Category Archives: Music

My favourites sung by T.M.Krishna

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Till now I have written about or just listed some of my favourite A.R.Rahman’s songs, Mani Ratnam’s movies and even the books I like, but not about my favourite Carnatic songs. So, here goes a post on my favourites sung by TMK.

1. Shankachakra – Poornachandrika

It is because of this song that I became a fan of T.M.Krishna! Thanks to my neighbour who lent me the Kshetra Tirupati CD in 2004, I happened to listen to this song. I listened to the CD once and totally forgot about it. Almost an year later, I remembered that I liked the Poornachandrika krithi in that CD and went back and listened to it. Then, the usual getting hooked onto a single song happened and I started listening to this song like mad. (When I get hooked onto a song, all my other favourites including Rahman’s songs take a back seat at that time 🙂 ) The very first concert of TMK that I went to was only on December 23rd, 2005! The reason behind going to that concert was only because of my liking the way he has sung this song. And one more thing was an interview with him on S.S.Music during the season that year. Though I now don’t remember most of what he spoke in that interview, After attending that concert, I became totally crazy about his singing and the rest as they say, is history.

All right, now time to continue the listing of my other favourites.

2. Alarulu – Sankarabharanam

I am generally not too fond of Sankarabharanam itself, but this song, especially when sung by TMK, is an exception.

3. Raga Sudha Rasa – Andolika

The fast -paced Raga Sudha Rasa is something which I frequently listen to, on a loop. Definitely the song to turn to when you want to drive away boredom.

4. Padavini – Salaka Bhairavi

This is yet another fast-paced rendition by TMK.

5. Vidajaladura – Janaranjani

Set in the best of the Ranjanis, Vidajaladura is a refreshing change from the often sung Pahimam Shri in the same raagam.

6. Elavatara – Mukhari

This one is from the Dasavataram CD. The Mukhari alapana lasts for some 10 minutes or so and its an absolute bliss to listen to it. 🙂

7. Ongi UlagaLandha – Aarabhi

Every other person might sing during the December Season, but TMK’s version is always special.

8. Sri Raamam – Narayanagowlai

This song from the album of the same name is such a classic! A longer

9. Tillana – Hameer Kalyani

A very beautiful tillana with a good mix of swarams and words!

10. Adi Nee Pai – Yamun Kalyani

This short song is such a joyous one!

11. Santana Ramaswaminam – Hindolavasantam 

If Shankachakra was where the fandom started, Santana Ramaswaminam is where it peaked! The lyrics, the raagam Hindolavasantam, TMK’s voice, the kalpana swarams in the end, the percussion matching the pace of the song – I just got hooked to this on the first listen & since then, it has always been there on my playlist.

I strongly feel that currently there is no one who can sing the words as clearly (spashtamaa) as T M Krishna and when it comes to Dikshitar’s kritis, his versions are the best (but only when not sung veryyyy slowly as it started becoming the case with TMK’s singing around the time of exit from the active December Season scene).

Coming back to Santana Ramaswaminam, during the Covid 19 pandemic, my daughter made an observation that every time I was getting impatient, be it even for a simple thing like waiting for a website to load, I used to immediately start humming Santana Ramaswaminam. This is the song that I keep humming all the time till date.

Azhage Sugama

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I don’t really remember if I have written about this song in detail earlier or not, but I can tell you that even after a couple of decades, it’s still up there in the list of soothing songs of ARR. What lovely vocals and instrumentals!

ARR surely knows how to tap into the beauty of a raagam like Dwijavanti (or is some part Sahana? That confusion remains till date for me). But the surprise here is the way it has been used not to express happiness which is what those raagams are all about, but to express longing, regret and repent.

A gentle rhythm, a slow tempo, mellow voices, piano, flute and violin aiding the feel softly in the background. The only time when the pace picks up is during that very beautiful violin interlude which appears to bring out all the pent up emotions. The song ends with a closing keyboard/piano which reminds me of the soothing phrases of Thendrale from Kadhal Desam.

Vazhithunaye & Yedho Yedho Onru 

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The moment we drew up a rough itinerary of our upcoming Europe vacation & shared it with my sister, her immediate reply was that we were almost following the route of Vazhithunaye song from Dragon! We hadn’t seen that song till then and, to our surprise, we realized that except for the Tissot Peak Walk at Glacier 3000, we were indeed going to visit all the other places! 

With a very long gap between the initial planning days and the actual trip, we kept turning only to Vazhithunaye & PoovukkuL oLindhurukkum from Jeans & had forgotten the rest of the movie songs featuring the places. 

Now, back from the trip, I watched Yedho Yedho onru from Enakku 20 Unakku 18 and I realized that we have covered everything in that too! 

Haven’t movie songs always been our guide to finding some amazing places to see? 

But this post isn’t about the location, but about the changing times and the music. 

Take Enakku 20 Unakku 18, the heroine & hero meet each other by chance during a train journey, don’t share their contact details & then end up searching for each other. Even after they meet, they are hesitant to express their feelings and let the time pass by. That’s when yedho yedho onru is shown.  

Moving on to Dragon, a studious guy starts failing in all the subjects and becomes a rowdy simply because the girl chose a guy like that over him. He then goes on to become a fraud on top of this and even gets engaged to a girl without revealing the truth and that’s when the song vazhithunaye happens. I obviously couldn’t stand watching a movie like that beyond the first few minutes & only read the synopsis. 

Similar locations – two different songs – one a long, slow, romantic song full of longing, with the interludes matching the vibe (blame my kids for me using this word instead of something like atmosphere or ambience) of the place, another a short, peppy, fun-filled song with interludes matching the pace of life today full of thoughtless partying & selfies. Do you realize that the duration of the song itself shows how impatient we as a generation have become? 

Take the lyrics and the way they are sung. There is no way that nowadays someone is going to pause long enough to sing uyireyyyyyy idhayammmmm as it is sung in yedho yedho onru. It’s another fact that even 20 years ago, it was already too slow for the times. 

In Vazhithunaye, it’s a continuous stream of  words matching the pace with which they are travelling – oor paarkkum nalla nalla thaLangaLellaam unai kooTTikonDu kaikortthukkoNDu! 

Coming to the musical aspect, one might expect a core Carnatic-based music for the first theme & a western-kind of music for the other. Ironically, here’s where the surprise factor kicks in!  

Though yedho yedho onru has some Charukesi in it matching the melancholic aching feel of the song, it still has a lot of western touches. Oh that interlude! 

Would you imagine a Reetigowlai with fast beats for visuals featuring the lead pair strolling outside Moulin Rouge?! Well that’s Vazhithunaye for you! The joyous Reetiwgowlai matching the energy level of the young lovers happily exploring some of the beautiful sights of Europe! 

The contrasting moods created by the pathos of Charukesi and the verve of Reetigowlai showcasing two different kinds of love during two different periods of time but set in the same place! Isn’t that the power of music! Wow! 

P.S.: I came to know only today that Vazhithunaye is composed by the son of Noel James, whose name we used to see in the credits of so many of A R Rahman’s albums! 

New York Nagaram

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You know how sometimes you start listening to some favourite song which you haven’t listened to for a while and then you just can’t stop listening to it? That’s what happened with New York Nagaram today.

What starts off with some simple guitar chords and humming transitions to some poetic yet so simple words describing the longing of a man for his wife, sung with so much feel by A R Rahman! Those interludes between each stanza, the varied humming by chorus singers and ARR himself and, above all, that climax go on to make this one of the best songs which conveys so much feeling with and without words!

2025

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For the first time in the last 25 years, 2025 was when I didn’t feel excited about any of the A.R.Rahman’s songs of a new Mani Ratnam’s movie and I didn’t even have the inclination to listen to the songs multiple times to see if I will even like it. 2025 was also when I didn’t even watch the newly-released Mani Ratnam’s new movie. But I did spend a really, really lot of time watching and rewatching Bombay, Roja, Kannathil Muthamittal, Agni Natchathiram, Kaatru Veliyidai, Ok Kanmani, etc. On the ARR’s songs front, I didn’t listen to most of his new releases of which there were plenty. I seem to be stuck listening to a set of about 30-40 songs of ARR in a loop and nothing much apart from that.

Coming to the reason why I didn’t watch Thug Life, to begin with, I am not a big fan of Kamal Hassan’s movies & I didn’t want to watch the movie without checking out the initial reviews. The very storyline of the movie itself made me not want to watch it.

On the Carnatic music front, I went to just 2 concerts of Sanjay Subrahmanyan, 1 fusion-like concert of Sandeep Narayan and 1 Jannal Oram programme of Sikkil Gurucharan. While the concerts of Sanjay were top-notch as usual, his recent interest in singing ‘compositions’ of Sean Roldan and composing music of a film lyricist’s verses & singing them in Carnatic kutcheris isn’t really something of interest to me and that’s why I didn’t really prioritize attending Sanjay’s kutcheris over other plans during December in Madras.

I attended 4 fantastic lecture demonstrations on Dikshitar’s compositions in Music Academy during the Season and felt all my excitement for the Carnatic compositions rekindled yet again.

2025 was when I was in Madras during Navaratri after more than a decade and I absolutely enjoyed the Navaratri atmosphere of Madras replete with golu bommai shopping in Mylapore. Of course, I did slightly miss keeping my golu in Singapore.

2025 saw us doing a lot of travelling and exploring new places, just like the previous few years. We did a good mix of temple-hopping, seeing nature’s beautiful landscapes and admiring a lot of architectural marvels.

2025 too continued to see my kids’ interests expand beyond academics and I was juggling between accompanying them to their sports & arts pursuits.

2025 saw me struggling more than ever in fighting a losing battle over my kids’ screen time.

2025 continued to see LLMs & Agentic AI ease the life of a software engineer like never before & it makes those yesteryear days of coding totally outdated. Didn’t we all go through those woes of having to write lengthy lines of Java code on your own, compile it & run it only to see that you have missed out a semicolon in one line?!

2025 continued to see me struggle with my weight loss pursuits & I experimented with everything from all-millets diet to no-sugar diet. The good part is that I have finally incorporated a good mix of strength training, cardio & yoga into my daily routine.

2025 saw me cooking more of new millet-based recipes and not experimenting with anything else. I had already mastered cooking a variety of side dishes for chapathi and 3-4 recipes of sambhar and rasam. I continued to struggle to make an upma of the right consistency & taste.

2025 had its share of highs & lows. 2025 saw me struggling to let go. 2025 saw me having my own anxiety moments. 2025 saw me seeking inner peace. 2025 saw me prioritizing my fitness goals. 2025 had some very special happenings.

Passing on wishes to an exciting 2026!

Celebrating 25 years of Alaipayuthey!

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Back when there was no YouTube or social media and no one uploaded anything anywhere and you had to wait for the right commercial break on TV just to catch the trailer of the movie featuring the dashing lead pair of Madhavan & Shalini, the trailer of Alaipayuthey itself made one want to watch it again and again! The music, the visuals, the dialogues, Shalini and her casual way of conversing and, of course, Madhavan! Even the font in which Alaipayuthey was written was stylish too!

It wasn’t just the trailer that made you go gaga over it. The official website of the movie had such great content too with a writeup on the lead characters and some amazing photos. Waiting for the Shockwave content to load and browsing through the website became a regular activity too, despite downloading all the images from the website.

Oh and the songs! But for evano oruvan which screamed of longing with a tinge of pain, all other songs were so joyful, celebrating life in itself! Back then, not a single day went by without listening to the audio cassette. Pacchai Nirame had to be listened to on a repeat mode every day. It didn’t matter if one had to patiently press the rewind button of the music system to listen to a song again and again.

Pacchai Nirame became an instant favourite and today, 25 years later, continues to remain my most favourite song of A R Rahman and the best song ever portraying such beautiful colours! It’s to Pacchai Nirame that I turn to even today for some colours to cheer me up on a random dull day. 🙂

Then the movie itself – such relatable characters looking even more relatable in their simple costumes and talking such casual dialogues, here was a story set in my very own Madras with each and every scene having some lovely colours and music that added more to every scene.There was a time when watching the entire movie itself was a regular pastime!

Today I don’t really watch the scenes of Alaipayuthey or listen to the songs of Alaipayuthey as frequently as I used to back then, but I continue to watch all the interviews of Madhavan waiting to hear some new tidbit about Alaipayuthey, I continue to turn to some scene of the movie when I want to take a pause and refocus or just plain relax, I continue to watch Pacchai Nirame first every time we buy a new mobile or a TV or a monitor, I continue to get reminded of the beautiful wedding scene of Alaipayuthey every time I visit Kapaleeswarar Kovil!

Every April when I see some content on YouTube mentioning about the number of years it has been since Alaipayuthey got released, my craze for all things Alaipayuthey does get rekindled.

Neighbourhood landlines or common telephones in offices might now have become outdated, searching for a girl by hunting down the stations or medical colleges instead of simply looking up on social media platforms might sound a roundabout way, youngsters having their own start-up might have become much more common now than it was back then, but the love story of Shakthi and Karthik continues to remain a timeless classic!

My Current Playlist

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Just thought of writing here what I am listening to nowadays….

A R Rahman’s masterpieces:

    • The classic Veera Raja Veera
    • The fun piece Nana from Couples Retreat
    • The soul-stirring Dichotomy of Fame from Rockstar
    • The playful Kuru Kuru KaNgaLile from, again, Couples Retreat
    • Ponni Nadhi from Ponniyin Selvan – the same Rahman can sound playful in Kuru Kuru KangaLile and pack so much energy in this ode to Ponni Nadhi
    • The haunting, contemplative Latika’s Theme
    • The inspirational ‘Never Give Up’ from Million Dollar Arm

The trailing background music of Kuru Kuru KaNgaLile is as lovely a piece in itself, as the one in the background for ‘Jugni’ from ‘Kaatru Veliyidai’. The vocals, the humming, the chords, the melody – there are multiple layers of awesome music running all through this less than 3 minute song.

Bliss of Navarasa Kannada:

  • Ni Paadamule Gati by Sanjay
  • Vande Sada Padmanabham by Sanjay
  • Naan Oru Vilayattu by Sikkil Gurucharan & Anil Srinivasan (Album – Tarunam)

The first two bring out the joyous shade of Navarsa Kannada, while the last one brings out the other rasa of Navarsa Kannada by being all soulful! 🙂

Finally, Sanjay’s Shri Parvati in the beautiful Shri Raagam is one song that I just can never have enough of! This is such a beautiful composition, replete with some lovely chittaswarams.

What are you listening to? 🙂

Kaatru Veliyidai Revisited

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I just couldn’t get myself to watch Kaatru Veliyidai again, because the very thought of watching the abusive nature of Varun (VC) was making me feel really irritated! What madness is it that makes the human mind hold on to someone despite all the abusiveness!

I finally got myself to watch a few scenes some time last year and, before I knew it, I got hooked big time to the magic of ARR & Mani Ratnam. What music and what visuals!

It is one thing to portray the initial happy days of a simple relationship, like in Alaipayuthey and OK Kanmani, where the relationship itself is yet to really begin. But it is quite a task to portray a complex relationship like that of VC and Leela’s, which is synonymous with everything but happiness.
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Kurumugil Song & Gujarat Marvels

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In recent times, if there was a movie that I really wanted to watch after seeing all the initial trailers, it had to be Sita Ramam. It’s another fact that I didn’t watch until it got released on Amazon Prime!

Seeing the trailers and promos, all the mystery surrounding the whereabouts of Ram apart, there was this one song that had me going back to it again and again, right from the lyric video release. The visuals, the music, the backdrop, the charming Dulquer & Mrunal – it was one of those rare songs that was very captivating, both musically and visually!

The colourful, animated butterflies flying rhythmically to the soft, opening music full of old-world charm (The role that these butterflies play in this movie, especially till the climax! Sigh!), the simple, poetic lyrics, the veena in the interludes and in the ending of many lines all through the song, the sight and sound of kids singing and dancing in chorus (do we even have such beautiful chorus in songs, nowadays?), the happy faces of Sitamahalakshmi and Ram 🙂 and, besides all these, the locations with some stunning architecture! What a beautiful setting the stepwell with all its mini-gopurams made for all the kids to run around along with the hero and the heroine!

It wasn’t until the full video of this song was released, that the magnificence of the location became fully apparent. The place fascinated me so much that Google search and much planning later, we visited the Modhera Sun Temple just to see that beautiful step well! Hearing the legend that Lord Rama and Sita once visited this place, we were wondering if that was the reason why this location was chosen to be featured in the song of our Sita Mahalakshmi and Ram. 🙂

Visiting Rani Ki Vav too along with this place, I realized that the famed stepwell featured in our Rs. 100 note is also featured in this song!

The surprise came in the form of the streets of this place called Sidhpur, which we took a detour to, on a whim, on the way to Rani Ki Vav, while googling for any other places to visit nearby. Google Maps said that there was an architecturally splendid, ruined temple named Rudra Mahalaya temple. As we were travelling on the congested market roads of Sidhpur, to our surprise, my husband spotted the Europe-like streets featured right from the opening sequences of Kurumugil till the end! Wow! We had never heard about the Bohra mansions of Sidhpur. Didn’t these mansions just add on to the old-world charm brought out by the opening music in the song? No wonder camels were a part of those scenes in the song, since that part of Gujarat had its fair share of camels and camel carts!

Since visiting these places, Kurumugil has become even more close to my heart, since it no longer just takes me back to the world of Sita Mahalakshmi and Ram, but also makes me reminisce about my epic heritage trip.

ARR’s Thumbi Thullal

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This song couldn’t have come at a better time! Right now, when the world in itself is facing uncertain times like no other, here comes a song bringing along with it celebration, joy, dance, longing, love, hope and all that is synonymous with positivity.

Starting off with a soft Charukesi (?), slowly transcending to the soft percussion which doesn’t have any shades whatsoever of the ‘saraveDi’ lyrics, it builds up into one of the most beautiful, soft crescendos ever at ‘madhumaNamO’!

In comes Shreya’s voice, singing some of those lines which seem to have the classic ARR touch, with sitar joining in in the background. I love the way how the words ‘en kaLLachirippin nILam neeye’ are placed with the word ‘nILam’ spaced out so ‘nILam’.

Again ‘saraveDi’ enters unexpectedly and is followed by a very lovely flute interlude.

Shreya sings more of those longing lines.

The percussion, flute, ‘saraveDi’, Shreya’s voice and, now, guess what?! Nadaswaram! And that too the majestic Nattai ‘jagadAnandakArakA’ acting as the crowning glory!

The crescendo of the thavil has the song switching to Nakul Abhyankar’s voice. The place where he goes ‘uyurAvEn’ is so wow!

Then comes this amazing chorus having all the classic touches of ARR.

And when Shreya launches off to ‘thumbi thuLLal’ again, you’ve chorus as the background along with all the thavil, sitar, flute and more! Wow!

The finale has us drowning in the mellifluous sounds of sitar and flute, leaving us asking for more of this addictive music!

The promo visuals for this song are quite appealing and the music and visuals together call for celebration!

There are way too many intricacies, lovely instrumentals, beautiful tunes, foot-tapping beats to be relished in every single second of this song that once you start listening to it, there is no way you are not playing it on an endless repeat mode!