On Sunday evening, I saw Sonali Kulkarni in Maymadham, singing about December flowers falling in her lap. Manisha Koirala and Arjun in Mudhalvaney, wrestling with computer-generated snakes. And the songs from Iruvar, Narumugaiye in particular.
All because of this pack of Tamil DVDs I borrowed from al_lude on Sunday. Some of them did not have subtitles. No matter. What was important was that this made me feel really nostalgic and gave me this glow of self-satisfaction that said – “There. One more hurdle crossed. Happy now?”
Did you know that Iruvar was originally titled Anandam? It was hyped a lot because of Aishwarya Rai. Because AR Rahman had gone on record about his “minimal acoustic” orchestra in his compositions. Because Vishwamohan Bhatt was supposed to play the mohan-veena for the album. I spent quite a few months hounding the few music stores in Guwahati that bothered to get Tamil cassettes about Anandam – but nobody knew anything about it. They tried to palm off Aasai, which was produced by Mani Ratnam and had music by Deva, as Anandam. Nothing doing, sir.
Then Siddharth Basu, in one of his Quiz Mountain episodes, played a song clip that had a menacing voice chanting in Tamil, with an outrageous violin-scrape in the background, and asked the participants to identify the film. The answer ( which nobody got) was Iruvar, and Basu mentioned that it was Arvind Swamy’s voice, and oo-la-la, Aishwarya Rai’s first film.
Bingo.
So when I finally found Iruvar , I was in Delhi, rummaging through a tiny shop in Palika Bazaar. I was there after my twelfth boards, but that’s another story. It took quite some time for me to listen to it, mostly because –
- New ARR albums were tough to come by, so you would generally “save” an album for later.
- I also bought Muthu and Minsara Kanuvu and the telugu version of Kaadhal Desam along with Iruvar
- There was only one walkman being shared among three individuals of varying musical tastes.
“Narumugaiye” drove me crazy. For one, it had Unnikrishnan, who I was enthu about ever since “Ennavale“; what was more important was that it also had this female singer with the odd-sounding name Bombay Jayasree, and a voice that gave me this idiotic grin everytime I heard it. I cannot deconstruct the song and the flow of words and music that make it up. No one can, it’s that good. I associated my own visuals with the song – when it played, I could really see an ancient temple, a tranquil place where no one is around. The sound of the mridangam would echo as the camera wove its way around the ancient pillars. And then the statues would come to life and dance to the Mohan Veena. (Aishwarya Rai used to fit in somewhere in that scenario, but no more, I am afraid)
The way Mani Ratnam finally shot the song differs a lot from the way I envisioned it. It’s in black-and-white, and near a waterfall, and with Madhu ( the lady from Roja, I never knew she was in Iruvar) dancing to it, along with a lot of other bathing beauties. I believe the setting is a recreation of Kalidasa’s Shakuntala, where the king visits the ashrama where Shakuntala stays, and sees a bevy of nymphets. One can hardly blame him for breaking into song.
And I still don’t know what the lyrics mean.
This is where you can listen to Narumugaiye, and the rest of the songs, if you haven’t already.
I fell in love with ‘Viduthalai’ straight away. I got a kick out of the fact that it was Hariharan who was singing it.
Fuck man. The acoustic guitar that starts it off, and the rock guitar solo in the middle! Mindblowing, all of it.
One needs to handle one song from Iruvar at a time. :-D
And of course, it was a MohanLal movie. His second one with Mani Ratnam.
(waiting)
I can’t get over the look on his face when he sees Aishwarya onscreen in “Hello Mr Ethirkatchi”. *Tee hee*
No one took the bait, eh?
Mohan Lal gave the performance of his life in that movie. Everyone noticed Prakash Raj more, though. Raj won the National Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role.
Iruvar is one my favorite ARR albums, of course.
I think you missed “worst” in the first line ;-)
Here we go again.
If you visit sometime, I could try beating some sense into you.
What?? You dare say things against Mohanlal on LJ? :-P
Great. Love this entry :)
Thanks!
Iruvar ROCKS. My favourite ARR ablum, hands down. :)
Have you tried playing any of ARR songs on the violin?
I don’t think I have… now that I think of it. How strange. I really should try them out whenever I can. :)
Sometimes the lyrics don’t really matter – give me Hariharan’s Pachchai Nirame over Sonu Nigam’s Saathiya any day.
Absolutely!
I don’t know if you have listened to “Sangamam”. Hardly known outside TN, but IMHO, one of Rahman’s best. And a sound quite different from what one associates with the early Rahman.
There’s this outstanding song “Varaga nadhikarai ooram” in the album. The other ones are excellent too. “Muthal murai”, “sowkiyama” etc.
Nice post. Enjoyed reading that.
Well actually, Vasu, a fellow student from RECW ( he was some 2-3 years back) actually sang the title song from Sangamam in one of our musical nites. I also like the clasical dance number “Margazhi ” from that movie .
Well, Vasu didn’t get around to singing it. We were planning to, but the time these guys were in the final year, the Music Club never had any musical nites, remember?
But he did sing it at the Trivium picnic, and at every other gathering people could get him to sing. :)
Margazhi is good, but sometimes, when I am down, I find S Janaki’s voice a little too shrill.
So thats where I had heard it first :)
“Varaga nadhikarai ooram” is just an amazing song! I think I should put up a playlist of my favourite songs…
Did you know that Varaagha was inspired by this Punjabi number called “Lal Meri Pat”? That song has been covered by a host of people, including Abida Parveen, Nusrat, Junoon ( the band), Asha Bhonsle, Reshma, Runa Laila and many others whose names I can’t recollect.
Its just amazing how you manage to come up with all these info! :)
Wow, I didn’t know that!
Hardly known outside TN
Er…
I have listened to EVERY Rahman album ever made ( except for Deen Isai Malai, which is a collection of Tamil Devotional songs, and very hard-to-find). I know the lyrics to Varaagha Nadikarai by heart. :-)
Wow! :). And even to songs from Yodha, the Malayalam flick starring Mohanlal?
Of course. I’ve heard the songs in Malayalam, Tamil (Asokan was what it was called )and Telugu. I also have the VCD of Yodha with me. muhuhuhahahaha.
Learning of the day: Comment on beatzo’s page and you will be rewarded by a piece of info which will make you think “Oh!! really? never knew it!” :)
Asoka? Really? Had no idea. :). After the protagonist’s name uh!
What, you didn’t hear it in Hindi? Dharam-yodha? Shame on you, laddie.
Some guy on ARRahmanFans once said he found a CD of Dharam Yoddha in, of all places, New York. Also Chor Chor.
but of course! A thousand apologies! :-)
Yeah, i did know it was inspired from lal meri path (actually i realized that when I listened to lal meri path at a later point in time and then spent an irritating half an hour or whatever wondering which song it reminded me of!!!).
But i think it is also probably the best-done inspiration I know of!! :-)
So, Iruvar IS the best ARR OST, like they say? Must try finding it somewhere man.
We’ll have to do something about that. ;-)
Hey , have you heard ” Kaakha Kaakha” ? Delicious songs ! My favourites are ” Uyirin Uyirae ” and ” Ondra Renda “
I heard it, yes. Thanks to. I liked Uyirin Uyirae a lot. Ondra Rendra, I listen to it only for Bombay Jayashree’s voice – it’s a copy of Harris Jeyaraj’s own “Dil Ko Tumse” from Rehna Hai Tere Dil Mein, which was again a copy of a Secret Garden song.
Did you know it was remade in Telugu too? As Gharshana, starring Venkatesh. Got quite poor reviews.
Oh! I thought it was the other way round. Anyways I think the Tamil one sounds really sexy.
Was Iruvar remade in Telugu? Know the movie name?
Iddaru is the name of the Telugu version. Dubbed, not remade.
I personally rate 1947-Earth as the the best ARR OST. Well thats me. :)
You’ll note that throughout the post, I haven’t called Iruvar ARR’s best composition/my favourite OST. ;-)
heh! yeah!
So,do you guys like ARR?
fan-aaaaaaaaaa!
It was hyped a lot because of Aishwarya Rai
Actually lot of hype in TN was due to the fact that the movie was based on MGR-Karunanidhi friendship/rivalry.
Some other stories associated with the movie:
There was a rumor that because of the aforementioned controversy many of the poems in the movie were creditted to Suhasini Maniratnam even though they were written by Vairamuthu.
Prakashraj was initially rejected by Maniratnam after initial screen test. But Prakashraj who had shaved his head for the screen test kept it that way hoping for a call back.
Iruvar has a big flop resulting in distibutors baying for Maniratnam’s blood. That was why Maniratnam produced ‘Alaipayuthey’ on a low budget, which turned out to be a big hit.
Hey, thanks for the trivia. Did know that it was controversial, but not the stuff about Prakash Raj and Vairumuthu. :)
one more
During an interview after the movie was released Maniratnam acknowledged that he based the movie on MGR-Karunanidhi’s life. He also went on to mention that the idea was suggested to him by Adoor Goplalakrishnan during one of the film festivals.
nostalgic to see the comments. Could understand how people felt the divine music during the release of the album. Thanks.