Really surprised that this video has been under rated with under two hundred likes!
I have listened to this atleast a hundred times just because it is extremely beautiful .
I have tried singing and recording this but have failed flat on my face over and over and over again.
I sing this song to my son Amey and it has been his lullaby song. Even today when he cries, I sing this song and he feels that he is being loved and stops crying and smiles.
This is the performance that set me down the thread of tracking all award winning ilayaraja songs and other popular songs of Ilayaraja. I used to listen much more to tamil songs than to malayalam songs for months, thanks to the inspiration from this performance.
Bijibal, the best music director in malayalam movie industry has been drawing me into his mindspace through various songs that he has been delivering. His down to earthness and his ability to stay connected to the truth has also been inspiring me.
When I hit on an album song that Bijibal music directed, I saw my school friend Mithun doing the guitar in it. Mithun had also figured a few months back in an 'ilayaraja medley' ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cj2K-lT2EgU ) that I had listened to atleast two hundred times and is the song that my son has listened to as his lullaby most. I had considered getting in touch with Mithun then and had not. As he figured with Bijibal now, I decided to connect with him.
Mithun had sent me a facebook friend request years back. My facebook had been deactivated for years now. I got it reactivated and contacted Mithun through facebook and he sent me his number.
As he is essentially a busy celebrity, I cut through the crap of 'It has been twenty years since we spoke' and started off right from my school days' memory of having been to his artsy home with beautiful pillars. We had a very close half an hour conversation that was so intense in information that I decided to capture it here.
Mithun-Bijibal : Bijibal has been Mithun's senior at St. Alberts college. Mithun reaffirmed my belief in Bijibal's class. While Bijibal was still a student at St. Alberts, he had done an album which clearly established his class as per Mithun.
CN : Can Bijibal become as good as Johnson?
MR: Johnson had much better cinematic situations to work for. Bijibal hardly has as much opportunity. Current movie situations are not as aesthetic. Bijibal is more about carnatic music and if he is given an opportunity, he is going to prove his class, no doubt.
Mithun as music programmer : Mithun has done the entire programming for the song 'Paapaleela' , one of the classical numbers from the national award winning movie 'Kaliyachchan'. All the sounds that you hear in this song has been programmed by Mithun. These are not done using the real ethnic instruments. These are just mixed in tracks from a huge repository of sounds. Mithun uses windows and not mac for his programming work. The industry prefers mac but Mithun has not had issues with PC yet and has been sticking with it hence. For mac, the common softwares used are 'Logicpro' and something else I don't remember. The insight I gained here is that to have a full fledged song, all you need is a singer and a music programmer. If you can get good enough at both, you can create an entire song yourself.
Bijibal would instruct how the feel of the music should be like and Mithun would choose and orchestrate sounds against those instructions. Mithun has worked with Aashiq Abu in all his movies except 'Gangster'.
Mithun's studio :
He just has put thermocol to absorb sound in one of his rooms is how he described.
Mithun's cinema connections :
Mithun's career has been about music programming for movies.
For the last two years, he has been working with the band 'Thaikkudam Bridge' and hence has not worked with Bijibal in his recent films.
Clearly, Mithun would serve as a wonderful source to answer all my questions regarding music. No flak , easy to get to the truth. Also, I see that he is really busy. He explained how during his days as music programmer, he would spend his entire time inside his music studio. Also, how he needs to travel to perform shown once every two days for 'Thaikkudam Bridge' now. Since he is doing stuff that I really respect, I could not keep the interaction completely as being one between classmates. Somewhere, I felt like a fan talking to a celebrity. Anyways, excited to find him and hope to take these interactions to a more meaningful level.
Crawling through music videos from recent malayalam movies is currently a habit and that is how I came back to this song. I am listening to the song over and over and over. I am not closely paying attention to the lyrics. The only word that has really registered in terms of it's factual meaning is the word 'Allah' . I am not a muslim and hence don't believe in Allah. I don't believe in God either. However, the surrender that this particular song as well as other songs of this genre brings has been very comforting.
At work, I have not had the best of the weeks last week and hence I had reached home pretty tired. Listening to this song over and over has cleansed my psyche. I feel much much lighter. The question is what is going on here. It is not the words. It is not the concept of god and surrender to him. However, I believe it is the surrender element that the song embodies that is healing.
The song seems to be telling me not to fight anything and let it all be. Let it all be. Just let it all be. Just let it all be. Give up. Don't fight it. Just give up. And when you give up and when you are not fighting, you are relaxed.
Another song that has exactly the same result is 'Kun faya Kun' from Rockstar. To my spirit, there is hardly any difference between these two songs as I listen to them back to back. It is indeed hard work to pretend and put up a brave face when you are breaking up within. It is dishonest and you know you are being dishonest in spirit. When you shed the farce, you are freed. You are freed from the pretence and you realize that the pretence is much bigger a burden than the pain.
Some days are not really nice. Yet you come home and smile and play with your kids happily. That is hard work. You don't really have to do that if the day has not been nice. Surrender, solve. Do not pretend. Do not mask.
What are you masking? There is hardly anything specific. But somehow there still are some things within you that are sad, that need to be cleansed. Things you don't really realize. You don't even 'know' . Such songs clean you internally. You feel less and less light and finally you are clear, totally pure. Joy.
The below song 'Khwaja mere Khwaja' again fits the bill. I have hardly any clue what the words mean. Yet I remember listening to the song days in days out. I think it is necessary to clean yourself up everyday. Working on a logical problem at work and failing at it scars you somewhere. Struggling to find the right solution probably strains you, winds you up and you do need to unwind periodically for smoother functioning.
Physically, I feel a coolness in my head. Tension has eased out of my head and my head ache is no longer there. And I am at peace. Daily cleansing of the mind and the spirit is fundamental. Music is truly out of this world.
