CROSSING OUT FAVORITES: P B SRINIVAS

 

In my limited years on this planet and with my limited knowledge mostly brainwashed by the waves of the late night radio, the sweetest masculine voice I have ever heard was that of PB Srinivas.

In the age of instant availability, the remembrance of a song is lost, when you can listen to whatever song you want to listen when you want to, a large part of longing for the song is lost. Along with that longing also is lost the widening eyes of discovery of a song and the amazement when the choice of playing your favorite song was reduced to probabilities.

PB Srinivas along with P Sushila and TMS ruled during a time of untroubled easy radio listening, for me personally the three represented the largely un-churned ocean of music in which every song represented a memory or story, but primarily the aforementioned amazement of discovery of a beautiful song.

 

And PB Srinivas and P Sushila are more so close because they have sung my all time favorite song, “Katru Vanthal Thalaisaayum” from Katrirundha Kangal, a simple happy riddle-answer love song that Kannadasan seemed to write out so brilliantly often that it makes you doubt that whether an extra hand of God was involved. It is the happiest song I’ve ever heard and it produces same happiness every time and it is sad that this type of indescribable happiness, I am unable to transfer; esp time when Sushila goes “Naanum…” and PBS joins in to complete the couplet.

The happy thing is that all the songs are still there, the sad part however is that he won’t be there to sing them anymore.

For one who doesn’t know the nuances of music or the theory of ragas how they might affect the spirits of the listener, there are only two type of songs: the pleasant and the unpleasant and all the PBS songs I heard were pleasant.

Even the ones he wrote were.

Death has claimed another favorite.