The Golden Era of Dr.IR and Dr.SPB

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#193 சிறிய பறவை சிறகை விரிக்கத்துடிக்கிறதே
(அந்த ஒரு நிமிடம், 1985 , ஜானகியுடன்)

Fantastic song!

One of the best from the SPB-SJ-IR combo, IMO...with the lovely percussion arrangements for pallavi, 3 saraNams with the second one different from the first & 3rd, both in melody & arrangments (they're differentiating the local Ambikapathi-Amaravathi from the foreign Romeo-Juliet / Laila-Majnu tragic pairs it seems - by way of resorting to mridhangam and nAttiya music). Ofcourse, vizhalukku iRaiththa neer - despite having the talented Oorvashi getting paired with Kamal, the movie was such a terrible bore and flopped (directed by Major S). Did she get another chance to work with Kamal in-between or had to wait for five years to do the terrific Palakkad girl?

This movie reminds me of a trip to yet another wingmate's village - because that's when we watched it in the nearby Thuraiyur town. This guy was a special friend, who looked so mature in the whole wing and was also one. (For the looks, he had the thickest meesai - had started shaving from high school I think and so looked way senior and mature than all of us. He was also soft-spoken, not getting into silly arguments, never bothered talking much about marks / ranks / this / that, never tense about ejjAms...and is now a top ranking official in Railways). We weren't that much close during the first two hostel years (Agate / Coral) but then ended up in the same wing in Emerald. Besides, he was also ECE. That brought more opportunities to interact. How? Mainly for "sharing books".

I need to talk about the books now. Except the first sem, I didn't have to buy ANY book at all for the whole engg course! Not just my experience, but that of most of my year mates! Reason? Library / book-bank / book-sharing in hostel! We used to get 3 books from book-bank each sem plus progressively increasing library tokens (1 for 1st year, 2 for 2nd year etc) and with those, could pick standard MKV / Millman kind of books for each sem. What I don't have, another used to have in the wing and it wasn't difficult to share at all - even on the ejjAm day. Worst case, some copying / writing down / visiting library fixed it!

Well, there was another book connection with this friend. He was the one who introduced J H Chase to me. I had seen those JHC books on book stalls / library but always thought they were 'maRRa' books -looking at those bikini pics on cover - and didn't venture. This meesaiwAlA was reading a JHC one day and told me it has less maRRa content than Sujatha or Pushpa Thangadurai and gave me that "You find him, I'll fix him". And that started my feverish checking out of all JHC's one by one from library until there was no more (around 50 of them - at one point of time I was reading them day and night for weeks!)

That way, he opened a new avenue to me which continued on for years with other janaranjaga writers like S Sheldon, I Wallace, R Ludlum...didn't they say your associates can have some influence on you?