Monday, July 10, 2006

Nyaana Thangame - Epilogue

For Twenty two years this treasure remained within me.

Now I have given them further lease of life by this sharing. Hope people understand and abide by the sincereity, trust and purpose of this sharing by me!

Its just like, embedding the time capsules as much as possible in various locations of the world for future generation to get and learn and decide!

To learn and perceive about this wonderful composer, human computer, a perfectionist, self-demanding, and above all the simple human soul!

Even in those times, It was heard that IR recorded all the songs of "Mundhanai Mudichu" in one day!

He used to go on round-robin fashion in various floors of recording theatres and within two days completing the re-recordings of more than 4 to 5 films awaiting the festival releases two to three days ahead !

In spite of that, for an un-heard film of unknown artists, he was making such rigorous efforts and put his heart out for this "Nyaana Thangame" song !

As I explained earlier, I didnt know the film name as "Raja Gopuram". After that day, I used to have constant watch on all his musical releases to find this song! Months later I got the casette and heard this song.

Frankly speaking, I was not satisfied with the ouput quality of this song in the cassette. I could find a lot more "details" missing and not reaching my ears!

I know this was there ! I know that was there. Where they have gone ??

Thus, the reality struck within me and the learnings I had from these are:

Whatever we normally hear and perceive is not the ultimate !

Something still best of best has already happened and might have been missing to reach us!

If I am so stunned and happy with any IR song whose recording details I never knew, certainly some more absolutely beautiful things are still hidden inside !

Same way. every song that has not reached you or not so impressive to you in comparison with other songs, doesn't mean that it lacks technicality, sincerity or substance!

According to me there is no such thing as Good Song or Bad Song of IR !

There are only songs which you heard often (voluntarily or cumpulsorily) or song which you could not hear often (again voluntarily or other reasons). That's all !

Other associated trivias with Nyaana Thangame which I can add:

I remember to have given a request letter to IR (during the usual morning visit to his house) for an harmonium. (May look like a childish request now, but I never had any inhibition in asking that then! )

Also, I gave a sheet containing the pencil outline sketch of his portrait ( drawn by me based on one of the Kalki cover page) and requested for an autograph.

While smilingly, he signed the autograph on the sketch, the other request, as anticipated, remained with him with no reply.

May be, his permission to record the proceedings of the song, a consolation grant to me on that day!

But that indeed resulted in a great treasure which I can never forget in my life!

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After this recordings, I could not visit him again (till 1987) as fate has decided other things for me.

Within few months from this fateful visit, fortunately (or unfortunately?! ) , I had a successful test and interview in one of the Central Public Sector undertakings (NHPC) and I had to move to Delhi by February 1985.

Saying Good Bye to TamilNadu was a painful decision but situation demanded that!

My long stint at Delhi, had memorable experiences which emerged due to my IR attachment!

Like the first IR song heard at Delhi, my first IR film seen at Delhi theatre, recording IR songs in cassettes during the "once-in-a-year" visits to TN, above all my initiation to WCM (theory) learnings all happened here !

Hope to record them in this blog soon !

6 comments:

Vignesh Subramanian said...

Dear CSR:

I had the privilege of reading your blog at (http://isai-alias-raja.blogspot.com/)

I finished all your posts since April in one sitting. How I would describe your blogs is – A fairy-tale story of a Die-hard Raaja follower.

Incidents such as - Remembering that First moment when you were drawn to Raaja's music, savoring his songs for ever and ever, Doing some crazy things just to listen to his music (even it means getting branded as ‘crazy’ by others), Defending Raaja to the core whenever his songs or supremacy is questioned, Shouting ‘Eureka’ and Jumping with joy whenever you “discover” some exhilarating stuff in his songs.. These are incidents which remain close to the heart of most of us and have gone through in various phases of our lives.. Its great to re-live and re-collect those “Incident Templates of a Raaja Follower”, through your blog.

But it became a fairy-tale story because of the opportunities - that you got to have the priceless possessions of his handwritten letters; To meet him up-close and personal umpteen number of times; To visit his recording theater and To feel everything happen for REAL in front of you.

We could only dream of those incidents and a live account of these dreams (as in your case) is like witnessing the Cinderella story unfold in front of you.

Thanks a lot for giving us an opportunity to have more insight of this great man/ his personal and his soul.

With Love
Vicky

PS: For a moment I thought the slow-paced village life (Which most of us had in childhood) which was well captured in "Malgudi Days" / "Swami & Friends" etc., was also felt when I read your blogs.. Is there a river (like sarayu) in "Tharamangalam" ;-) On a serious thought, if you put some nice cartoons (In RK Lakshman styles) describing these incidents next to those posts, then it can give a more authentic and professional feel...

CSR said...

Thank you Vicky for you kind words and suggestions ! I will wait for your comments on Nyaana Thangame also in particular!

Regards

CSR

Anonymous said...

awsome mr.csr. i rather envy you because you happened to be with ilayaraja and his recordings. god provided a destiny to you so that you had interactions with another god i.e music god. excellent blog and keep on posting.
every raja sir fan worth his/her name should read this blog
logesh aravindan

CSR said...

Thank you Mr Logesh Aravindhan,

It is indeed destiny that makes all these including these articles/blogs. Happy that you find it worthy of reading by others also! Would try to continue postings some more!

Regards

CSR

Anonymous said...

Its Nostalgic...rediscovering and redefining oneself as you read through a stuff which you thought of writting.

Thats gerat of you vicky..to have suggested malgudi days type of cartoons...great.

Endless hail

CSR said...

Dear Venkat,

Thank you for the comments. Recalling such incidents and memories, and moreover, sharing with like minded people gives you great joy.

Regards

CSR