a popular form of music. Nor need it be so.

Pronunciation of words was another problem with Yesudas. He consistently made mistakes in his pronunciation of words from languages other than Malayalam. It was this weakness that prevented Yesudas from achieving in Hindi what he achieved in South Indian languages. His fans will claim that his pronunciation in Malayalam is perfect and peerless. But we hear ‘Sneham’ as ‘Snegam’ and ‘Brahmam’ as ‘Bramham’ in his songs.

In 2004 Yesudas raised much controversy by asking the new generation singers to pay royalty for singing his songs on stage. The controversy started when Unni Menon disclosed that Vinod Yesudas, son of Yesudas, was insistent that: “If songs of Yesudas are to be sung in Music Events, then royalty has to be paid for it.” Singer Madhu Balakrishnan also said that he was refused permission to sing a Yesudas song in the program of a Malayalam TV channel. This controversy generated intense disquiet among Yesudas fans. This was the first time that Yesudas suffered damage to his reputation. Later Yesudas withdrew his announcement on royalty. At one point of time Yesudas had even tried to make Malayalam Film music his monopoly trade. He started his music company Tharangini Records and refused to sing for films or music albums that did not assign audio rights to Tharangini Records.

It has been a long time since Yesudas’ voice became, in terms of musicality, a pale shadow of his much vaunted earlier voice. For a decade or so we have heard little of note from him by way of well rendered songs. Even his sad songs have become loud reverberations. Yesudas had once made an open request. “Lata Mangeshkar’s voice has lost its sweetness of yore. She should now desist from singing.” But alas, he has not desisted from singing even after his voice had long past its prime!

Even his positions on god and religion in connection to music appear unsure. In his interviews, regardless of the question he is asked, he has a tendency to drag his answer into a dialogue on god and religion. Even while talking about a subject that has nothing to do with god or religion, he ends up with the formulation that he seriously believes in, “Whatever happens, it has been pre-ordained by God”. In that case why is he still fighting to gain entry into the temple at Guruvayur? Is not the high caste domination that denies him temple entry at Guruvayur
‘pre-ordained’ as well by the 'Jagadheeswaran' he always talks about?

I will always remain a fan of all the wonderful songs of Yesudas. But then, just as we re-appraise the literature that held our interest and affected us once, just as we subject a film that we loved once to a more critical review, listening with discernment and with emotional detachment the music and songs that we once enjoyed is essential to make better our artistic sensibilities and humane sensitivities.

John Lennon - Part 2

2010-03-18T10:01:00.000-07:00

John Lennon Part 1 - Lennon and the Indian Gurus

What ever the spiritual questions that pursued John Lennon, He was the most celebrated Rock ‘n’ Roll singer, lyricist and composer in the world. He and his Beatles band had transformed the face of the popular music in the world. Beatles as a band had functioned together just about ten years, but even today their music is highly popular world over.

It was Beatles that transformed pop music from being an object of personal taste and appreciation to an exalted medium of social change. They started as a handsome group of teenagers singing love songs. But gradually they were able to remould their music as music of change bubbling with political and social commitment. The wave of adulation that they had set off all over the world came to be called Beatlemania. Beatles was a total reflection and representation of the ideological confusion and fear that had gripped the world in the sixties. John Lennon had started the troupe when he was all of sixteen.

John Lennon was born in Liverpool, England, on October of 1940 to Albert, a steward in a merchant ship, and his wife Julia. Albert was rarely home but used to send home money. He stopped sending the money when he lost his job. When he returned two years later, Julia, who was pregnant with another man’s child, refused to accept him. This was in spite of Julia and her son John Lennon being friendless and without money.

Alfred kidnapped him with the intention of secretly settling with his son in New Zealand. On learning about this, Julia caught him and after a bitter bout of argument, Alfred left it to the 6 year old boy to choose between father and mother. John chose his father decisively, but seeing his mother leave in tears he ran after her. Alfred had to leave his son.

Julia was unable to manage her wild son. Right from his early school days he proved to be a bully who got expelled from schools for picking on other students. Finally he was left to live with Mimi, the child-less elder sister of Julia. Julia has become merely an occasional visitor to her but she was musically inclined and had taught John right from his tender age to play the banjo. She used to bring the albums of American singers like Elvis Presley and made John listen to them.

Julia presented him with a guitar when he convinced her about his interest after repeated requests. Holding the guitar in his hand, John Lennon announced that he was going to become very famous one day. His mother took it to be an empty rhetoric of the young boy. She used to tell him: “Guitar is a good thing John. But you will never be able to make a living out of it”

One day when she was returning after seeing John, she was run over by a car and died. John had later said, “I lost my mother twice. When I was five, I was orphaned even when my mother was there. Later at sixteen, as I slowly getting closer to her, she died on me”.

Skiffle was a popular form of music in Britain of those days. Skiffle troupes used to tone up household items and use them as music instruments. Pans, pots, ladles, spoons, etc. became music instruments. Guitar and banjo were added on to them. John, attracted by this different but creative form of music, took part in this. He was just 16 then.

It was around this time that John Lennon met the 15 year old Paul McCartney. Paul was a crazy lover of music. He was quite adept at playing a large number of musical instruments. He had lost his mother to cancer. They exchanged their admiration and appreciation of their common interests like Rock n Roll and American Blues. This led to the evolution of a deep bond among them. But McCartney’s father just hated John Lennon. He warned his son: “You will get into trouble if you join him.”

Lennon had once revealed his self-appraisal: “I was shy and assailed by self-doubts. There was something wrong with me. I was seeing things others did not. I had a mind at once complex, conscientious and poetic. I understood everything through the haze of hallucinations. It is frightening to be such a child since there will be no one to share your mind with. My communion was with the likes of Oscar Wilde, Dylan Thomas or Vincent Van Gogh. They were all hallucinated personalities. They were all ostracized by the society as they revealed their true self. This made me feel the loneliness all the more.”

“I wanted to be loved and accepted. But I was not willing to be what I was not for that. This attitude of mine made everyone in the homes of my friends to warn them ‘stay off him’. Their parents were aware that I could affect their sons. It was true, too. I just could not help doing whatever I could to trouble everyone in my friends’ families. I might have done this out of jealousy of not having such a family. Paul McCartney’s parents were simply horrified to see me as I was indisciplined, not being under the iron control of parents. In a way, not having parents was an opportunity for me. I had wept a lot over not having parents. But it gave me awareness at a very early age.”

McCartney brought his friend George Harrison to the troupe. He was not even 14 then. Harrison, who played the guitar, was just as crazy about music. They played at clubs and night dances. They had played the background music even for strip tease dances. In no time at all, they secured the chance of playing at the most popular Clubs in Liverpool.

Soon enough, they left on a music tour of Hamburg in Germany. Their troupe became famous in the city. Invitations to perform came in droves. They accepted all the invitations to perform in the exuberance of youth. This enraged their original sponsor.

They were staying in a cinema theatre. One day when John Lennon was not there, in a fit of teenage sexual frustration, Paul McCartney nailed a condom to the wall and set it on fire. Fire had spread a little in the theatre. The sponsor filed a complaint with the police that they had attempted to set fire to the theatre. As George Harrison was not yet quite 14, a complaint was also made out about subjecting a child to labour. They were deported from Germany right away.

They continued to conduct their music shows in England. It was around this time they crafted around their band the many promising features of Beatles. Three Part Harmony, Humorous Stage entries, the many shades of American Rock & Roll were all integrated to showcase the Beatles. It was also the time when Beatles became a four member troupe that later became famous as the Fabulous Four. Lennon, McCartney, Harrison and the last entry, drummer Ringo Starr completed the great quartet.

Lennon married Cynthia Powell in 1963. She was Lennon’s schoolmate and Lennon had got her pregnant. The wedding took place without the consent of Lennon’s family and without their presence. He named his child Julian in memory of his mother. When Bryan Epstein, owner of a local Music shop, took over as their Business Manager, his first condition was that Lennon should not reveal his marriage till Beatles became famous. He thought it will stop young women from becoming his fans. But when Lennon’s married status was revealed after Beatles became famous it made no difference.

Many rejections later, Beatles finally entered into a music recording agreement with EMI Records Company. In the beginning of 1963 Beatles released their first album ‘Love Me Do’. It was a big hit. This was followed by ‘Please Please Me’. To this day these songs remain popular all over the world. The hit music albums of their early days like ‘I Want to Hold Your Hand’, ‘She Loves You’ and ‘I Saw Her Standing There’ had huge re-runs. With all these hits Beatles became England’s most famous music troupe. Most of their songs were written and composed by John Lennon in less than an hour of sitting down to it.

The four handsome young men, not quite 20 yet, created waves among British teenagers, girls in particular. In 1964, they went on their first American tour. Over five thousand shouting, waving young fans saw them off at the Heathrow Airport, an unheard of event till then. ‘I Want to Hold Your Hand’ had sold over two million copies in America. But Lennon was anxious about the kind of reception they were likely to receive in America.

He need not have feared. Over three thousand noisy, boisterously cheerful fans were on hand at John F Kennedy Airport in New York to welcome them. With this a grand British invasion on the world of American music was launched. Till then no British troupe had achieved success in such scale or grandeur. Many like the Rolling Stones, Elton John, The Animals, Petula Clarke and others followed the highway that Lennon had paved to America to achieve fame and success.

The Ed Sullivan’s Show was the most popular music show on American television at that time. When Beatles sang on the show, it is said, an unprecedented half the America watched it. There were some petulant music critics who wrote: “Beatles have not brought a single new tune across the Atlantic.” But Beatlemania had truly gripped America. Beatles numbers occupied the top five positions on the Billboard of sales of music records. Such a thing had never happened in American history of music sales. From then on Beatles albums have been selling on a massive scale till date.

Beatles made two films in the sixties. Both ‘A Hard Day’s Night’ (1964) and ‘Help’ (1965) were huge hits commercially as well as artistically. Both lyrics and musical score of ‘Help’ showed great maturity. Songs had become more philosophical and the music score had strains of country music in the background score.

Their next album ‘Rubber Soul’ (1965) is widely regarded as a rare high in creativity. It had imaginatively used instruments like Indian sitar, never used before in western music, to great effect. George Harrison had learnt sitar from the Indian sitar maestro Pandit Ravi Shankar and put it to good use in this album.

John Lennon and Beatles were greatly affected by wealth, fame, women and drugs. They were becoming disenchanted with their life and their music. John Lennon complained that nobody heard their music on shows and the hooting and howling of the crowds drowned out the music. This was the time when he wrote songs like ‘Help me if you can, I am feeling down’. He was subconsciously crying out for change and help.

During this period in an interview given to the daily ‘Evening Standard’ Lennon said: “Christianity will die. It will shrink and disappear. I do not know what will go first, the Rock and Roll or Christianity, because we are now more famous than Christ.” Southern states of America, generally categorized as Bible Land, strongly opposed Lennon’s views. There were widespread demonstrations and burning of Beatles music albums. A ban was imposed on Radio stations broadcasting Beatles songs. Music shows were cancelled. Catholic Church passed strictures on Lennon’s comments. Lennon was forced to apologise, even though he did it in a very general and off-hand fashion.

Last year Catholic Church had issued a statement which said thus:
“That opinion of John Lennon, which created bitterness among the faithful, today sounds to be empty, meaningless and egoistic speech of a working class youth who had a big and unexpected success in a historical event named Rock ‘n’ Roll. But even today the truth stands that Lennon’s songs remain, after generations, artistic creations that time and custom cannot stale but instead prompt an inner search that goes on and on.” In September of 2009 more people searched Google for John Lennon’s Beatles than Jesus Christ!

The music event organised in San Francisco in 1966 became the last public event conducted by Beatles. The huge tide of fans growing with the boundless fame of the Beatles created unmanageable security issues that made their tours torturous. Therefore, John Lennon decided that no more tours and that put a stop to the Beatles stage shows.

Beatles, restricted to recording studios, continued to present better and better songs. ‘Penny Lane’ and ‘Strawberry Fields’ were among the important songs of the period. The album called ‘Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band’ was an unique achievement in terms of poetic lyrics and musical experience. Many Indian musical instruments were so lovingly played in songs of this album like ‘Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds’ and ‘A Day in the Life’.

In the days when dispirited by the heady fame and mental stress, he had become the disciple of Mahesh Yogi. But he got nothing from the Yogi brand of Indian spiritualism. This only frustrated him even more. Lennon, who wrote lines like ‘Jai Gurudeva Om’ in his songs, began to call him ‘Sexy Swami’ (later, ‘Sexy Saddie’).

Even after being cheated by Indian Godmen, Lennon remained an Indo-phile with deep respect for the Indian tradition of philosophy and Indian music. In Beatles’ song like ‘The Inner Light’ one can hear the strains of sitar, Sarangi, dholak, etc. This song was recorded with Indian musicians in Mumbai. John Lennon had also written songs with his reflection on Indian philosophy like ‘Instant Karma’.

Within the Beatles deep differences were fermenting till finally the troupe broke up. ‘Abbey Road’ was the last Beatles album to come out – in 1969. But amidst all the differences, they still came out with good songs like ‘Revolution’ and ‘Hey Jude’, the optimism-inducing number like ‘Here comes the Sun’ and sad number like “The Long and Winding Road’.

Lennon separated from Beatles in September of 1969. But he refused to be the first to announce it. So McCartney announced the breaking up of Beatles in 1970. Lennon said later: “I created Beatles and I closed it down.”

John Lennon met Yoko Ono, the Japanese singer and painter, in 60s. Ono asked him to marry her, knowing well that he was already married and father of a child. When his first wife Cynthia returned from a tour of India, she saw Lennon living with Yoko Ono. Cynthia got her divorce after considerable heart-break. Lennon went on to start a music troupe ‘The Plastic Ono’ with Ono.

Lennon released an anti-war album called ‘Give Peace a Chance’. Songs like ‘Imagine’ and ‘Working Class Hero’ followed. Later on ‘Imagine’ became the anthem of Anti-war movements all over the world.

Lennon hated war. He refuted the war monging of U.K. and U.S.A. He became a dominant face in the Anti-Vietnam-War protest movements. With his wife, he conducted his ‘Bed In’ protest against the war. They staged their ‘Bed In’ protest before cameras for all the world to see in the semi-nude condition with the slogan ‘Make not War, Make Love’ held aloft. In 1971, he released the album ‘The War is Over’. On the occasion, he took out hoardings at great personal expense announcing ‘If You Like, The War is Over’ in seven important languages in nine different metropolitan cities of the world.

Lennon’s album ‘Some Time in New York City’ had songs on women’s rights and racial relations. It spoke of Britain and the struggle in Northern Ireland. It spoke of Lennon’s trouble in obtaining American Green Card. It was said that Lennon was close to Leftist Movements and that he made huge donations to Workers’ Revolutionary Party. He is supposed to have helped finance the Irish Republican Army too.

The American President of the time, Richard Nixon, tried to have Lennon expelled from U.S.A. He believed that his anti-war movements were a damper for his electoral success. He got initiated a move to expel Lennon from America accusing him of having been arrested in London for possessing Ganja. Lennon had to spend four years in courts. Lennon complained about the inhuman efforts to expel him from America in his television appearances and at protest meetings. In 1973, the U.S. Administration ordered Lennon to leave within 60 days.

Lennon reacted to this at Press Meet by announcing the creation of an Imaginary State called ‘Nutopia’. It will have no boundaries, no passports. When Nixon resigned following Watergate scandal, the expulsion order on Lennon was rescinded. Lennon secured his Green Card. When Jimmy Carter assumed office as President, Lennon was a Special Invitee to the Inaugural Dinner!

After a long period of estrangement from his eldest son Julian, he got close to him. He announced that he was going to retire from the music world and spend quality time with his new-born son Sean. But he could not keep away. He quickly came out with his new album ‘Double Fantasy’. He announced that he was setting out on a music journey that will go on for many years to come. Lennon was, then, on 40.

A few days after the release of this album, on 8th of December 1980, he gave an autographed copy of it to an ardent fan of his, named David Chapman. At 11 p.m. that night this same fan shot John Lennon on his back firing five rounds to kill him in front of his own house. The question why Lennon was killed remains a mystery to this day like the questions that haunted John Lennon in his life time.

You may say I'm a dreamer

But I'm not the only one

I hope someday you'll join me

And the world will be as one

-Imagine-

John Lennon Part 1 - Lennon and the Indian Gurus

2010-03-11T13:03:00.000-08:00

The fifty something but attractive looking woman from Brazil had named herself Aananda. Her real name was Minha Amiga. She loved the concept of Aanandam in the Indian religious thoughts so much that she changed her name to Aananda. She had never come to India, but she considered herself an Indian. Namaste was her usual way of greeting. Her infatuation with India was because of her belief that India was a spiritual land and a nation of Gurus.

She knew only Portuguese and practically no English. She got in touch with me through my website. I too conversed with her for a while through the help of an online translation service. The reason she cited for getting in touch with me was curious, to say the least. She imagined, after a look at my photograph, that I must be an Indian Guru. After putting her own facile construction on sentences like ‘Let the music set you free’ in my articles on music, she concluded that I am putting forward some kind of Indian spiritual axiom!

I thought I will play along for sometime and told her that I too was a kind of Guru. But she took me seriously and started addressing me in forms like ‘My Lord’. She started beseeching me to give her a ‘spiritual awakening’ and ‘aanandam’. This frightened me sufficiently to tell her that I was no Guru. She merely said: “No Guru calls himself a Guru”.

She felt that my words had magical and soothing effect! Obviously, something must have gone wrong in the online translation! She started asking me about the many Indian rites and their implications. In particular, she wanted to know about the extraordinary strength imparted by Nirvana Pooja. I can hardly blame her. Swami Amrita Chaitanya who had his female devotees dancing in the nude at midnight and Mata Divya Joshi who gave Darshan in the nude to her male devotees were internationally ‘famous’. One can only pity the devotees. Recently Amrita Chaitanya was arrested and put in jail. Divya Joshi committed suicide when caught for financial fraud running into crores.

But who cares? Babas materializing ashes, Matas who bless with embraces and kisses, Nithyananda Gurus who heal by touch and sex, the post-modern marketing wizards who teach the art of living are among some of the most internationally ‘famous’ Indian Gurus. Visit any of the ashrams of these ‘famous’ Indians, you are more likely to find foreigners than Indians. And do not be surprised if you find famous authors, musicians and cine artistes among them. It needs intellectuals and creative people more than ordinary men to fall for such Godmen. If only you pause to think, it is easy to see through these fake Gurus. But then, as Richard Dawkins said: “Religion is the process of not thinking”.

White men coming to India in search of 'Wisdom and Spiritual Liberation' is nothing new. But, barring a few most end up at the ashrams of charlatans and frauds. The music band Beatles, who shook the world in the 1960s with their magical music, were no exception. Beatles headed by John Lennon, who created some of the most popular and influential songs in the history of pop music, visited the ashram of Maharshi Mahesh Yogi in Rishikesh in 1968. This Yogi is supposed to be the guru of Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, the Chairman and Managing Director of Art of Living Inc. Before visiting India John Lennon had sung thus:

India, India, take me to your heart

Reveal your ancient mysteries to me

I'm searchin' for an answer,
But I know I'll never find it here
I am following my heart wherever it takes me…

Here we find the reason for the rich and famous among Westerners coming to India. Did John Lennon find his answers in Mahesh Yogi who ‘invented’ Transcendent Meditation? Beatles who had come for a three-month stay returned midway. It was said that Mahesh Yogi had tried to sexually molest the singer and actress Mia Farrow when she was alone with him. She was the only woman in the group to have come alone. Others had come with their boy friends or husbands. When angry John Lennon was leaving the Ashram, Maharshi Mahesh Yogi wanted to know the reason for his leaving. John Lennon had burst out: “Aren’t you the cosmic Guru? Don’t you know?”

John Lennon - Part 2