The Singer who Stirred the Soul is No More

കഥ മുഴുവൻ തീരും മുമ്പേ
യവനിക വീഴും മുമ്പേ…

P. Jayachandran. The singer, who set the heartbeats of millions, is no more.  He was known for his soulful, passionate singing. At eighty, he could still evoke a wide range of emotions through his soulful numbers. His fans could still drown in the emotions that flooded his songs.

മഞ്ഞലയിൽ മുങ്ങിത്തോർത്തി
ധധുമാസ ചന്ദ്രിക വന്നു…

His arrival on the horizon of film music was without much ado. Without as much as a flutter. Like the moon, he sailed across gently, as tides of emotions rose and fell in the listeners’ hearts. He carved a niche for himself with the unique tenderness that filled his songs.

ഉറങ്ങുന്ന ഭൂമിയെ നോക്കി
ഉറങ്ങാത്ത നീലാംബരം പോൽ
അഴകേ നിൻ കുളിർമാല ചൂടി
അരികത്തുറങ്ങാതിരിക്കാം…

You may be a confirmed, unromantic realist, but his love songs would still send tingles up and down your spine. The romance in his voice would catch you unawares. His songs never ever failed to stir his audiences.

ഇന്ദുവദനേ നിന്റെ നീരാട്ടുകടവിലെ
ഇന്ദീവരങ്ങളായ് ഞാൻ വിടർന്നുവെങ്കിൽ
ഇന്ദ്രനീലാഭതൂകും നിൻ മലർമിഴിയുമായ്
സുന്ദരീയങ്ങനെ ഞാൻ ഇണങ്ങുമല്ലോ…

Listening to him, one felt he explored all possibilities in a composition to make sure the emotion in the lyrics was manifest in his singing. No wonder he was the joy of his music directors. Together they could spin musical webs in which we, the listeners, were only too happy to be entangled.

പണിഞ്ഞിട്ടും പണിഞ്ഞിട്ടും പണി തീരാത്തൊരു
പ്രപഞ്ച മന്ദിരമേ…

To this day, I feel a tremor beneath my feet when I listen to the above lines. He constantly built a world of emotions through his melodies. He connected deeply with the lyrics he sang and did full justice to the writers of his songs.

കനിവോലും ഈശ്വരൻ അഴകിന്റെ പാലാഴി
കടഞ്ഞു കടഞ്ഞെടുത്ത അമൃതാണോ…

A deceptively ordinary number would turn immortal once he churned out its timeless beauty, seemingly, with ease. He doesn’t intimidate you with his rendition, which is like a gentle breeze. He just enwraps you in it and before you know it, you are held by its spell.

എൻ മണിയറയ്ക്കുള്ളിലുള്ളൊരീ
നിർമ്മലരാഗസൗരഭം
ഇങ്ങുനിന്നുപോം മന്ദവായുവും 
അങ്ങു നിന്നരുളീലെന്നോ…

Like good wine, his singing got better and better, and headier as he aged. At seventy or so, he could sing with a teenaged singer a love song that crossed the barriers of genres and age to enchant both the young and the not so young. And that too for a macho romantic hero of thirty and some.

കുപ്പായക്കീശമേൽ കുങ്കുമപ്പൊട്ടുകണ്ടു
കൂട്ടുകാരിന്നെന്നെ കളിയാക്കി…

The hero’s shirt pocket and the unmistakable traces of sindoor on it was really a mushy theme even in 1970, when the movie Ambalapravu was released. But the stirrings of subtle romance triggered by the inflections in the song could not be ignored. Several decades down the line, the theme is still syrupy. The stirrings remain.

ഇന്ദുമുഖീ ഇന്ദുമുഖീ…
എന്തിനിന്നു നീ സുന്ദരിയായീ…

Some of his romantic songs are quite intensely so. They have a haunting quality and they linger in your ears even after the notes have faded away. You catch a drift of the intro, and you get hooked on to the song. You cannot stop listening until you have heard them through.

ഇതുവരെ കാണാത്ത കരയിലേക്കോ
ഇനിയൊരു ജന്മത്തിൻ കടവിലേക്കോ
മധുരമായി പാടി വിളിക്കുന്നു
ആരോ…

His singing style was such that you felt he never held on to his songs. He let them free. He let them linger in the air and in the hearts of the lovers of his music. He left his stamp on each one of his songs without claiming any credit whatsoever for them.

He was witty and humorous. He wasn’t easily flattered, if one goes by the numerous interviews with him which are as popular as his songs. He was very matter-of-fact and down-to-earth, though his singing set his fans soaring high on the wings of longing. Almost all of his popular melodies have an intoxicating sweetness, but those seldom heard are even sweeter.

His singing was effortless. His approach egoless. He would randomly pick any song of any of his contemporaries, sing it to a tee, but still leave around it a magical aura of his own.

From singing for the comedians and the side-kicks in the movies to crooning for generations of heroes, he came a long, long way, sustaining through changing times, unlike many of his peers. His fans never had enough of his songs though. They forever yearned for more. However, the cycles of beats had to come to an end. The refrains had to fade away. And the singer finally gave in, as he had to, and merged with the rhythm of the universe.

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Urmila - The Dilemma

Just a few days back, I saw the play “Urmila”, produced by Adishakti, staged at Kerala Fine Arts Society Hall, Kochi. I had to cross several hurdles to watch it. The cab which had confirmed my ride, turned and rode the other away without so much as the courtesy of cancelling the ride. Well, that left me sour, to put it mildly. So, mind you, I didn’t cancel the ride either. And I dashed to the auto stand to catch a rick to board the Metro to alight at a station closest to the venue, which was still not close enough.

To cut the long story short, I reached the venue 15 minutes late – “only”. By the way, I had made use of the time on the Metro to complain about the cab service and the driver on all possible platforms. In the end, the play was worth all the r’s – the wrath, the revenge, the rush, the rick, and the relay rides.

The play was well through its intro by the time I settled into my seat. But my spirit was not dampened in the least. I had done my homework well. The play was about Urmila Nidra or, rather, Urmila’s sleep. Apparently, Urmila had received a boon of sleep, by virtue of which her husband Lakshman could spend his fourteen years of exile wide awake, taking care of his brother Ram and bhabhi Sita every minute of it. That Urmila never asked for the boon, nor wanted it, was another matter. Yes, the play addresses gender issues and some of the many ethical dilemmas raised by the epic Ramayan in the casual reader’s mind.

However, what is most incredible about the play is the medium used by Nimmy Raphel, who enacts Urmila. Her body, the medium, in a state of sleepy wakefulness, carries the message of the play. And as the play unravels, you see the medium merge with the message. And you watch in awe, as Urmila continuously swings between sleep and awakening.

Sleep is not always synonymous with peace, as we have always been led to believe. In the play, the boon turns out to be the bane, no less, of Urmila’s life. Thanks to the "gift of sleep", as she sarcastically calls it, not only would she have to live her life for a full fourteen years without her newlywed husband by her side, she also has to drift through the entire time in slumber. No, the boon was never her choice. Nimmy Raphel as Urmila is amazing as she wades through her semi-conscious state, all the while holding out against the unfairness of it all.

Raphel’s acting is praiseworthy for her attention to the tiniest of details. In her woozy state, as she tries to find her feet, she quite literally tries to find them, as though wondering if they are in their rightful places at all. She even lifts up her foot and looks at it as though she’s surprised to know that it’s right there, where it should be, after all.

Raphel uses up the full length and breadth of the stage as she struggles to stay awake, staggering, swaying and faltering, and trying to fight the sleep warriors who try to push her back into the infinite abyss of sleep. Time and again, Urmila slips and falls, every time flailing her arms and legs in her effort to float upwards, to wakefulness. The inappropriateness of her carriage, the lack of propriety in her movements, and her sheer helplessness even as she is aware of the state she’s in leaves the audience stunned at the spontaneity of Raphel's acting.

Nimmy Raphel has scripted the play, and directed it as well. So it's no wonder, she is visibly in control of the whole act. In the visual conception of Urmila’s subtle state of suspense between sleep and wakefulness manifests Raphel’s brilliance. We have all experienced this state of being at least once, albeit for a fraction of a second, just before falling into deep sleep or right before turning fully awake. Raphel’s representation of her stupor is so palpable that she keeps the audience perching on their seats, almost still, for the full duration of an hour and a half. Sleep is not always peaceful. Not when it comes unwanted. And then, it is full of disquiet.

One cannot but wonder at Urmila’s dilemma. What could she have actually chosen? To wake up to the harsh reality of the life of a new bride estranged from her husband, by default, for a long fourteen years? Or to languish in the numbness of sleep, until the return of her husband who never considered for once that she could have had a choice in the matter in the first place?

The performances of Vinay Kumar and Sooraj as the warriors of sleep maintain the focus and enhance the experience of the play. 

The stage setting, the lights, and the costumes have all enriched the play. This audience looks forward to seeing more from Raphel and her team Adishakti.

[Pictures Courtesy: Adishakti Website, Social Media]

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The Finale

The heart stops midbeat
The rhythm pulsates, lingers
The music plays on.

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Ecdysis

 

The red and the blue,

the green one too,

and this pretty beige –

they all have to go

from my wardrobe

bursting at the seams

overflowing with clothes

new and old

and some over-worn,

for, when comes the time

to shed the garb

of fleshy yarn

and bloody weaves

in which I was born,

why leave a litter

of abandoned skins

like hollow shells

that, though once pretty,

would be empty

and mere debris?

 

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[Image by pngtree.com]

[This poem was first published by Madras Courier.]

The Story-telling Room

A room as simple as the man. A man as simple as his writing. His writing as simple as his way of life.

The room mentioned here is a study. A study that used to belong to the Indian novelist known for being the simple genius that he was and his novels known for their simple Indian flavour. Through his pen was created an entire fictional village on the banks of a fictional river, close to a fictional forest, with a charming fictional railway station to complete the setting. And peopled by characters so close to real that the reader wished they could visit the place. Yes, I am talking about R. K. Narayan, one of the most illustrious Indian writers in English.

To visit R. K. Narayan’s house had been a strong wish since the day it was known to me that the house is being maintained as a museum. The house has been restored and kept just as the author had left it. The spartan interiors of his home is filled with the vibes from a past – a past filled with charming tales of ordinary people and their unpretentious lives. The house, especially the study, is reverberating with, perhaps, his thoughts that still linger unborne, unformed, unshaped by his unassuming style of writing.  His narratives are so incredibly simple that it was considered a flaw, a shortcoming, by some, the poster walls say. Surely they may not have recognised the complexity involved in his simple writing.

RKN’s writing is soaked in the spirit of the region where his stories happen. The alienness of the language he writes in does not mar the pristineness of the world of his characters. The regionalism of his tales does not come in the way of the grace of the language he writes in. Or else, Graham Greene himself would not have taken the initiative of getting RKN’s books published.

This unique raconteur’s stories took form while he was on his walks down the street. His characters took shape as he stopped to exchange pleasantries with the shopkeepers, the roadside vendors, the shoppers, and the random passersby he might have chanced upon on his casual strolls.

As a reader and a hopeful writer, one feels it’s easier to be laborious in one's writing process than be effortlessly engaging. For, simplicity has to flow naturally. Like it did from this great storyteller’s pen.

His study has many windows. So had his mind, which opened out into the world. And his thoughts would have soared the skies. Some would have flown away into the horizon. Perhaps some are still there perching on the trees. Swinging on the boughs. Rustling the leaves. He would have recalled them into his study had he lingered longer in this world. Had he lived longer, he would have ushered them in, put them together, strung them one to the other to form charming tales, and treasured them between the leaves of his books forever. Had he lived longer.

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[PC: SW, Interiors of  RK Narayan's House, Museum in Mysuru]