1978 - 2. SINDHU NADI POOVE
2) SINDHU NADI POOVE (MOVIE: SHANKAR SALIM SIMON, RELEASE DATE: 10 Feb, MUSIC: MS Viswanathan, LYRICS: Kannadasan)
Madras was a simple city back then, the smallest and the most unpretentious of the four Indian metros. It had a casual air about itself. It never wanted to be somebody else. People were laidback, traffic was sparse, shops opened and closed early, mamas and mamis wore veshtis and saris to get about. It was Calcutta without the roshgollah and the pretension. There was very limited scope for entertainment in the city back then. There were the movies, which Madras made plenty of; even more than Bombay. There were music concerts, often movie-related, and then the Carnatic variety which attracted well-heeled enthusiasts to the exclusive sabhas. There was theater that produced many a doyen, but were gradually being outstripped by comic plays. But the crown jewel of the city, for leisure and “breeze-catching” (you needed torrents of it in hot and muggy Madras), was the Marina Beach, the second longest beach in the world. It was the ultimate hangout place for the Madras hoi polloi: for younglings in love, married couples settling in-law disputes, families partaking in ‘kootaan choru’ picnics, and the bus-loads of pilgrims from Andhra and the Deep South.
A place so renown had to be a regular feature in the movies, and it absolutely was. ‘Sindhu nadi poove’ was an early song shot in the beach. My cousins and I sang and danced to the song topically at the Marina and rejoiced at our own silliness. You would be excused for thinking that the movie in which this song features ('Shankar Salim Simon') is a remake of the legendary Hindi masala megahit, ‘Amar Akbar Anthony’. It was not. It was actually an awful movie. The only reason it got any attention from podi pasanga like me was ‘Simon’ – Rajnikanth – who by then, was raking in the crowds and overshadowing every one of his co-stars, but still playing the villain and sidey roles. And then there was this song set like a qawwali with some Hindi lyrics thrown in (‘Yehi to pyaar hai mohabbat ki nishani hai’ and such). S Janaki and MS Viswanathan have done a great job on the song. MSV in his unique timbre – and hilarious Hindi. I was listening to this song for this write-up, perhaps after thirty-odd years. The tune and verve in this number is still intact, and it is actually a great listen. This is what sets the ‘Mellisai Mannar’ (King of Light Music), MS Viswanathan, apart and made him the prolific music composer that dominated the southern music scene from the fifties to the seventies. He scored music for over 800 films. That is more than every Indian composer, except Ilaiyaraja.
Rajnikanth’s pair in the movie was a damsel named Latha, who was supposed to be a consort to the then Chief Minister of TN, MG Ramachandran (MGR was known to have had several such consorts or secret wives. My uncle, Damnoose's macroeconomic comment on this matter: "the price of kumkumam (sindoor) in Tamilnadu dropped from five rupees to fifty paise when MGR passed away"). It is said that Rajnikanth fell madly in love with her and started stalking her, like only Tamil heroes can. Latha went to her master and complained. MGR summoned Rajini to his dreaded home, The Ramavaram Gardens. I don't care much for what transpired there. For the next year, Rajnikanth had a torrid time. He was outcast from the movie industry and branded as a psycho, till K Balachander and a few others took him to MGR as an act of surrender, and had him intervene. All of this is hearsay, of course. But people recited the story with their mouth watering, as if they watched it from close quarters. It is said that Thalaivar made a vow right there, patted his left thigh held high like in ‘Annamalai’, marked that red-letter day on his Sri Murugan Stores calendar, and married a different girl with the same name – Latha. ‘Idhu yeppudi irukku?’ (‘How is it?’ his famous dialog from the 1977 movie, ’16 Vayathinilae’), Rajni perhaps exclaimed after his marriage in Tirupati.
(I can’t seem to find a good video for this one).
(BAD VIDEO BELOW)
Comments
Post a Comment