Tamil Old Songs

I am a lover of Old Tamil Songs. When I was a kid it was my practice to stand at the door steps of my neighbors home and listen to the gramophone playing beautiful Tamil Music. Yes Sir, no radio but gramophone. To the uninitiated the gramophone, a mechanical device, has to be wound to play a single 78 RPM (78 revolutions per minute) record. The second or reverse side of the record requires another winding. Do you know the old records were cleaned using a rag and kerosene oil. These records had that inviting smell that only polyvinyl chloride (PVC) and kerosene mix can produce. Don’t let that scare you. I got this from Wikipedia. Now I remember these records were known as vinyl but not before Wikipedia told me so.

I had great times listening to M.K.Thiagaraja Bhagavathar, P.U.Chinnapa, Vasanthakokilam, M.S.Suppuletchimi and a host of others.

It does not mean my song appreciation stopped there. I have gone through  MSV, Shanker-Ganesh, TMS, Susila and now ARM, Harish Jayaraj, Yuvan Shanker Raja, Srikanth and Illayarajah.  The only complain is the new songs don’t stick long in memory, it comes and goes. Give me anytime 1980s and 1990s. They are sweet memories.

The idea is to go back to the old nostalgic years and bring back old memories and share with the bloggers and readers. It is just not old music alone but any incident, stories and everything under the sun. Please respond by being a story-teller.

Where do I start? I attended a Tamil school that had only three rooms for the whole school. Students who could not be contained within the building, had to study outside in the shade of a big “rain tree”. It was a raised platform where the first year students sat cross-legged on the wooden structure. We had one reading book and the writing implements were a slate and a marker known as “slate-kuchi”. Anybody can elaborate.

As the children were studying one of the nervy ones urinated. Hence, a stream of water was following from one end of the raised platform to the other. I remember the teacher Teacher Maami (lady) but her reaction, I cannot recollect. Talking about bad conditions in our present day Tamil schools!

Much more to say if I have a response.