Be it dappan-koothu (folk-ish numbers with regional flavour) or melodies, Shabareesh Varma hits the nail when it comes to catchy lyrics appealing to the modern day audience. The lyricist-singer-actor’s ‘Pistah’ song of the 2013 Tamil/Malayalam bilingual Neram and the chartbusters of the recently released Premam have only added to his popularity. His acting roles as John and Sambhu in Neram and Premam, apart from the fact that he crooned five of the seven songs in the latter, have endeared him to the Malayali audience.
During his BCom studies at MES College, Aluva, Shabareesh was hardly known as a lyricist, as some fear factor prevented him from displaying his talent before the public and he was more of a singer at the time. It was only after the success of the song, ‘Pistah’, an assemblage of meaningless words that is a ‘semi-reloaded’ version of a few funny lines that actor Jagathy Sreekumar reels out in the 1980s movie Kinnaram, that Shabareesh came into the limelight.
There was no particular time or space for me to sing. It could be anywhere from the classroom to the college canteen, so that there was always be a group around me. My singing turned out to be a mood changer, most often. I had a feel for creating alliterative and rhyming word play in lyrics. ‘Pistah’ was one such,” he explains.
Alphonse Putharen, director of Neram and Premam, was a senior student in the college, and their close acquaintance, beginning from MES College to the School of Audio Engineering in Chennai and into tinsel town, is what led to the song being included in the film.
To know more about his campus life, some elements in Premam may come handy. “We three, Alphonse, Kichu (of Premam crew) and I were a noted pack in college for possessing a Midas touch when it came to the arts and sports, both for individual and group contests. We achieved a record hat-trick win in all three years of the degree course in events in both fields. Cinema too was a common element that drew us close. While discussing the script for Premam, it was only natural that elements of our campus were included. You can see a Murali sir in the college or a ‘Bhargavi Nilayam’ in the vicinity of the campus, but not a Malar Miss (one of the three leading ladies in the movie),” he smiles.
Bhargavi Nilayam is portrayed as a rented-stay of the college students in Premam. The name has a colloquial reference to a ‘ghost’ house. “May be the resemblance to a ghost house earned it the title of Bhargavi Nilayam. Right from when we joined college, it was called so. The three-bedroom house looked spooky, overgrown with creepers. While it had five or six regular residents, at times it accommodated up to 12 students. This was a place where I too joined my friends occasionally to play cards,” he says
There was an unfulfilled dream Shabareesh had when he graduated in 2006. He was unable to see his debut short-film Arkkan completed. “We were all final years, and a fund-crunch hit us badly towards the end of the course. So it had to be dropped midway.”
In hindsight, he says his college experience was just perfect, though at the time, he did feel the need for some changes. “Those days, I felt our college uniform was unnecessary, but now that seems like a good thing. Likewise, we yearned for campus politics to be allowed, whereas at present I think the choice of the college was right.”
— meera.manu@newindianexpress.com