Compared to other renowned lyricists in M-town, BK Harinarayanan has to his credit only a few songs, but they are chartbusters nevertheless, like Olanjali Kuruvi from 1983 and Kaattu Mooliyo from Om Shanthi Oshana, establishing him as a promising name.
Did he always want to be a lyricist? “I don’t think so,” he says. “We did not have any such ambitions. As school kids, we looked forward to the holidays to play with our friends and when we studied further, we just went with the flow. That was how most of the students of my times were. I did not have any specific aim”.
A graduate in Physics from Sree Krishna College, Guruvayoor in Kerala, Hari says he always loved reading and writing. “I used to take part in poetry writing competitions and participated in various zonal-level competitions. My uncle was a teacher and he greatly influenced my interest in reading and writing. The aksharashlokam (a kind of antakshari with poems) competitions still help me pen lyrics for movies. Your vocabulary needs to be really good to write for every situation the filmmakers come up with,” he says.
That aside, Mathematics remains his favourite subject. “I was ill during my Physics final exam in college and could not fare well. In the other subjects, I managed to get 70 per cent marks. I had six months’ time for improvement in Physics and to go for post graduation. That’s when I heard of Chartered Accountancy (CA) for the first time”. Another uncle of his who was into Commerce told him CA had much to do with Maths and Hari was happy to take it up. “That is probably the only thing I regret in life. I did not like it even a bit,” he laughs.
A practising Vedic priest, having fun in college was a difficult task for Hari. “I used to conduct marriages and other ritual ceremonies from an early age. For various ceremonies, I had to go to my college teachers’ houses and they all knew me well. In college, I could not move an inch because I was always under the scanner. I was afraid to do anything troublesome,” recalls Hari.
Growing in a field that is in no way related to what he studied in college, Hari offers his take on whether formal education is necessary. “In my case, the answer is no. I am a Physics graduate and I am not doing anything related to what I studied. What you study in school and college does not promise anything in life. It is what you make out of your life that matters. The rest is only a formality”.
On today’s state of affairs in education, he says, “I travelled about 10km to college from my house in Akkikaavu and today people come to my place to study. There are dozens of colleges in Akkikaavu today. If you find an isolated place, the next thing you see is a medical or a dental college springing up. There is an engineering college every five kms. Quality is affected when education is sold like this.”
revathi@newindianexpress.com