So many things happened in a very short span of first half of 1978!
The series of letters and the first personal one-to-one meet and finally the preview of Sattam En Kaiyil !
Nothing happened in a pre-planned way.
It Just Happened ! That's All !
Even in that period, IR would have been extremely busy ! In spite of that, what made him to spend those hours of writing or meeting ?
All these things point to one thing.
He is basically a good Human being with utmost sincerity and honesty towards his works and the people associated, valuing & respecting others, whomever they are, whatever the knowledge gap is !
Certainly, that period was to be considered as a watershed period in our life !
After that, suddenly, we also became busy in our own life, with college studies taking the importance and our time.
But IR memories and his music were always in our mind all the days and nights, alongwith all curricular and other activities.
Practically I can say, thereafter, every moment of our life is associated with some songs of IR in that period!
In fact, Shankar continued in Vellore with his studies and I returned to Tharamangalam (near Salem) for my Engineering studies !
Naturally, those were not the period of email and telephones !
So very rarely we were in touch with each other. But whenever the opportunity was available, we continued our IR discussions.
In those period, Radio was the main source and particularly, Vividh baarathy went on broadcasting the new releases one by one, the songs of which we already heard in IR's house.
I used to jump in joy and telling my family members to note the song and narrated our IR visit, our listening of that songs in his house etc.
During my Engineering college days at Karuppur (which is some 10 kms away from Salem), particularly during Saturdays, the second half was used to be free and I made it a point to visit Salem and to see any IR films newly released at that time.
Films like Ilamai Oonjaladugiradhu, Priya, Kizhakke pogum rail, Sivappu Rojaakkal, Mullum Malarum, etc. were such films seen by me at Salem theatres with all special efforts !
Of course, to stand in the que well in advance, you have to forego your lunch; (also you have to live with the fear of getting spotted by your seniors and ready to undergo ragging ! fortunately nothing such happened)!
I used to explain the storylines, dialogues and re-recording etc to my mother and sister of these new release films (which otherwise would come to my village after an year or so).
Slowly, my family members also got into the list of IR fans !
My grandmother, my mother used to analyse the raga of IR songs and thus my knowledge of raga list also started growing and my respect for IR was growing exponentially.
In the later part of 1978, during his last year of studies, Shankar chanced upon his second visit to meet IR.
This time through one of his friend, he could witness a song recording of IR.
That was a Telugu film called "Yugandhar" a remake of hindi film "Don".
That was the first Telugu film of IR, that also for NTR.
The song that was recorded on that day was the theme "Na Kosame Ne vachaaru" ("main hoon Don" equivalent).
I hope Sankar will one day blog that visit !
3 comments:
Your mother and grandmother, were they musically trained? Did you have a diary with notes of ragas of IR songs in those days?
Dear Arvindh,
In fact they are not musically trained in the real sense, but they were having the knowledge of singing from their ancestors and identification of ragas by ears! (not swaram wise etc)!
I indeed kept the list of songs and ragas in my earlier period ! Which I lost later when I moved out of Tamil Nadu for job purposes!
Anyway, now-a-days "Ilaiyaragam" database is already avalilable in net and that is one good attempt and a reasonable list is there!
CSR
Dear CSR,
It is really interesting to know about your family and their music knowledge ( isai kudumbam :-). Keep continue your narration..I just could not stop reading the next chapter..
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