Offering love duets at the divine altar

Lyrics of film songs loaded with divine names or those drawn from movies bearing saintly titles can easily masquerade as ones belonging to a spiritual genre, though in reality, the verses may dwell on

Lyrics of film songs loaded with divine names or those drawn from movies bearing saintly titles can easily masquerade as ones belonging to a spiritual genre, though in reality, the verses may dwell on a diametrically opposite theme such as passionate romance between the hero and heroine. There’s every chance that children who easily pick up these numbers may croon them on a wrong occasion.

My brother’s wife once took her four-year-old son to an event in a neighbourhood residence organised as part of a religious celebration. Delighted by the child’s presence, the female host of the house asked him if he could sing a bhajan on any God. The kid thought that the lady wanted him to sing a song from the then released Tamil box office hit Saamy (literally meaning ‘God’), an action thriller whose songs became chartbusters. He chose the fastest number from the movie for which actors Vikram and Trisha would dance at breakneck pace.

It went on these lines with the heroine asking the hero, “Shall we elope after marriage or elope and then marry?” As my brother’s son sang these lines loudly with folded hands before the divine altar, the entire hall exploded with peals of laughter. It took quite some time to restore the spiritual ambience in the venue. In the late eighties, my sister’s family living in Coimbatore went to a temple with their threeyear- old son on a day when it was crowded.

A film had then been released and one of the duet songs from the movie became a hit. The lyrics of the duet given life by the hero and heroine in the backdrop of a beach started thus, “Guruvayurappa (Oh, Lord of Guruvayur!), You’re the only witness to my love.” The number sung by SPB and Chithra that was on the lips of every youth of the period and regularly played out on radio and TV had little to do with the deity of Guruvayur except for drawing the God to the witness box in the court of obsessive love between the hero and heroine.

My sister showed the idol of ‘Guruvayurappa’ installed in the temple to her little son and asked him to render any divine song. Instinctively, he shot off, “Guruvayurappa! You’re the witness to my love,” with a fervent pitch. The devotees who had gathered there had a whale of a time, forgetting all their worries and impending petitions to the almighty, at the Kollywood love song aired by the child as an offering to the deity.

Email: vishyvaidya@gmail.com

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