PART 10+1: POSTSCRIPT, DISCLAIMERS, APOLOGIES, AND OTHER FINEPRINT

WHY DID I WRITE THESE BLOGS?

"You are going to get sick couching in that sofa, watching all those sad videos of SPB, and crying like a baby. Find another past time," my wife had scolded me several weeks ago.

You can't say that my spontaneous outpouring of grief was the reaction of a puerile mind uninitiated to agony. I have been fairly conditioned by my share of tragedies. But Balu's passing away, that too on my birthday, made me feel as if a part of me was gone, like it happened when my father or my sister passed away. It was a deeply personal loss. There were so many memories associated with him, right from childhood to adolescence to adulthood.

I was filled with this baffling guilt because I felt that I had somehow drifted away from being the ardent Balu fan that I used to be. There was a permanence about his presence which was reassuring. But maybe due to that, I had perhaps taken him for granted. I had skipped his recent New Jersey Tamil concert during the 'SPB 50' tour (although I did attend the Telugu one). I had missed watching the latest episodes of his YouTube channel, 'Simply SPB'. I had slacked. And he was gone. Without warning.

For weeks following his demise, I watched and re-watched hundreds of hours of his interviews in Tamil, Telugu, and Kannada. I watched his old concerts, his movies, old episodes of dimwitted serials he acted in, his interactions with Yesudas, Chithra, Janaki and with the Rafi family. I was messed up.

I wish he he had not traveled to Hyderabad for that show. I wish he had recorded more episodes of 'Simply SPB'. I wish he comes back to do this one final concert. I wish...

Our college alumni group had been conducting a monthly music appreciation program for some time. I called my friends and told them that I wanted to do an episode on Balu. These blogs germinated from the scribblings that I made for the two-hour long joint tribute that I did along with a couple of my friends. Writing about and reliving Balu's enchanting music proved cathartic. I can now say I am officially out of mourning.

DISCLAIMERS, APOLOGIES, FINEPRINT, & SUNDRY

So, here is the deal. I know in a short while, I will start receiving feedback on these essays (yeah, from millions of readers) about how incomplete they are in capturing the life of the legend called SPB. Well, trying to encapsulate the life of a genius that has sung forty-thousand songs in sixteen languages through ten songs is an impossible feat. I never hoped to do justice to that. I knew it would end up like the parable of blind men touching parts of an elephant and interpreting it to be different things. So, to those that felt I shortchanged Balu by not bringing out his best, what can I say! The fault is all mine.

People from Balu's future home state (if you get my drift) will not come to terms with the fact that I had not featured a single Kannada song in my main list of songs (although I had played snippets of a few in one of the video collages). How can this eulogy be complete without including Balu's body of work for a people that loved him immensely, they will ask? It was not intentional. If it makes you feel any better, some Tamils I am sure will complain about the 'Top 10' list not featuring enough Tamil songs (and too many Hindi songs). It is all fair feedback. My music appreciation program, and therefore my blogs, was a collaborative effort with friends and were targeted at a predominantly non-South Indian audience. So, I had to balance out the list of songs so that I didn't lose my audience completely. Nevertheless, if you have come this far, I thank you for your patronage.

This is not to pander to SPB's Kannada fans, but here is a beautiful song of his, from the movie 'Thirugu Baana', with music by Balu's dear friend and life-long collaborator, Satyam gaaru, and lyrics by RN Jayagopal. This is an awfully popular song in Karnataka till this day. You will know why, when you listen to the lyrics (or look at the translation).

Last but not the least, some ardent Rajnikanth devotees will absolutely pull me up for maliciously omitting Balu's epochal work with Thalaivar. I know where they are coming from. You know, many say Rajnikanth was essentially a "front-stalls" hero in the early eighties. His wider acceptance came with 'Thambikku endha ooru' and especially with the iconic song 'Kadhalin deepam ondru', assembled at the SPB-Ilayaraja hit factory. When Mr Bigshot Oscar winner, AR Rahman thought that he could be cutesy with Rajnikanth's opening song in 'Baba' and had Shankar Mahadevan sing it, the whole of Tamilnadu erupted. I kid you not, people pelted stones at Rahman's home. Emergency was declared, the army was called in, the needful done, and Balu was brought back to sing 'Oruvan oruvan mudhalali' for Thalaivar's next, 'Muthu'. The song is an anthem for Balu, Rajnikanth, and AR Rahman to this day. I digress. To the Thalaivar fans, I am sorry.

As a tribute to the collaboration between the 'Superstar' and the 'Singing Moon', here are some of their hits that I put together. By the way, Balu had such collabs with several stars across languages. To such an extent that some like Kannada superstar Vishnuvaradhan, used to have a clause in his contract that Balu must sing all his songs. I tried holding the ocean in the palm of my hand and I failed. For that failure, I will be eternally proud. It just goes to show the immensity of the God that walked amongst men - Dr 'Padma Bhushan', 'Kalai Mamani', 'Gaana Vidushi' Sripathi Panditaradhyula Balasubrahmanyam!

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