Ravis compositions were noted for freshness

KOCHI: Director Hariharan who brought Bombay Ravi to Malayalam remembers the renowned music director, who set the tunes for a number of Malayalam songs. “Right from my childhood, I was a great fan of Bombay Ravi. The songs ‘Chaudhvin Ka Chand,’ ‘Do badan’, ‘Hamraz’ and ‘Nikaah’ were the songs I liked the most.”“Right in the early 80s, when both me and M T Vasudevan Nair thought of a project with the youngsters in the lead roles, I wanted to experiment with the music department. So I asked MT whether we should invite Bombay Ravi to lend music to the movie. Both of us went to Mumbai and met him. We told him about the film and he readily agreed. The first song he composed in Malayalam was the song ‘Manjal Prasadavum Nettiyil Charthi...’ in the movie ‘Nakhakshathangal’. He set the tunes for four other songs in the movie. But the first movie released was ‘Panchagni’ again from our combo. Both the songs ‘Sagarangale’ and ‘Aaa rathri maanju poyi’ were noted for their freshness. Still both are hot favourites among Malayalis all over. ‘Nakhakshathangal’ was released later. K S Chithra won the national award for the best female playback singer and Jayachandran won accolades with the best male singer for the song ‘Kevala Marthya Bhasha’ in the movie. Later, he rendered music to my movies ‘Oru Vadakkan Veeragatha’, ‘Parinayam’ and ‘Mayookham’. For ‘Parinayam’ he won the national award for the best music director.  One thing I noted in Ravi is his versatility in finding tunes. If the director is not satisfied, he would come up with a fresh tune that will impress you like anything. A typical example is ‘Manjal Prasadavum’. I recorded a devotional song that was played at the Guruvayoor Temple and handed it over to him. I said: Raviji, this is one sort of song I’m looking forward to. He smiled and said, “Ok, let me give it a try.” He came up with a fresh tune that has no resemblance to the original devotional song but would make every Malayli music director envy of. That was how ‘Manjal Prasadvum’ was born.One of my greatest grief is that he would not be composing music for my next movie. I’m planning a new movie and two weeks before I rang him up. I told him that I wanted him to give music to this movie also. But he told me that he had serious health problems and was not in a position to undertake another project.”