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The Genius of Ilayaraja - II

Two Peppy Numbers It has been a tough week, fellas. Escalations, failed promises, missed milestones, "con"-calls, colorful reports with incorrect data, attrition, interviews...the usual. So, naturally, I was unusually thankful that Friday had arrived. I poured myself a glass of Grover's Cabarnet Shiraz from the vineyards of Nashik -- the ostensible birthplace of my ancestors; about my only connection with them. It was really not a wine glass, you know, but a stainless steel tumbler with dabara, in order to camoflauge it from the prying eyes and sniffing noses of my mom and daughter, placed unobtrusively on the chest of drawers next to a globe, and me sipping the blood of Christ casually as if I was drinking neer more. The pressures of a brahmin household...! I switched on my iPod, turned on "shuffle" mode and immersed myself into the treasure trove of my favorite Ilayaraja songs from 1976 to 92. I tell you, folks. I have listened to a lot of Raja. But N
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The Genius of Ilayaraja - I

Two exquisite songs - Jul 29, 2009 (re-posted here) Just the other day, when I was driving down for the umpteenth time between BLR and CHN, Balu's rendition of two songs just enthralled me...so much so that I nearly ran into a vagabond motorist (drunk, I am sure; me with Balu's songs and him with 200 milli of naatu sarakku or sevutthu mutti). One was "Mandram vandha ...thendral" from Mauna Ragam; the movie that made Karthik and Revathi and umpteen repeat sequences of lovers playing practical jokes with each other's parents..."Mr. Chandramouli"... Anyway, back to the song...the pain, the senstivity, the "feelings" (as they say in Tamil!) expressed by Koman (Kokila Mohan...or Mike Mokan!) - the only movie he acted well - and all of that rendered brilliantly by the plump genius hit me like an errant lorry on NH46 with a tonne of bricks. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v​=bKy6lO-TJvw BTW, there is a recent adaptation in Chenni Kum sung by one of my f
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The Great Indian Revolution

It was a warm, pleasant summer day when I landed in the US to pursue my version of the much-touted ‘American Dream’. The year was 1994. Indians, humongously more illustrious had been arriving at US shores for more than four decades, then. To be sure, I was under no illusion then that my ride was going to be smooth. I absolutely knew that my dip into the American melting pot would have its own challenges and surprises. “India!” I told with palpable pride to the politely curt immigration official first, and then to my colleagues at work later and expected laudatory nods on hearing the country of my origin. That didn’t happen. What left me more flummoxed was how, about one-fifths of humanity, figured nowhere in their value systems - news, politics, society or economics. I initially took it upon myself to educate people about my country but realized later – with a pang of agony – that people didn’t want to know. In the “New World”, they were not interested to know how a five thousand year
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