Rahman, Illaiyaraja, Vairamuthu
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... all the way from across the north of the country,
PARVEZ DEWAN, is grateful for the Dakshina

In January ’93, I patiently stood in the queue outside Siri Fort Auditorium, for the first Delhi screening of Mani Ratnam’s new opus, Roja. I also hoped to catch some mind-blowing music by my favourite Indian composer of the 1980s, Illaiyaraja. Just the previous year, Ratnam-Illaiyaraja had, in Dalapathi, given me Rakamma, Yamunai Aatriley and Sundari. I’d slide the cassette into my powerful hi-fi system and let the thumping beat (Chaam tittak tey) ram me in my guts. And the year before that it had been Ilaiyaraja’s high-tech (if somewhat uninspired) foot-thumper Anjali with its Magic Fairies and Love Jodis.

As I dreamed of his magic standing in that long queue for Roja, the sweet Tamilian teenager ahead of me broke my heart. He informed me that Ratnam had jettisoned Ilaiyaraja in favour of someone called ‘Raaman.’ I wanted to leave right away. However, the crowd behind me was too thick to penetrate. I had no option but to be pushed forward into the auditorium. But I was angry. As angry as I’d been when Raj Kapoor had thrown Shankar Jaikishan out despite an incredible three-decade partnership.

In the auditorium, the lights dimmed. A few minutes later, the space inside the auditorium was gripped by the delicious reggae prelude to Chinna chinna aasai. And all was forgotten and forgiven. I had found a new object for my musical affections. It was then that I realised how deeply involved I, a Delhiite who works in Kashmir, had got with the world of Tamil popular music. I don’t even understand the words of these songs. But I listen to them — and sing them in my bath — almost all the time.

My fascination began with a film festival screening of Ratnam’s Nayakan (1987), which is easily the most influential and mainstream Indian film after Sholay. The theme song, Ten Paandi cheemailai haunted me for months. A friend got me the cassette from Madras. Then came the Ratnam-Ilaiyaraja’s Agni Natchatram, with its incredibly sensuous music. This time I couldn’t wait for months. And who was this Illaiyaraja guy?

A Tamilian IAS batchmate started filling in the details. From that day, Shankar-Jaikishan were demoted from being my all-time favourites to merely my favourites of the 1960s.

In fact, I developed a theory about this displacement. Two theories, actually. The first was that till around the mid-seventies, Mumbai was the quintessential film industry of India. After that the centre of gravity shifted decisively to Chennai (and Hyderabad) for commercial films. And to Kerala (and, briefly in the late seventies, Karnataka, too) for art films.

The first Indian film was in Hindi-Urdu. So were India’s first talkie, first colour film, first cinemascope film and first 70mm film. However, the cinemascope revolution — after which all commercial films were made in cinemascope — started in the mid-seventies in Hyderabad, Chennai and even Bangalore. The first 3-D film, My Dear Kuttichetan (1983), was from Kerala. The Dolby and DTS trends, too, started in the South, mainly Chennai.

And it wasn’t just technology. By the 1980s, Chennai was leading in terms of style as well. Also slick editing and low light photography. (My theory about Anjali is that it is about a well-to-do family that somehow can’t afford electricity.) After I discovered Illaiyaraja I started putting Hindi-Urdu lyrics into his tunes, which have a universal appeal. I did it for my personal pleasure. However, many in Mumbai had the same idea. But they did it for profit — and without the maestro’s permission.
This led me to my second theory: the new two-nation theory. And this has nothing to do with cinema, or even divisiveness. Today the South —not just silicon Bangalore or Cyberabad but even Chennai and the Rayalseema hinterland — dominates India in computers. So many cameramen in Delhi’s private TV companies are from Vijaywada and Guntur. Ice cream parlours first came up in Hyderabad and Chennai: Delhi was slower by a decade. Slick shopping arcades started in Bangalore. The Vysya Bank was the first in India with ATMs. Karnataka pioneered private medical and engineering colleges.

If we in the north don’t match the south’s levels of literacy, health care and life expectancy, there might emerge two zones within India: a forward looking, development oriented, East Asian-style south, and a regressive, rajsatta (power politics) oriented, sub-Saharan north. Which, ironically, might strengthen our national unity. Three southern states would dominate all modern sectors of the economy. (The fourth, Kerala would look after human resources.) Anyway, every time I’d go down south on vacation I’d raid the music shops. And I would pester friends in the south for specific CDs.

By 1994 I realised I wasn’t the only north Indian obsessed with Tamil songs. For one, I could always count on the company of the Mumbai-based plagiarist Anu Malik. That year a shop in Delhi’s Palika Bazaar started selling Tamil pop songs. For a few brief years, in the mid-1990s, you could get Tamil cassettes even in Jammu’s Gumat Bazaar! I assumed that these were for Tamilian Army officers posted in Jammu. I was wrong. I was told that a growing number of north Indians wanted to hear Rahman and Illaiyaraja in the original; and before Anu Malik and party got to them.

Strangely, I wasn’t happy at this development. I started feeling possessive about ‘my’ Tamil songs. I didn’t want to have to share them with other north Indians! So much so that when Tamil songs started getting translated officially I started find fault with the metre of the translations. For instance, I strongly felt (and still do so) that Chhoti si does not have the bounce of Chinna chinna. The first syllable has to be dragged and becomes chh-ooo-ti. Had the song been translated as Chhoti-chhoti aasha, the rhythm would have been the same. Similarly Kaathal Roja-ve has a different rhythm than the official translation, Roja Jaaneman…. To be faithful to the original rhythm, the word Roja has to be in the third syllable. As in, say, Jaanum Roja tu Try it. You will agree.

Tamil songs seeped into my bones. My Tamilian friends would patiently translate Vairamuthu’s delicate lyrics, line by line, for me. I would get angry if some Hindi-type plagiarised a song that Ilaiyaraja or Rahman had laboured on.
In the bleak, militancy-hit winter of 1993-94, I was posted as the Principal Secretary to the Governor of Jammu and Kashmir. The very mountains Ratnam had so painstakingly recreated (in Himachal) for the cantonment scenes of Roja surrounded my office. Each time I would step out of my hut to walk to the Raj Bhawan it was always the same song that would fill my head: Pudhu vellai mazhai.

Then I realised that I had become the north Indian equivalent of the character Kamal Hasan played in Ek Duje Ke Liye. My conversation was littered with (badly pronounced) phrases from Tamil songs. A few years ago I became friendly with a girl from Tamil Nadu. One day I did something she seemed to like. She got sentimental and asked me why I had done something as sweet as that. I found myself asking her instead, Ithuthan kaathal enbada?. And no, I won’t translate that.

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