క్రాంతిగాడి తొలి "music-లవ్వు" story

There used to be a telugu songs program called 'Chitralahari ' which was telecasted once in a week by Doordarshan when i was in school.Thats the only primary gateway to telugu film music in those days to me. I used to stay at my ammamma's house most of the times.As there was no other colour TV available around ,all my colony friends and the neighbours used to throng our house everyday. And when the program was Chitralahari,they were always punctual :) . Ontime.

That day. Chitralahari day. Everybody ,as i said ,arrived on time ..sat on floor .....some leaned against wall....some leaned against door...totally relaxed :) .Festive time for everyone. The maximum people were MY friends. I sat with Radha(krishna), Nagu(nagabrahmam, 3-4 yrs senior to me) watching the show. After 2 or 3 songs.. there came a song....

The way the song began...wow.....the crystal-clear, beautiful, enchanting begining itself took our breath away.And the lovely voice of the singer was so good. Me and Nagu watched the whole song in awe. After that song..a few more songs were shown. But I was still stuck there in the previous song. It was something new which i never experieced before.

A few days gone.. . I didnt forget the song yet. The tune was still lingering in my mind but very feebly. I think it was saturday or sunday. I was walking in the quarters where nagu stayed. He suddenly started humming the first few words with that tune.And that made me remember the tune properly. Oh..Enchanting!!! And for the next few days that was the only song i sang (Dont worry..I sang to myself..not publicly :) ) all the time..at school..at home..streets...bathroom.... everywhere under the sun.

After nearly 2 years:

There was one function at my ammamma's house that summer. summer holidays for me. Enjoying the season :) A few days after the function...my mamaiah brought one of his friend's taperecorder. We didnt have one at our house.It was a small one though. He brought some cassettes...and in that bunch of cassettes...it was there. The cassette of the movie ,in which there was that song i listened long time back..around 2 years ago, was there. KRANTHI IN EUPHORIA :)

I used to pick that cassette and look at the case. WOW...How beautifully the title was wriiten in telugu . ROJA .The song I watched on TV two years ago was "chinni chinni aasha" :). i felt even more happy whenever i read the name AR RAHMAN. My first his-word-encounter with him. Whenever my mamaiah went out..the only one cassette that was played was ROJA. I never even looked at the other ones. After i pressed on ... I ,with full attention, used to listen to that song completely immersed.Every bit of the song..every second...mesmerized me. Its a different world to me. Never before experience.

Sometimes .. when my mamaiah was not around..i would just lay on floor with no bedsheet or mat(the floor was sometimes so cool :)) and with only a pillow supporting my head...and close my eyes... while the cassette was getting played. In the initial seconds I used to attentively observe the music of the songs...and everytime i did so..my heart palpitated heavily. Never before it happened that way...and after that..i would fall asleep like in trance. My mamaiah ,when he was back,finding the tape in ON though the playing was done(No Auto-stop )..would wake me up saying in a stern voice "rey ..entraa...alaa padukunnavu...kaneesam off cheyavchhu kadaa padukunemundu". haha.I would have turned it off if i knew when i was about to sleep. But i didnt know.I didnt know when i slept and i didnt know when my heart got calmed from its heavy throbbing. After a few days...tha tape was gone. :( . edupokkate thakkuva.

Days were rolling. Still in schooling,...as i said we didnt have any taperecorder....but I seriously wanted to buy that cassette.The reason/thoughts : "I dont know how long it takes to have a tape at my house..but it may really take a long time.....and what if they stop that ROJA cassette production later..Oh..no!!!......but I donot have any money to buy one ". I was so naive :)

2 more Years later:

Finished tenth class. Like many others...one day...I went to the other town to attend a one-hour-entrance-exam for some intermediate college.After the exam.I came out of the hall. Ennallanuncho manasulo vunna korikaki rekkalochhina vela.ROJA audio cassette knali.That was the first time i had some money in my pockets :)I could buy a cassette and still could afford bus fare to go back. :) .I was walking on the roads still pondering ... to buy or not to. Couldnot make up my mind. The biggest factor restraining me was : " though i buy..where shall i hide it. Hmm.not an easy task. What would i say to my parents if they found my hidden treasure and waht if they asked my logic behind buying when there was no tape to play it." I stood before a music store. What do u think? Did i go in? Did i buy ? Any guesses?


P.S: Why this post now? :)

Everytime AR's muisc is slated for release... its exhilaration for me...and yeah...its because .. his new movie album is getting released ...you know it too..Its JHOOTHA HI SAHI. I LOVE RAHMAN kadaa !!! . So..oka rangelo waitng ...yama yama curious......eppudeppudu vindaamaa ani..!!!! :) hello !!!! naaku vinapadindi..evaro anukuntunnaru akkada "konni jeevithaalu inthe.." ani. Who's that ???? ;)

Masters of Indolence : Dreamers of Excellence :)

Am goin to tell about four guys who were the masters of lethargy ..never worked hard while in their engineering but always dreamt of securing excellent percentages in exams. Its a paradox..isnt't it? . However bad they had written exams ,nothing would stop them from expecting good marks on the results day.They never looked back to analyse what went wrong . They always celebrated by goin to movies in either Sivaparvathi or Vishwanath theatre after exams got finished. Not for their excellent doing in exams which they never did . They celebrated just because they completed the big task of FINISHED-THE-EXAMS. :)

Here are their styles of studying / preparation :

RAMESH:

He can be called Superman bacuse atleast he always made an attmempt to study from the day one of the semester which was an insurmountable task for the rest of the three. Everyday he would freshen up himself in the evening and would sit before the table which was placed at the window. So on the study table ,there would be big big books opened which he picked up for that day to study. That was a standard scene .No change in any day. He attempted to study everyday , missing not a single day. But that scene was more like a template. The table, the books , the opened page numbers, the chair..everything would be static. the only dynamic object going in and out of that template would be Ramesh.Everyday he would enter into that template thus completeing the picture perfect :) . He would just sit there looking through the window at the people going to KPHB colony(popularly just called Colony), or talking to his roommates or listening to radio or looking into the skies or watching ocassionally some cricket match in the ground etcetera etcetera. Whenever I ,along with sreedhar or kishan or both , went to colony,theparadise for JNTU hostelers, there was not a single day when ramesh missed us wishing 'hi' from the window of his room no. 201,Second floor,New hostel. :) He had great dreams to secure excellent percentages and he TRIED to study from the day one of the semester. But the saddest part was he was not that serious most of the time :) . He was better than the other three as he might have got something into his mind everyday. I guess his serious preparation would get started atleast a fortnight before the exams.

KRANTHI (hmm..its me) :

Donot dare to imagine that i study form day one. Like everybody else of us , even I wanted to get good marks. But I had this great AOP (ART-OF-POSTPONEMENT). I never planned/thought of studying daily. But someday,by some quirk of fate, though i felt like reading something i would carefully push the idea to the next day. "repu chuuddhaamle..lets go to colony ". My studying or preparation would start from the day before the exam and would end once the exam got finished. I had one study chair and a big pad. That would be my throne for that exam period. My tension would reach its pinnacle at around 4 30 pm on the day before the day of the exam and my preparation would start at 5 pm.I would sit on that my throne ,place pad on it, pick the syllabus sheet and the related books,pen and some paper and study till 7 30 pm without a break and with jumbo jets flying from my heart to brain all the time. After dining, I woud come back to room ..read for a while.... and then head towards room no 201 picking some books .

KISHAN :

kishan's preparation also mostly would start in the afternoon .No need to mention that this afternoon was the day before exam only. He was not the type Sit-Focus-Study-for-longtime. He would open the book, read for a while gets self-satisfied for his accomplishment :) and would keep the book away. He would tell to himself : "okay..i finished this...now i must take a break..aftert that i will start again...hammayya ". Thene he would chat with his roommate Anil or ramesh or go to colony with Anil . Sometimes he would get horrified and panicky when he stumbled upon some CT(college transfer)guys accidentally in the corridors of the hostel beacasue they study all the time in such a way that they could burn their books with their intense reading .He used to say to me "enkamma..vaallentraa babu..alaa chaduvutaaru..bhayamesthundi" :). The best part was: He might have had volcanoes erupting in his heart thinking about preparation but he always seemed placid to me :) .. In the evening he would go to colony... mostly with anil ....and after coming back form there and after dining, he would knock the door of ramesh's room 201 with a book in his hand :)

SREEDHAR :

He never hated the educational system in india MORE on anyday THAN HE DID on this the day-before-exam. :). His break-point to read would not come that early. He would just roam and roam in the hostel postponing the herculean task. All the four years sreeedhar and I stayed together all the time.Roaming in the colony, watching movies,playing cricket inside the hostel , JNTU style of chatting(famously called sollesukovadam ,christened by Anil. Anil's words "...ala roomki vachheyi ..sollesukundaam :)) .. After first year he went to the new hostel(godavari hostel) while i prefered to stay back in the old hostel(krishna hostel) inspite of his asking. .So obviously, sreedhar had only one place to go whenever he felt like going somewhere : my room :).

So..during exams he would come during that 5 to 7 30 period and would talk to me and crack jokes with my roommate innocent(looks like so ) krishna. Krishna used to go crazy during exams. Krishna would start readin from the day one. Very serious.Very hard working. Inspite of that he used to get tense and would go berserk whenever sreedhar tried to make fun at that time. I used to laugh but not whole-heartedly as there was already an exertion of one billion pascals of pressure on me. Sometimes sreedhar would... pick one book ,flip the pages ,keep it back again. The most intriguing part was: When he studied he wouldnt just read. He would try to understand the whole concept thoroughly.Not like me/us.For example,if there was some circuit or stucutre that he was unable to comprehend he couldnot just go to another topic.He would work on it or he would ask a million people until he found the solution. He would do that on this day too.He was like that and we three were not like that,fortunately :).Fortunate because if we 3 adopted that policy we could never finsh the syllabus. Sreedhar & I used to do our supper at mess hall together and finally walk towards ramesh's room 201.

201 : The haven

You might be wondering why all the roads for the three of us were taking us to Rameshs room.i.e 201. haha. Even we didnt know .We knew ..well...but not exactly :) . At different points of time we three would arrive at ramesh's room 201 . His roomate sateesh from EEE would be there studying seriously like a yogi.Sateesh would sneak out of 201 with his books within 15 minutes of our entry into that room becuse he always knew what was about to happen in a few minutes .We three never ever observed his going out :) until ramesh told us.Okay... By the time we were there Ramesh would be seen in his mosted favourite template ie.sitting before his desk which i told you in the begining. As our primary intension was to STUDY(?) we would go there with our bulky books. For a few minutes everything would seem optimistic considering that we were studying. Note the point: sreedhar hadnot started his preparation yet. He had one habbit:He playfully twiddles the tip of his shirt-collar with his fingers. so,he would just sit there flipping the pages of the book and twiddling the collar .

And after a while sreeedhar would start venting his frustration :) " cha cha...what the hell is this subject. why is this book this big.Do we really need these gigantic ones. look at those ECE, CSE books ..so small and morover delight to study. Ramesh,kranthi... u tell me . did any of our sirs teach genuinely during our classes. No.Never. When they didnt know for themselves ,what could they teach us? Why should we study all this theory.No practical knowledge in these.Whats the use of these in our life. Hell with this education system in India. No knowledge enhancing style of teaching. cha cha.......". We used to say something just as an act of reciprocating as we were already in our own tensions and were in no mood to make a plan to change the educational system of India :) . It would go on for a while. Then Ramesh would turn towards kishan and mock at him "entraa kishan...anthaa ayipoyindaa preparation" He used to scare kishan " Kishan.........nuvu book ayipoyaavule..neekemi raadu" ..haha.

Kishan ,in his style, would read one topic ,for a while and then would set his own alarm saying "okay..i finished this.Its hightime for a break now..just ten minute break...and then i start again".And then he would go into a relaxing mode. he would either go out or stay there only speaking to sredhar. From his desk, Ramesh would smile satirically at kishan. You might be wondering what i was doing during all this time .Amid inermittent laughing, I used to try hard to focus while this whole thing was going. I coudnot concentrate among these discussions of me & my friends. Sometimes.. found success i.e focussed . But, it would last only for a few minutes :)

what next ? :

At some point...we would keep our books aside and start enjoying the peril we were in. Ramesh would say something funny and we three burst out laughing. He even would immitate some sirs and some classmates including girls. Kishans curiousity would rise high when the discussion came to some classmate whom he always thought weird and would say something like "vaadentraa baabu..." and I used to observe Kishan closely that time :) . i used to bring forth the over-action things of some classmates :) . . Sreedhar would also remark about other classmates.His main target always was one specific girl (anybody remember?)and we all would laugh and laugh and laugh. No matter what...the three topics that would come up for sure were 1. Brahmanandam 2. Chitram Bhalare Vichitram 3. Thanikella bharani in Money (especailly me and kishan enjoy this topic-3 more ) . andaram padi padi navvutaamu.

This would last till 11 pm. Kishan usually would sleep early.. so ,in his signature style, would set the alarm at four 'O clock for the next morning and leaves 201. Sreedhar after venting everything and after laughing to the heart's content would try to open the book finally.Me ,not able to concentrate and tension building up on the other side would try to make a move to leave 201 and get back to my room .When i plan to leave , ramesh used to say "edo chaduvudaamani vachhavu...as usual...ikkada chadavadam neevalla kavadamledu kadaa...haha...enjoy " .And after everyone of us gone, ramesh too would try to get back to some serious study. In my room i used to study till 1 30 (2 am ,maximum) and then would set an alarm at 6 am for the next day.

Sreedhar deserves a very special mention. He was a perfect DARK KNIGHT.He would start his preparation at around 11... 11 30 in the night and he never did sleep a wink. No way. He always did a perfect 100 percent night out and directly came to exam. Make a note he used to come without brushing :) . Such a serious preparation .While in preparation ,even if there were some equations or diagrams or derivations or some mathemetical problems he never used a pen/paper to practice. He would just read those and would remember everything in the exam.


Next morning...from 6 am ..i used to recap what i read last night .

Kishan would wake up at 4am and continue his studying.

Ramesh too would wake up early and ...continue his.

And seedhar,as i said, No sleeping all the night....would directly come to exam hall with exuded confidence and with a scale in his hand :)

Thats the story of four students who always wanted to get good percentages but never made an attempt to achieve that.

Many a time, we felt guilty about our acts related to marks,pecentages,drops etcetera. But we never learnt any lesson. The only best part was,by the end of engineering, we all got 70 plus percentages :)

adios
Kranthi