The Golden Era of Dr.IR and Dr.SPB

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#257 மலையோரம் வீசும் காற்று
(பாடு நிலாவே , 1987 )

What a sweet melodious song, sung nicely by our man! IR keeps the orchestration soft - to suit the mildly pathos mood and the song is quite haunting. During the time of its arrival, I didn't even remember the movie's name after getting it recorded on a Sony EF60 cassette. It soothed many a night - listening on headphones during the bed time was such a nice feel! A regular on buses too and I never knew who were the faces on screen. Recently, when trying to get the youtube of 'malaiyOram mayilE, veLaiyAdum kuyilE' for my wife, I stumbled upon the video of this - an outdated Mohan doing his stock expressions / gestures. It was dismal and I think Nathiya also happens to be on the screen (not very sure). Now I know the movie's name - the Mu.Mehta line from the mAn-thEn movie

By this time, I've changed a couple of rooms and ended in the biggest room of the 'Fort view' lodge - a bachelor accommodation place - that had the view of the Tippu's fort in Palakkad and was next door to the 2nd best hotel in that town during those days - Fort Palace Hotel - that had nice rooms, beautiful lawn service, fantastic restaurant & a separate, loud bar. 2 years into the job, I was still a teeto and there had been a number of bachelor parties during this time period and me & my college mate had to undergo the teasing as 'soup ghOshti' during every one of them. Interestingly, my room mate - a senior by 5 years - was not in town most of the time (travel job) and I had that huge room all for myself, apart from the many SS / IW novels he had (buys them to read in hotels during his travels) and the 200+W PMPO music system with dual cassettes, 5 band graphic equalizer etc

He was a fan of TR's music and had almost all his albums & that's how I kept in touch with his scores even while away from TN - it was extremely enjoyable to play 'rAkkOzhi koovaiyilE' & 'indha malliga manasa' on that system! My cassettes get played too but not so much when he was around (as he wanted thALakkozhuppu stuff and mine were mostly 'EdhEdhO eNNam vaLarththEn', 'malaiyOram veesum kARRu', 'sheNbagamE' kinds). It was nice anyways whenever he was around and he was a fan of the "Nalantha" restaurant (what a nice name) and I became a regular there as well. This restaurant used to play TFM some times, Ayyappan songs during the season (that sounded more cinematic than even TFM) and some MFM hits.

Around this time, there was another shift in my musical leanings - though rAsA songs were still the #1 preference, like the way I developed a taste for MJ during college days, started to listen to a lot of recent MFM. I should say it was a glorious period for both movies & music for MF. I even had a whole 90 min cassette recorded with MF songs - including sAgarangaLE, Ah rAthri mAnjju pOyi, vaishAka sandhyE, manjal prasAdavum, neerAduvAn, Araiyum bhAva gAyakanAkkum. Actually, such songs occupied most of my (already limited) available time of music listening. I had HTNI echo cassette in which only two tracks were liked & listened (the title one and the flute based 'do anything') and at that time the quality of echo cassettes was so poor that one cannot use the walkman without a screw driver around (to adjust the head and get sound on both ears).

Looking back, I remember also feeling a little low / gloomy whenever I think of my rAsA listening choices during this time period - already dull 110 V kind of voltage, very tired after long work hours, heavy rain for months etc...'malaiyOram veesum kARRu' kinds only added to it. Well, it was way different from the bright days of school!