Eternal

 

It was a bright sunny morning in April. We had just landed in that city and for a person who had hardly moved out of his hometown (home city!), things seemed exciting though a little alien. After a long train journey, I was a little tired too. Suddenly, a song started playing from a distance. It was from a loudspeaker. It said ‘Chura liya hai tumne jo dil ko’. Only the previous year did I start learning Hindi as part of my second language and therefore, I was able to understand the rough meaning. But what struck me the most was the different sound and also the voices.

Having grown up in Madras, my exposure to film music started and stopped with Tamizh films, and the only names I was familiar with were ‘M S Viswanathan’, ‘KaNNadasan’, ‘T M Soundararajan’ and ‘P Suseela’. During the Vinayakar Chaturthi festival, the temple close to our quarters in Madras would play MGR songs and Hindi songs. One of the songs that was played often was ‘Dum maaro dum’ (look at the irony!). Little did I know the names of the singers then, though the song would give a very different feel.

Going back to that sunny morning, I was attracted to that song instantly. After joining the school there (the only school in that city that offered Tamizh as a language), I was slowly getting into Hindi songs. Peer influence! There used to be a programme called ‘Binaca Geetmala’ on Sri Lankan Broadcasting Service every Wednesday between 8 pm and 9 pm and I started listening to that just to keep up with the trend. Over a period of time, it became a habit which would not leave me at least for the next 3-4 years.

My first attraction was the male voice in a majority of the songs. Bowled over by the magneticity in that voice, the person became my childhood hero. Then it was the female voice which was part of many duets with that male singer. In fact, her name was very popular even in Madras those days. I became a huge fan of both the singers – Kishore Kumar and Lata Mangeshkar. None of the other voices appealed to me as much as the voices of those two, until something happened.

There was a devastating cyclone that year in that state causing very severe damage in the coastal region and the Government sent a directive to the schools to collect Relief fund from residents in the city. The school in turn divided us into different teams and we had to go door-to-door to collect the fund. We took to the task with glee (no classes, you see!). Even as we were walking, a song floated in the air and it said ‘Mil gaya hum ko saathi mil gaya’. The male voice of course my most favourite voice. The female voice was different. It is not that I had not heard that voice before. In fact, I had heard the voice many times before in that Geetmala. Yet, it moved me for the first time.

That was the beginning.  

Though comparisons are odious, I must say that the voice of Asha Bhosle is unique in terms of the sweetness, versatility, ductility, and expressiveness. Most importantly, though it sounds effortless to a lay listener, the hard work is apparent to a trained ear. Disco, romance, sad, classical or for that matter any genre was handled by her with equal felicity.

The mutual admiration between ILaiyaraaja and Asha Bhosle is well-known to many. She has praised his genius on many occasions, one of them being an interview in Marathi in which she said how he changed a part of the CharaNam in a jiffy, in her first ever recorded tamizh song for him. Raaja sir in one of the interviews last year mentioned as to how pleasurable it was to work with her.

The song I have taken up is from the first Hindi film of ILaiyaraaja and probably the first ever song both worked together.

When the Hindi remake of Sadma was announced, my happiness knew no bounds when I came to know that Balu Mahendra managed to convince his dear friend to score in Hindi as well. Not many know that until then ILaiyaraaja had kept away from Hindi films in spite of many offers. The audio launch happened in a 5-star hotel in Madras with Amitabh as the chief guest. A Tamizh magazine while writing about this event mentioned that the songs were a ‘carbon copy’ of the ones in Tamizh! Later, when I listened to the songs in the cinema hall, I wondered if the person who wrote that piece was auditorily challenged. Except for two songs, the tunes of the other three were totally different and even those two songs had some subtle variations.

This song – Yeh Hawaa- in particular sounds so different from Vaanengum Thanga ViNmeengaL and it will be hard for people to believe that the situation in the movie was the same.

It starts with the strumming of the guitar. Well, this itself is an understatement. The guitar caresses, cajoles, canoodles, dandles and fondles for 20 seconds. This does not mean that it does nothing after that. The brass flute joins after 20 seconds and the romance continues for the next 20 seconds.

The humming of Asha ji starts after this and goes on for a while, with the bass guitar and the rhythm guitar backing the vocals. The chorus takes over and continues the humming. Suddenly, there is a change. The melody which until now was soft, changes colour. With the trumpets in full flow, it gets peppy and ebullient. The subtle variation in Asha ji’s humming just before the chorus takes over cannot be missed by a trained ear.

After a very subtle guitar piece, the Pallavi starts in Asha ji’s voice. The way the Pallavi unfolds gathering momentum in a matter of seconds, shows the genius of both as also the trust the composer has on the singer.

After a pause, the bass guitar plays in its inimitable style and the trumpets take over with the percussion backing them. A very different sound follows. But what is amazing is the akaaram in the voice of Suresh Wadkar, which appears after that very special sound. To start with, the akaaram has the backing of the western instruments. The latter withdraw after a while. With the drone of the tanpoora in the background, the akaaram in pure Chandrakauns stirs one’s soul. Definition of Meditation!

Contrasts again in the CharaNam with the tune turning peppy with both the singers vying with each other.

Filled with joie de vivre, the second interlude is a treat to a connoisseur. For starters, there is that tribal percussion sounding in ‘3’s. The composition is set in ‘4’ and yet the percussion goes in ‘3’s (Gati Bhedam). Yet another percussion sounds only the fourth beat -if one takes the count as 1 2 3 4 in medium tempo. Note that the tribal percussion sounds in the next tempo. The small flute plays a melody and the trumpets respond like how a group of elephants would sound. The elephant army continues its march until the humming of Suresh Wadkar and Asha ji with the latter in particular showing her prowess in oscillation.

Some people do not leave this world. After all, does the wind ever stop blowing?