Music, ah!!!

Music, the love of life… the elixir which makes me survive!
It has the power to transport me to times long ago…something that I have discovered even photographs cannot do. Magical, absolutely.

My pretty much bored state has now moved to one of frenzied activity, and I find myself busily searching for music that can chill me off…Rahman, the brilliant, definitely…some others before Rahman came up in full swing that I can’t really find but just remember. Rahman’s stuff themselves – I don’t know if anyone actually knows about this – but some Tamil serial for which he composed music was absolutely splendid. If I’m right, it was called ‘En Iniya Iyandira’. I was barely 5 years old when that was on air, and all I can remember about that serial was that it had something to do with the writer Sujatha (guess it was his story or dialogues..) and had Rahman’s title or background music (can’t even remember that :P) and one sentence that a robot in the serial keeps repeating: ‘Naan Sibi, nee Nila’ that I used to dutifully repeat at times too. Even thinking of it transports me magically to some time when I picture myself as a kid watching dear old DD. The national integration concerts are some more memories.

Another thing I vividly remember is the Hindi movie ‘Kudaa Gawaa’ starring Amitabh and SriDevi which released when I was about four years old. I watched that movie in Bangalore at a cinema right next to my aunt’s apartment. We were sitting quite close to the screen, and it was a pretty freaky affair. My cousin had famously screamed during the opening scene when many horses ran towards us ‘Anda kudaraiyellam poga sollu, ma!!!’ I recently managed to listen to one of my favourite songs from that movie after a really long time, and I squealed with delight and told my sister about it. It felt really good!!!

Listening to songs from Alaipayuthey immediately takes me back to the time the movie released, when I realised how cute some people could get: Madhavan was absolutely delightful, and I clearly remember how my friend and I secretly looked at the cassette cover flap having his pictures when we were supposed to be listening to our science teacher. Likewise, songs from Boys transport me to my class XII. The movie’s craze was at its peak then and all the girls in our class would sing songs from the movie every free minute we could get. Girls’ school that I was from, there was more than one reason why we went crazy over the movie. ;) Sandhya and I were Munna-crazy girls, and every actor in the five lead guys had fans in the class. We even convinced our English ma’am to allow us to sing the songs in her hour once, with all the doors closed, and girlishly grinned when we sang ‘Dating’, thinking how we were behaving in a near-blasphemous in our school.

Any song from BSB reminds me of my Nick Carter crazy friend, and of all the fun we used to make of him, saying he looks like Ramba (the Tamil actress), etc.

‘Vaanam namakku veedhi’ from Anjali reminds me of a dingy theatre in Coimbatore. For some reason, I always thought Anjali was the first Tamil movie in colour (LOL!!!!) – guess that was the first movie I watched in a cinema and hence the idea!

Watching the song ‘Chinna china aasai’ reminds me of the day Roja released, as this song came in a trailer in DD. I remember my sister and I watching the trailer with music from some unknown guy, as the movie was releasing at the same time as Ilaiyaraja’s Devar Magan.

Music, ah!!