En iniya pon nilave

A morning song. More than where you heard it first, it’s about where it takes you every time you hear it. You can feel yourself going up a hill station you are so familiar with. You know the place. You know at which hairpin bend the mountain air gently buffets your nostrils with its eucalyptus scent. The winding road with its steep hill on one side, and a proportionally deep valley on the other. The hill with its wild flowers and trees growing at unnatural angles from between the crevices of rocks. The lumbering buses with the drivers acknowledging each other with a gentle beep of the horn. Fellow passengers are either too wrapped up in the beauty of Nature or just deep in thought. No one talks, even the babies are quiet. The monkeys that look on the scene with what seems like curiosity. The air gets cooler as the town comes into view.

Rathiriyil

It’s Sunday, which means you can wake up later than the rest of the family members, it’s a right you’ve earned by going to work the rest of the week. You are awake all right, you just don’t want to get up. You lie around, relishing the lazy beginning of the day off. The neighbour guy walks in asking you to get up, while he reads the paper. Your friend pops in on his way to the market. You like that people drop in without any formalities. The door is always open. It’s 8 am, and someone puts on the radio for the Sunday morning special, hey usually play the latest songs at this time. The majestic notes from this song fill the lazy morning air, the soaring violins carry you to a mountainous place. You can even feel the crisp morning air of the hills. You wake up. It’s going to be a lovely day as you see the sun break through the clouds.

Mayanginen

It’s a bus stand song. Probably on a work trip to one of the neighbouring towns. You don’t go often, maybe once a month or twice at the most. You get off the bus after an hour or so of travelling, and notice that even the short journey has lulled you into a groggy, sleepy mode. You look around trying to orientate yourself, thinking how all these bus stands are alike, with the diagonally parked buses, little kids selling hot tea and snacks, women selling flowers to uninterested ladies in the bus, the ubiquitous dog, the piled up dirt near the end of the bus stop, past the buses that won’t begin their trip for a while. There are a few ladies selling flowers arranged in heaps near the entrance, after which is a tea shop with the customary ‘petty shop’ right next to it, selling magazines, chocolates, cigarettes, and bananas. You stop to buy a Gold Flake and light it at the tiny machine that looks like a fan regulator without the white paint, its wire glows when you press the button next to it to light up. It’s a bit hot, hopefully you can beat the heat and return early, you think as this song comes on from the tea shop radio set.

pani vizhum malarvanam

It’s the first year in college and they have some event to celebrate the end of the year for the final year students. What started as an uncertain beginning has turned out to be quite decent after all, and you’ve made fair bit of friends, grades need work but there’s always the next semester. You walk by the event hall and see a couple of your college mates tuning their guitars. There’s another guy who looked quite stern at a chess tournament you went to but he is smiling now, maybe not such an aloof guy, you think. There’s alcohol in the eyes of these guys, and soon it will be in yours too, as you heard your classmates were going out to buy everything they could get and make a deadly cocktail. It’s still early, around 2 pm, so you hang around, making fun of lecturers and professors, talking about some movies, and someone seeks you and your friends out to give a glass of the mix. You drink it without asking what’s in it. It’s not too bad. Quite a few of this goes down, and you go back to the hall and they are playing this song.

andhi mazhai

The rain that started in the afternoon sputtered to a brief stop only to continue with more strength. It’s nice because the lights come on early, lending a festive atmosphere to the evening. The usual friends haven’t come today due to the wet evening. The working members come drenched with the handkerchief offering feeble resistance against the downpour. It’s decided that you will go and buy food from a neighbourhood ‘hotel’, famous for its sambar. You don’t mind the rain as long as you get to eat the delicious food from the restaurant. You go to your friend’s place and they have the same plan, so you share the umbrella, and walk to the hotel which is five minutes away, but tonight will take a bit longer as you will have to skirt around puddles of water and avoid being splashed on by speeding cars. You can smell the food already standing at the counter. You order your food and give the waiter a steel vessel meant for steaming hot ‘sambar’. As you wait, you talk of this and that, school and home work as you watch people who are waiting for the rain to stop, song comes on the radio from the cashier’s counter. Your food comes and you catch the second stanza as you near home. You’ve heard the song before and it will come again, unlike the ‘hotel’ food, with its idlis and dosas rolled in plantain leaves and wrapped up in rolled newspapers.

kadhal oviyum

It’s around 4 pm on a fairly hot day. The ground has soaked up the heat and radiates the it through the soles of your feet as you stroll to the front of the house where the water pump is to see if it’s your house turn to get water. The other tenant and the owner are done with the pump and you go back to bring buckets and plastic vessels. The pump handle feels warm too as you start pumping. The residual heat seeps through the wet floors around the pump. As you start taking the buckets filled with water back and forth, filling the drums outside your house, a friend comes by to park his cycle, so he can go to a movie that’s becoming popular at a cinema near your house. He asks you to join him but you decline. The songs are on the radio already, and coincidentally, this song comes on the a transistor set from the neighbour’s.

Mayakkama kalakkama

The walk back from school in the evening seems longer than usual. The test results are out and you’ve just scraped the borderline score in math although there is redemption in other subjects in which you’ve scored quite well. But who wants more marks in history and geography? It’s the ominous red underline beneath the math score that’s going attract attention. As the house gets nearer and nearer, your mind gets more desperate trying to work a way out of this but to no avail. Almost on cue, as you enter the street where your home is, this song comes on from the radio at a tea stall. You’ve heard it a thousand times, but it gives you some sort of strength. A glimmer of hope. You lift your head and walk.