Opinion The killer love song
Kolaveri di deflates the pretentious and the overwritten
Yo boys,this soup song is no flop song. If you dont know the song in question,youve missed possibly the most tweeted,most liked,most viewed song in the recent past. Kolaveri di flashed on YouTube in the second week of November,less than 10 days later it was watched 7,119,008 times. More than seven lakh people have shared it on Facebook. The YouTube map reveals the songs international fan base. India,the Gulf countries,the US and Australia blaze in bright green. South America and China stay pale in comparison. Gujarati DJs have spun a popular version of it. You can even watch women in Japan dancing to the song,complete with rhythmic hip shake and head nods.
But what explains the astronomical popularity of this catchy tune with wacky lyrics that took six minutes to write? Kolaveri di packs star credentials,but that doesnt explain its lure. Those surprised at its popularity include Tamil actor Dhanush,who wrote and sang the song for film 3,Chennai composer Anirudh Ravichander,co-star Shruti Haasan and director Aishwarya (Dhanushs wife and Rajinikanths daughter).
Dhanush might call it absolute nonsense,but this song sustains because of a distortion of sense rather than non-sense. Once you know that Kolaveri means killer rage in Chennai slang,the rest explains itself. This is the Everyman and Everywomans song of jilted love and broken heart. It speaks of failure and rejection but with tongue in the cheek and a wink in the eye. It is about disappointment but also about getting back.
Dhanush,big of smile and scruffy of beard,mocks the Only English world of the white-skinned and the black-hearted. Instead,he sings his own English song where the moon is a rounder moon-u and the night a blacker night-u. It shows that language need not be pure,and how words arrive at meanings through contexts.
Kolaveri di shows the beauty of the spontaneous,illumining the power of the impulsive and the artless. Music,literature,science often arise from exactitude and practice. Or,they might just flit across in that one inspired moment. Kolaveri di bolsters our belief in that uncommon spell of inspiration.
Here,approach trumps technique as the song reaches out to millions across the world. The video itself is no Chammak challo achievement,instead it centres simply on a cute boy making merry in a studio with friends. It is the recording of a song,not a production of it. Like all relevant satire,it deflates the pretentious and the overwritten.
If in the arts (and in life) we bluster for meaning,Kolaveri di emphasises the inherent randomness of the world and emotions. And there is a beauty in the arbitrary. Be it in the chance meeting with a stranger in the airport,the fall of the leaves or the shape of the clouds. Here the randomness forces you to click fingers,sway your head,hum along and,maybe even,rise to your feet. You will listen to it,not once,but twice and it will loiter in your ears.
The chancy has always had a place in science. The notion of randomness is the basis of a whole branch of mathematics,probability theory. In literature,Lewis Carroll probably used it best with Jabberwocky and Hunting of the Snark,with his interlocked and nonce words with no meaning and multiple meanings. In India,Sukumar Ray,father of high-art Satyajit Ray,created a nonsense club at home that was devoted to the ridiculous and practical jokes. His poetry collection like Abol Tabol (1923) created a world of hasjaru (swan plus porcupine),bakachhaap (crane plus tortoise) and girgitia (chameleon plus parrot).
Kolaveri di shows that love,like the hasjaru,is many things. It can be the first love of sweet delusion and soaring hormones,it can be the on-bended-knee kind of love or it can be a cow,cow,holy cow,kind of lovvu lovvu,where you want the person so bad,and want to hold them so tight,though you know s/he has left already.
nandini.nair@expressindia.com
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