Nandakumar Nagarajan

 

I entered CECRI in 1994. Till then I had no clue about any music composer. I just used to hear many songs (hindi / tamil / malayalam) and occasionally sang them without really putting much thought into who composed them or what were the different aspects of a song.

But since I could sing, my ragging was predominantly musical. When I entered the CECRI hostel Iw as told that three names were synonymous with music : Bvs Maruthi (final year), Vidhyashankar Kannan (final year) and Nanda (third year).

Maruthi was largely into classical music (averred by his habit of eternal betel chewing) with an occasional indulgence in light music. My classmate Deepa Srinivasan was a classical singer par excellence and together they were instrumental in keeping the carnatic segment alive in CECRI which featured unnikrishnan and later Kadri gopalnath concerts.

The "music room" of cecri was a room with water constantly trickling down the walls on to the floor from an embedded but cracked pipeline giving an eerie damp smell. Located on the first floor and at a dark corner overlooking the casuarina plantation it appeared to invite many venomous visitors (snakes/ scorpions) which were no rare sights in CECRI.

Unlike Maruthi, Buchi (Vidhyashankar Kannan) and Nanda were fully into light music. With a yamaha keyboard which was only a tad better than a kid's, a battered kettle drum and a worn out maracas, Nanda was the lead singer and Buchi was the keyboard player of the "music troupe".

Nanda was an embodiment of inspiration. A soft-spoken fellow with a gentlemanly singing voice and an introverted romantic, he struck a chord with me instantly. He and Buchi would meet many times in a "music room" and tirelessly practice the songs of their interest (including "Zoom zoom zoom baba"). He made me join the "troupe" and later along with others set the scene for some modest "concerts" at CECRI.

Nanda was the one (without him realizing) who taught me the biggest fundamental of harmony: Three notes make a chord.

He introduced me to :

1. The augmented chorded in the pallavi of "en iniya pon nilave"

2. The surreal chord progression in the pallavi of "kodai kaala kaatre"

3. The major, minor and suspended chords by just "playing" them as he would hum a song along

In many ways Nanda was my first guru in light music. While he himself was a decent player of chords, he preferred to sing. He left CECRI in 1996 and we discovered each other only day before yesterday - after 25 years. And coincidentally we both are married to bengalis

And today you are hearing his wonderful tribute to SPB : the name which we both cherish as the light of our musical souls.