12th June Part 1 off track

12 June,

For a change, a different topic on this post.

My favorite music director is Ilayaraaja.I am a great fan of his music.He is respectfully called as the Maestro.Those of us who follow the south indian movie scene would be familiar with his music. Here is his official website www.raaja.comTamil is a south indian language and i do not know that language. But that doesnt deter me from listening to a lot of tamil songs as most of
Ilayaraja's evergreen songs are in Tamil.If you are not from India, it is very likely that you will find the concept of songs-in-movies bizzaire. But songs and movies are wed for life
in the indian scenario.Most of the movies made in india have atleast five songs. It is only recent that we are getting to listen non film or private albums in the
popular domain.And the indian movie industry is not naive. The indian movie industry makes around 900 movies an year compared with around 100 movies from
hollywood. Ofcourse hollywood movies capture some 300 billion dollars worldwide and Indian movies make around 3.5 billion dollars.Well the point of this rant is not about bollywood versus hollywood. It is a chant about one of India's most versatile music gurus.I always wondered if I would get to meet my legendray hero. The wish is yet to come true. I wished to see the way he records his music. I
wanted to be a part of his miracle charm which enthralls millions of his fans. Well, i havent been lucky, yet!But, i happened to come across this write up where the author lives a working day of the Maestro. This article is pretty long (22 Pages,42000
characters) and expects the reader to have seen some of the maestro's movies. Basically, the article is for fans. And I enjoyed reading it!http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/sanketh/dump/ilayaraja.html
Way back in 1988, I got a chance opportunity to visit the city of Chennai (then Madras) to meet my relatives. I was very excited as I knew
Ilayaraaja worked and lived in Madras. I made some enquiries and found that he worked at Prasad 70 MM recording theatre (he still works there
and some of his very best movies were made there).In those days, there was no internet and it was very tough to obtain information. So i was
extremely delighted to have made some progress. I managed to convince a cousin of mine to take me to Prasad studios, which he did. We both
waited outside the studio gates for three hours in the scorching sun to catch a glimpse and probably an autograph of the Maestro. The studion
guards repeatedly shooed us away, but we were hell bent. Finally, we met a man who sweet talked us into paying him 25 rupees for an entry to
the studio. Hving taken the money from us, he vanished into thin air keeping us waiting. He never came back.. and we never got to see the
maestro.I still hope i get to see him some day, and to take his autograph.
Sailors of yore used to write messages on paper and put them inside bottles and seal them with cork. These bottles were then thrown to the sea
in the hope that someone would find them and read the contents. The internet is my bottle and the contents of my blog are the pages in the
bottle. I end this page with the hope that someone who has access to Ilayaraaja gets to see it and helps me meet him.
~Murali