Doore Doore...Doore
Theeram thedi neele pokum
oru vanampaadiye poley...
The sole song of 101 Chodyangal, the film which won many accolades including the National Award for the Best First Film of a director, was also the first step into M-town for Shobin Kannangattu. M K Arjunan master composed the soulful music and P Jayachandran gave a mellifluous rendering to Shobin’s melancholic musings. Through a kid’s eye the song’s lyrics question the nature’s wonders.
With confidence oozing out from his voice and a zest for life, Shobin was not the same 12 years back. He was a sulking youth who was crestfallen due to God’s uninvited fate written for him. An unfortunate road accident in 2002 left him blind for the rest of his life. His optic nerves got damaged and he was diagnosed with ‘heredomacular degeneration’.
“ Doctors said I lost 80 per cent of my vision and can’t be cured as the injury had affected my nerves,” said Shobin, who is currently doing his M Phil in Malayalam from Mahatma Gandhi University, Kottayam.
Asked about his experience with 101 Chodyangal, he said: “I am extremely grateful to Siddharth Siva without whose encouragement, I wouldn’t have reached anywhere. He gave me the confidence to pen the lyrics for the movie.” Though it is for the first time Shobin is penning lyrics for a movie, he has written around 30 devotional and patriotic songs for different albums and has worked with Arjunan Master and singer Unni Menon. “I see Arjunan Master as my guru and a mentor and whatever he had taught me will remain with me for a lifetime. He composed music for my 18 songs and debuting in the film for his music was a blessing,” said Shobin. Some of the notable devotional songs written by Shobin were for the album Bhadrapriya, in 2006; the songs in Narayana Jaya, a devotional album of Lord Guruvayurappan in 2011. “The song beginning with lines Kannane thedumi kannukalil was written during the course of 21 days’ bhajana in Guruvayur. It was praised by Dakshinamurthy. The song was sung by Unni sir and he also sang another song in the album B h a d r a p r i y a , ” Shobin said.
From his early childhood days, Shobin was a voracious reader and liked to read poems of Changampuzha, P Kunhiraman and stories of Vaikom Muhammad Basheer, O V Vijayan and M T Vasudevan Nair. And it was during the years of his seclusion, he became more and more associated with music.
“I always used to write poems and short-stories. And once after the accident I became disheartened but when I read inspiring biographies of Beethoven and Stephen Hawking it boosted me again and I started to write again. Initially it was mostly devotional,” says Shobin, who loves to write melodies, philosophical songs and poems.
Shobin now has a handful of upcoming Malayalam films in his kitty and is amidst bringing out a patriotic song on August 15.
“It is a patriotic song and to get the real flavour of the song, I wrote it by travelling through the length and breadth of Kerala,” said Shobin, who interestingly never uses pen and paper to scribble down his musings.
“Sometimes some lines might come while I am sleeping, and I don’t wake up to write it down. Whatever comes to my heart, I memorise it then and there itself. The lyrics stays with me forever,” said Shobin.