Pazhaya sogangal

You never heard this song when it was released. An experimental movie that didn't do well perhaps. Thankfully, some songs outlive the movies they feature in, you think when you listen to it much later. There’s a college-day-afternoon angst quality to the song. Even now. It takes you back to your second or third year. To the days when you left after the last class afternoon around 3.45 and waited for the bus. There are puddles near the bus stand from the previous day’s rain. The locals in their dhoti and shirt wearing sandals and chewing pan. You see a man on a cycle carrying water in two bronze vessels tied together with a cycle tyre or tube and slung across the carrier in the back.He looks like a decent, honest man. A dog tries to run after him for a few metres and gives up sensing no imminent fight. The day has an unnatural combination of the apocalypse and optimistic cheer. Sweet melancholy.