A Walk Down Rahman Lane by Suresh

  If you are here for the first time, please read this post.

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Every tea stall that played Raja now played Roja, only Roja. And yet, I don’t remember when and where I first heard the song “Chinna Chinna Aasai”. We had neither television nor any music player at home then. The song, however, was always in the air, long after it stopped playing. Any popular song in Tamilnadu at the time was omnipresent. It was everywhere, all the time. You don’t have to do anything to access the song, it’ll find a way to reach you, again and again and again. So, though I have a vivid memory of my first encounter with the other songs in Roja, I don’t have one for “Chinna Chinna Aasai”. So, I present here one of my n^th encounters with the song. 

I remember the annual day cultural events in a school in the neighbourhood. A group of girls of age five or six, dressed as little fairy angels in pink and blue fluffy frocks, danced to the song. The dance movements were simple and cute. The girls stood in their place for most of the time, bobbing their heads, moving their upper body sideways with hands on their hips. They twirled once in a while, in stuttering, staccato steps, not a fluid rotation. Their hand gestures made many shapes in the air translating every word in the song’s lyrics into a dance step. For the line that goes “I want this earth to revolve around me”, the girls placed their hands on their chest (me) and painted a two-dimensional sphere in the air. They stretched their arms sideways and drew one half of a full circle with each arm (earth), and as they pulled the edges of their frilled frocks a little with their petite fingers, they rotated in their spot (revolve around).

The dusky girl who danced in the middle at the front was beautiful. I noticed that she was the only one in the group who lip-synced with the song while dancing. Also, she was the only one smiling throughout. She seemed pleased with her performance. Though all the girls on the stage were performing the same dance routine, each one did it differently. A girl dancing in the last row had forgotten the steps; she was imitating the one next to her, and so she was always the last to finish a movement. The girl in the corner at the front went blank, stopped dancing and picked her nose instead. The one next to the girl at the centre appeared confident, but because she had missed a beat at the start her entire performance was out of sync. A girl in the second row was performing all the steps correctly but was looking down throughout. Some girls looked excited and so gesticulated more than necessary, and some seemed shy, hesitant and rigid in their movements. Despite all the variations in the execution of the rehearsed steps, when the song required everyone to hold hands and form a circle, they somehow made it happen; they did it with perfect synchronisation.

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About Suresh

Suresh's contact details are stored as 'Background Score Urs Musically Suresh', on my phone. IMO, like 'Thalapathy' and 'Thala' this can become Suresh "star title".
From John Williams to Ilaiyaraaja to the music in Satyajit Ray's films to Ghibran's compositions, Suresh writes about music across languages on his blog. A true music buff, from time to time, Suresh uploads his favourite background scores as a compilation on his YouTube channel as well. Don't miss listening to this one.
When there are days when doesn't want to listen to any dandanakka music or even songs for that matter, one can quietly head over to Suresh's YouTube playlists. I'd urge you to head to his YouTube channel and listen to the music he's compiled. Pure bliss.
Thank you Suresh, for sharing your nth encounter with ARR's debut film track, on this blog.

Say hi to Suresh here.