The Golden Era of Dr.IR and Dr.SPB

[genesis]

I think given the strong Telugu brahmin ambience of K Viswanath's world, which reflects in his movies, songs and lyrics, with endless off-the-cuff references to Hindu Gods and the myths associated with them in parallel to the story and situation, atheist Vairam is not exactly comfortable in translating the idioms seamlessly. It is a tough task, admittedly, and probably needed Kannadasan to do justice.

It is not that Vairam doesn't know Ramayana or Mahabharatha or possibly even scriptures and other stories. But it is clearly not inside him as it would be inside someone like Kannadasan or Veturi, lyricist for this song. Veturi probably is able to empathise with the protagonist's cultural background as he is from the same background. The references slip out from him very casually - they don't even seek attention as references.

It looks like Venki is busy or not in a mood to engage. Let me step-in.

You are brain storming all ideas why Tamil lyrics is not as good as Telugu one while ignoring the obvious. The Telugu lyricist got the first chance to write lyrics and most probably got reviewed by director and revised few times. Tamil lyricist had to write song that lip synch well with Telugu lyrics, fit the tune and also make some sense in Tamil. Also we will never know how much of it was translated by Raja himself. There is no wonder it is not as good as Telugu original for you and I wonder about the usage of weird words in Tamil. Salangai Oli songs have very "foreign" sounding words. They could have just released the original as is, like Sankarabaranam.

Of all K.V's movies Sippikkul Mutthu has the best Tamil Lyrics (Vaali?) and another Kamal movie has the worst.