Wrting the songs

I won a prize for poetry in school. I was 14 years old.
They selected me to compete at the district level. However, I did not get to go because they chose to pick another kid to compete for mono act or something else. (That kid turns out to be the great malayalam/tamil actor Vineet). In a way I was relieved that I was not selected because writing never came naturally to me. It is hard work.

If I have to pin down the hardest work that I did for this album, it's writing the lyrics. Everything turned out fine eventually but I had no faith when I started. I looked around quite a bit to find someone. No luck. And I started the agonizing venture of writing.

I wrote 6 songs. All by myself. It is really a miracle because I still have no idea how they turned out to be the way they are. From the feedback I have received so far, they are not half as bad as I thought they would be.

Anyway, the biggest miracle is the 7th song. I did not write it. I tried my best to get it written. I remember working with my Aunt (Ms Sreelatha Damodaran. A poet herself) 2 days before the recording. She managed to get a decent pallavi for me but that was only 25% of the song.

So here I am.. On a Sunday morning at 4:00 am. Awake. Sitting down with a paper and pen just wondering how I was going to get this song done without lyrics. The singer is Madhu Balakrishnan. I had booked him for 2 songs. Okay. Worst case, he sings only one song.

At around 11 am Divya (my wife)'s father brings a couple of people home. He says, "Rajesh, meet Philip, he is a writer and meet Sajan. He is a singer, composer and a music teacher.". I couldn't believe it. This is too good to be true. I asked him if we could try a song out. We went upstairs and got on it.

To summarize, by 6pm, the song was written, the track was done by Sajan and I was on my way to Kochi to start my recording spree.

I have to mention specially about Sajan here. He did bring out the best in that song. I had no clue what ragam it was and all. He said it was "Hamsanaadam". I was happy that there is something worthwhile in it. Even though Madhu rendered the song finally, there is still a lot of Sajan in that song. I owe to him.