Raaja and I

Suresh had tagged me, a month ago, to write about Raaja in my life. And I've finally come to take it. I've rambled a lot (and broken some of the conditions) while answering the questions. So please bear with me.

1. The moment that introduced you to Raaja.

If it's about the first ever Raaja song that I got hooked to, I don't remember at all. I've listened to Tamil Film Music all my life. Music, to me, has always meant Film Music. So, naturally, I got hooked to many a Raaja number even during my childhood. I'm not able to particularly recollect any specific song, but as a kid, I remember loving his chartbusters from the late 80s (abUrva sagOdharargaL and the like) and very early 90s (anjali, thaLapathi et al.). The first ever audio cassette we kids bought on our own was a combination of chinnath thambi and gOpura vAsalilE. And I remember loving the latter much more than the former, dhEvadhaip pOloru then being the song closest to my heart. But I'd not call any of these “my first Raaja experience.”

With the advent of Rahman in the Tamil Film Music scene, I quickly turned into a huge Rahman fan. He was the first music composer whom I began to follow very closely, and became a gushing fan of. I used to feel smug about my affection for the most offbeat of his works amidst other fans who barely knew that he did those albums. Those days, I thought of Raaja as a yesteryear legend who has composed some great albums (my familiarity with his works was strictly limited to his association with leading actors and directors), but I was never a true-blue fan.

I truly came to witness the genius of Raaja only when I went to college. It happened as I got to listen more and more of 80s Raaja. I vividly remember the first time I bumped into some of these songs that simply bowled me over. Listening to IramAna rojAvE while eating in my hostel mess (they occasionally used to play songs from the '80s) when I was in my first year. Listening to the college music troupe perform a rockish version of nI thAnE en ponvasantham. And then there's thenRal vandhu ennai thodum listening to which I used to get so ecstatic and even used to “sing” the full song (including the interludes) sitting in the classroom with no concern whatsoever as to how my mumbling would sound to the guy sitting next to me. I remember being completely enamoured by songs like AgAya gangai, AgAya veNNilAvE around the same time.

By the time I was in the third year at college, I had a computer in my room (till then I used to listen to songs from an “mp3 station” that some kind soul had set up in our intranet labs), and soon my daily play-list had nothing but Raaja. And the greatest reverence was reserved for Raaja-Yesudas combo.

2. Name one occassion where Raaja's music directly/ indirectly influenced your life.

I'm a proper stoic. In that respect, the joy I get out of listening to Raaja's music is quite singular. At times, I've been almost moved to tears. That's as much “direct influence” his music has had on my life. Listening to Raaja transports me from thoroughly quotidian moments to a different plane wherein what I am, ceases to matter. I'd of course come down after a while, but then there's always another Raaja song that's already out there, that I've not yet bumped into.

3. Lets take Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Kannada and Hindi into account. Assuming that one of this is either your mother tongue or native language, name a favorite song in each of the other 4 languages that immediately comes to your mind.

This is quite embarrassing because I've not listened to that many of his works in Telugu, Malayalam and Kannada at all, and I'm very conscious of it. But anyway, here goes.

Telugu – suvvi suvvi, rAma kanavEmirA and mounamEla nOyi. I know, technically, these are as much Tamil as Telugu, but since they were originally composed for the Telugu versions, I'm picking them over other Telugu songs of Raaja that I've got a chance to listen to.

Kannada – jOtheyali, the violin instrumental theme from pallavi anupallavi (which was later reworked as mella mella ennaith thottu).

Malayalam – tumbi vA. Endlessly beautiful.

Hindi – Har koi samjhe. I actually had the audio cassette of the Hindi version of Hey! Ram. That's probably why I've always felt that this is a proper Hindi song. However, it's been a long time since I last listened to the Hindi version.

4. One song of Ilaiyaraaja that you consider rare and think a song that many people should have known but don't.

Okay, I'm going to take some liberty and list a few.

Adum nEram idhu dhAn – sUra samhAram. An earlier post on the song.

maNNaiyum ponnaiyum – nAdOdi pAttukkAran. What a wonderful song! It's one of those songs that I really wanted to write a customary gushing post about in this blog. Divinely endearing chorus, virtuoso arrangements, beautiful solo vocals. Just brilliant in every single way. The seamless transition from the nAdhaswaram to the flute to the violin in the first interlude has me in total rapture every time. The song changes its scale whimsically, taking seemingly arbitrary turns, but there's something mystifyingly organic about the whole of it. An incredible mix (mishmash if you will) of irresistible pieces that's all the more seductive as a whole.

kaNdEn engum pUmagal Urvalam – kARRinilE varum gItham. This one is quite popular, but nobody is talking about it as much as they should be. A masterpiece that's just perfect in every single note. The uninitiated must listen to both the Janaki version and the Vani Jayaram version. I'm told there's a third version as well, sung by P Susheela, but unfortunately, I've not got a chance to listen to it.

5. Raaja's number that you are hearing right now/ most recently heard..?

mAnAdak kodi from mudhal vasantham. I got hooked to this song a few weeks back and it's been playing in repeat mode since then. I went back to the song as I began typing this post.
Also, maNNaiyum ponnaiyum. I was discussing about the song with my friend to whom I had gushingly recommended this song some time back.

I tag all those who are reading this post. Feel free to use the comments space of this blog.

நீராய் உருக்கி என் ஆருயிராய் நின்றானே!

நீராய் உருக்கி என் ஆருயிராய் நின்றானே
ஓராதார் உள்ளத்து ஒளிக்கும் ஒளியானே

ஈர்த்து என்னை ஆட்கொண்ட எந்தை பெருமானே
கூர்த்த மெய் ஞானத்தால் கொண்டு உணர்வார் தம்கருத்தில்

நோக்கரிய நோக்கே நுணுக்கரிய நுண் உணர்வே
போக்கும் வரவும் புணர்வும் இலாப் புண்ணியனே

என் சிந்தனை உள்
ஊற்றான உண்ணார் அமுதே உடையானே

To “post-bigil” or not,

That’s the question. And, a question of Shakespearean dimensions at that. These are the kind of questions one has been asking oneself, unselfconsciously, for a long time now.

Is Bigilism self-contained? Does it leave any scope for a “post-bigilist” school of thought?¹ Can any form of thought be “self-contained” for that matter? Is it not the case that that form of thought will give way to something “post-that?” Does the postman ever stop delivering the letters, so to put? Is that what Gödel said, umm, in a rather mathematician’s way of saying it?

By the by, does genius wear out with time? In which case, I've a Pascalian kind of wager to propose, for the sake of the “larger good”² of, uh, what else but genius.

[1] – Say, it does. The next question of gargantuan proportions would be on how to spell it – elegantly as ‘postbigilist,’ or as ‘post-bigilist’ with an ugly but somewhat useful hyphen?

[2] – Note to self, for some food for thought over some Scotch: well, one has been thinking about this for quite a while now. Shouldn’t one just stop putting words or phrases in double quotes to say them but not mean them the way as some might take them? Frankly, it sucks. Just tell the readers that you aren’t sure. That takes less time, and is a lot more elegant. May be, it’s time to form a “post-double quote” school of thought – oh, wait, a post-double quote school of thought.

Vishal Bard, Wah Wah!!

Just listen to it. Now. It’s been close to two years, but the awesomeness, the orchestral and choral flamboyance, the wild and unfettered singing, the boisterous fun in this song hasn’t waned one bit. One of those songs that makes me frenetic; that makes me want to stand up and dance, my two noncooperative left feet notwithstanding.

I can't stop gushing about this man Vishal Bhardwaj. Four brilliant films and many wonderful music albums in his kitty.

On that note, do visit Vishal Bard Watch (from which I steal the pun for the title of this post), a blog started by Ramanand to follow the movies and music of the man, to collect news and views about him; also, watch his latest short film Blood Brothers.

Postmodernism as the path to shut up

True postmodernists tend to be utterly ambiguous, and when they write, they unrelentingly confound the readers; also because they’re not sure of what they want to say themselves. To think of this as almost a virtue, one tends to think, is the primary characteristic of a postmodernist.

Many a time, the postmodernist next door starts to write something down. He thinks he probably has something to say. You know, stuff one feels like saying. As he writes on, he realises the horror of what he’s writing. Sometimes gradually, but most times instantly. “Do I want to say this? Is this, um, right?” he wonders. And, invariably, he realizes what’s not so right with it. It could probably be right, but most often not so right as to write it down.

The height of postmodernism, one sometimes tends to think, is to just shut up. Which is what one usually does on one’s blog.

It's not really Glen Drummond, and one knows it. It's Raaja. His genius. mabbu glass'la 'yA irukku?

Arbitrary musings on male chauvinism etc.

A few days ago, I had a weird argument with Mr. Sriram. I argued that he doesn't come off as a male chauvinist in the true sense to me, when he claimed that he is a male chauvinist with no reservations whatsoever. And, he came up with some reasonable points to back up his claim: he expects his wife to cook and maintain the house and all that jazz. Of course, well-informed folks know that most of his gibberish is vetti scene, but let me not cop out in that direction for the moment; instead, for the sake of the argument, assume that he's in fact being honest. My counter-argument was that it's only his way of getting away without doing that sort of work. Which only makes him a lazy ass. An escapist at best. Responding to this, he insisted that he truly believes that it's the wife's duty to cook food for him (and herself, I presume), but he confessed that he won't advocate it to anyone else. This total refrainment from the advocacy of his own notion of a wife's "duty," I thought, was a clincher to my case. (To his defence, he added that he won't advocate anything to anyone for that matter.)

Of course, whether or not he comes off as a chauvinist to his readers is irrelevant to me in all possible ways, but this got me thinking about male chauvinism and gender bias in general, and specifically in our social context.

[Please note, this fruitful discussion happened before he wrote that lousy post about saving rate, aachaaram etc. where he defended theettu, pathu and echchal, and justly earned the wrath of a well-meaning, unsuspecting lady who unfortunately expected him to make sense, no less. In fact, if I may play Freud for a moment, I'm positive that it's his defence mechanism that must have made him come up with something as weird as that post, after having been unable to convince me.]

******

So much for my musings on advocacy of one's beliefs. I don't really have a rigid notion of what's chauvinistic and what's not, and perhaps more importantly, who's chauvinistic and who's not; especially in a social setup like ours where the difference in the treatment of the two genders are so pronounced and deep-rooted. There's more to anyone's life and the man-woman relationships in it than what can be deduced by passing a judgement on what the person thinks about gender roles. There is more to a woman's life than what can be deduced by passing a judgement on how she is "oppressed" and "confined" to the role of a housewife in a patriarchal setup. It's even bizarrely high-handed (and insensitive) to even suggest that these unsuspecting women are definitively subordinated by virtue of their role as housewives.

To my mind, male chauvinism and gender bias exist in all shapes and sizes across all social stratas. Likewise, I am tempted to believe that some form of "real-world" feminism exists across all social stratas. It'd be incredibly naïve to suggest that mere societal conformance or yielding to a conservative mindset (or even possessing one) automatically translates to "oppressing" or "being oppressed."

[On that note, here's a somewhat related and even more incomprehensible post, where I had mused “on how words (especially if it is ‘one word’) can’t completely describe any man,” among other things. To grasp the the degree of incomprehensibility therein, sample this: “The validity quotient of any statement is definitely statistical; and that statistics differs with any physical parameter one can think of.” Wow. It's so much fun to quote oneself, I say.]

******

Let's take our own Tamil cinema. There is this superb folk duet, Kai Valikkudhu from the movie Kunguma Chimizh. (I haven't seen the film, nor the video of the song.) Now, the lyrics of that song will make many liberal feminists tear their hair out. (For better results, try directly reading the lyrics than listen to the song.) The lines of the song espouses many of the broad gender archetypes of our society. "Ammi araippadhu pombala velai dhaandi," the husband says, and if at all he chips in, it's said to be only a favour. Now, for a true feminist, this would most probably be deeply offensive, but I don't find it as problematic. In fact, it's these kind of portrayals that represent the reality of our society and the way it works. And, frankly, it'd only be naïve on anyone's part to judge the relationship between the two on the basis of what the two think about the gender roles and man-woman equation. On the other hand, I find the portrayal of the educated woman in a seemingly modern film like Kaakha Kaakha quite chauvinistic in the way it tellingly reduces the role of the woman (pun intended) to someone who the hero has to protect, who makes him vulnerable. Not to forget the way the film ends -- the hero's ladylove is dead ("killed" by the writer so as to make a martyr of him), but the hero has to go on. (Well, I am not accusing Gautham of being chauvinistic here, it's probably just bad writing.)

******

Some time back, a close acquaintance of mine (who, to my knowledge, is significantly liberal in her ideas) offered me a serious advice that I should go for an arranged marriage. Why, I asked. Because, in that case, the wife "will listen to me," she said. At the same time, she was all for a girl to go for a love marriage and found it only fair that she "does the talking" instead of "just listening to her husband" out of the marriage. Effectively, she advocated love marriages for women because the girl will be an equal partner or even have the privilege of "dominating the proceedings," even as she advocated arranged marriage for men. Needless to say, I was deeply perplexed. It's the same person who thinks it's appropriate for the man to "dominate" in an arranged marriage but also finds it as appropriate for a woman to "dominate" or at least "be equal to" the man in a love marriage. Now, is she a feminist, or one who reinstates -- inadvertently or otherwise -- the patriarchal system?

******

One is probably better off without making a point, but I am afraid I've made a couple of them in this post.