He started my journey towards betterment. If it had not happened at that point through him, it might have happened in a different manner by someone else. But it did happen to me by him and I am sharing that journey here. It is okay if you stop reading here.
For those who continue,
It all started on December 2013. I was in my tenth grade.
Beginning (2014-2016):
Two movies were releasing that weekend, Biriyani and Endrendrum punnagai and during that tuesday's lunch break, two of my friends were fighting over which one to watch. This happens every time. I seldom pay attention to these because I found fighting over something that is not going to happen is meaningless. But this time I was keenly listening to it. It was partly due to the boring maths class before the break (in that state even a fly's buzzing would have interested me) and partly because the guy arguing for biriyani was a close friend of mine and he was putting out arguments only about the music director, that it was his hundredth film. He claimed that music director to be 'vera-level' and he started singing lines of 'edirthu nil'. I had seen its lyric video previously on sun music, so I was able to get the context. Suddenly my class teacher came shouting 'Idhu class ah illa meen market ah' (is this a class or a fish market) and we started eating like chamathu kids without uttering a single word after that. For the rest of the day I was hooked up with those two lines he sang and kept singing it within me. Two lines for 5 hours, in my highest pitch, in my lowest voice.
That evening in home, I went straight to youtube in my computer and played the whole song for the rest of the day. I was going crazy over the song. For some reason I thought yuvan was looking like me in that video. I started behaving like him. I wore my oversized black t-shirt, I wore my titan-zoom watch, I uncombed my hair and started singing along with my highest pitch, medium voice all night.
The next day, I went to this guy and told about how much I liked the song. He took pride for it as if he had composed the song. The following week he started giving me some of the famous songs of yuvan. One at a time. Apparently they were my childhood favourites. Loosu penne, kan pesum vaarthaigal, en kaadhal solla, vemegam etc etc.. Every song made me think 'what this song is composed by yuvan ah? this also va!?'
Gradually I was educated on his collaborations, trendsettings, awards and specialities for the rest of the year. He gave me a white toshiba pendrive which had all his songs (even from the movies that were not released). It was his brother's friend's pendrive and I understood where he is getting all these information from.
We started jamming his most unpopular songs which we had no idea, if not for the brothers'. Obviously our friends started getting irritated because they hadn't heard those songs and we sucked at singing. We started preaching yuvan. How underrated he was, how unnoticed his works went. We realised hard-work shouldn’t go in vein and we took it as a responsibility to spread it. We would suggest songs to others. Even if by mistake they admitted to have liked it then we would go on saying back stories of that song, similar songs by him, the award he was supposed to get for that song... We pretty much did what all google was supposed to do.
No one:
We: After singing a song that no one else has an idea about, in our shitty voice.
'Thats yuvan for you' 'Hey y'all yuvan for yau' 'heyall-yuvan-yeahhh ''hell-all-yuv-yeah' 'hallelujah'. It became our Hallelujah. I was pastor Joshuah and he was Avarachan. We would lay out plans on what song to speak about(preach) everyday. This started spreading. Our juniors knew it, our seniors knew it, our teachers kew it, everyone knew it. When the rest of the high school kids in the world were talking games, movies, heroes, books, porn, gadgets and bikes we were talking Yuvan. In our class there was rarely a vijay-ajith fight. But there were a number of yuvan-anirudh or even yuvan-rahman fights. It went to a point where people started hating yuvan because of us. But we didn’t care. We carried on with our business.
Over Obsession(2016-2018):
We completed school and went to different colleges. My college had an equal portion of other state people as well. The number of people familiar with tamil film music was only a handful. I had a huge responsibility of 'yuvanizing' them all alone. As a first step I started hating other music composers. A perfect analogy would be the members of my family whatsapp group. According to them to prove your loyalty to your religion you must spread hatred on the others. For them it was hinduism, for me it was yuvan. Ironically, it was not a good time to have entered the mission. Yuvan was at his worst form ever. He hardly did any good films. I considered it as a test to my loyalty and I passed it with flying colours. Yes, I watched AAA, Yakkai, Kadamban, Sathriyan, Semma bodha aagathey and almost every shit of a movie he composed in theatre. For around one and half years the only music I heard to was his. I got a new mobile and the first thing I did was to go to starmusiq.com, search yuvan shankar raja and download all his music in alphabetical order of films. Anirudh was at his peek at that time. My friends went crazy over the freshness of his music. I started hating him without even listening. For every bits of his music that I heard from my friends I would find a similar tune in some other yuvan song and complained that he lacked originality. Worst of all I began judging people by the songs they heard. I hated them if they liked anirudh.
I found out there were many like me in Facebook. I joined yuvan fans clubs. I spammed stories. I got yuvan t-shirts. I joined whatsapp groups. Since he was actually going without address all we were able to do was to hold on to his past works. Luckily I started following cinema-son from fully filmy (I liked him at that time) after his video 'yuvan will never be back because he was always here'. He did this series called fully-frank. He did an interview with Selvaraghavan as a part of it. It was two hours long. I hadn't watched any of his films previously, but I watched the whole interview just to hear what he says about yuvan. I did the same with all his other collaborators' interviews as well. At that time I didn't know that it was the only good thing I had done in my life until then.
Me and cinema(2018-2019):
Almost all of the frequent collaborators he worked with were great film makers. Vishnuvardhan, Ram, Selva and Kumararaja to name a few. I ended up liking the way they talked about films in the interviews. I got to know cinema before even starting to watch. I started with 'Aaranya Kaandam'. I saw the film after seeing various analysis and discussions about it. So I was able to understand the depth of the film. (Previously I watched only tamil mass hero films and that was cinema to me). I wanted more like AK and started to watch all the acclaimed movies that yuvan was a part of. My roommate was a good film buff too. With him I started watching a few hollywood films. The first non-tamil film I watched is 'Edge of Tomorrow' and straight after that it was 'Prestige'. It was a huge transition for me within a month from vedalam to prestige. I was drooling over cinema like a kid. I found this group called 'heart of cinema' in FB. They needed people to manage their page, that’s when I joined them. It was a new page with hardly 50 or so followers. The team consisted of four members including me. They were the ones who introduced me to cinema for all over the world starting with 'Bicycle Thieves', 'Seven Samurai' and good films from within the country or at times within the state itself. I saw 'veedu' by Balu mahendra and was shook by it. Later I felt guilty when I knew Balu mahendra's 'Thalaimuraigal' was also released on the same day when Biriyani released. I understood good cinema was and is always present around me and I was staying away from it. I learned a lot through films that my college or parents would never have taught me. One such example is, if not for a huge revolution in tamil cinema, I would never have known about the casteism happening all around me.
I got so much into cinema. I was even thinking of making one. I didn't say this to anybody. I had a basic storyline for a short film and it kept on adding layers and meanings to itself for the next one year. I didn't realise it happening. It was such a natural process. It grew into me. After a year I got a chance to explore the one year long desire. A friend of mine who was good at photography, after reading few of my amateur blogs on films asked me to write a story for a short film and told we will do it together. I started thatti-ezhupping the story that was inside me for almost a year and somehow in a 6 month span, after a lots of beginner struggles and overcoming laziness, the boy who was fondly watching AAA in theatre ended up making a short film. However I wouldn't say it as a good film or anything but for me it was an achievement. I was too ambitious and tried too many things. Many didn't understand the film, not because it was complex and all but I didn't write proper screenplay, it was not clear enough. I learned a lot both while making it and after. My friend did a great work with camera. He even won a price for it. Yes, my film got an award for cinematography and I was the happiest man on the earth.
I became busy with films and surprisingly gave yuvan a rest. It gradually ended up as a huge break. Yes, me and yuvan were on a break for almost one full year. I rarely listened to music. Even when I did, it was not yuvan. I consciously tried to stay away from yuvan at times. I didn’t want my judging, blindly obsessed and one sided self to surface again. I began listening music other than tamil film music. I became very fond of pink floyd and Santosh Narayanan. One day spotify's algorithm took me to anirudh's 'Kanave Kanave' on shuffle. I loved it. I was listening to that on repeat and other good songs of him. I loved his vibe. At that point I realised one very basic thing in life, You need not hate anyone to prove your love for someone. Love and hatred are not two sides of a seesaw.
The way home:
After one plus year of staying away from yuvan, spotify did its thing once again. It played 'paravaiye engu irukkirai'. I was in a very good mood that day and gave it a chance. Midway through the song when Raaja sang 'Indha pul poondum, paravaium naamum podhadha', I was crying. Crying hard. I've never felt that good for crying in my life. When he sang 'mudhal murai vaazha pidikkudhe', I felt home.
I would say that the break made me understand the actual beauty of the song. It is okay to take a break, It is okay to go tough on yourself for the past, realise it won't take you anywhere, learn to accept it and learn to go easy on yourself. Maybe all the events were just a coincidence and the previous one had nothing to do with the next. Maybe yuvan had nothing to do with it at all. If not for him, life would have found another way and things may or may not have been the same. But at this moment I would like to show my gratitude to yuvan and I wrote this.
Happy birthday Yuvan.
