Janaki Ram

[Janaki Ram @R_JRam]

#RaajaOnSpotify hey @spotifyindia there was an ad where raaja sir sings the opening of a song and teases us by saying listen to full song in spotify. I subscribed after that ad but cant find out. Please post the ad if you can #raajarules

[Joy Bhattacharjya @joybhattacharj]

The absolute joy! Remember their names -Kiran Pahal, Poovamma Machettira, Prachi Singh, and Vithya Ramraj.

[The Khel India @TheKhelIndia]

Watch this acceleration by Vithya Ramraj to overtake the Chinese athlete in the final leg!

- Helped India win its first Athletics Gold Medal at Asian Games 2026! 🥇

🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥

[SKP KARUNA @skpkaruna]

லதாமங்கேஷ்கருக்கு பாரத் ரத்னா விருது தந்த உங்களுக்கு, அதே தராசில் என்னை வைத்து மதிப்பிட்டு அதே பாரத் ரத்னா தர மனம் வரவில்லை எனில் நீங்கள் தரும் எந்த விருதும் எனக்கு வேண்டாம் என கம்பீரமாக மறுத்த ரோஷக்காரி ஜானகியம்மா. 🙏❤

[$0€@££9 🇮🇳 @sportsfame1]

I saw someone post on here claiming that Ganguly’s only career highlight was waving his shirt at Lord's. This video is for anyone who needs a reminder of who actually transformed the Indian cricket team into the world-beaters we see today.
⁦@SGanguly99⁩ #indiancricketteam

[Malay Krishna @Malay4Product]

S. Janaki Ji refused the Padma Bhushan in 2013 and said she deserved the Bharat Ratna instead. A lot of people found that arrogant at the time.

Most of North India does not know her name. Almost all of India has heard her voice. If you have ever heard an old South Indian film song playing in a shop, a bus, a wedding, it was probably her.

So let me tell you who she was.

Her full name was Sistla Sreeramamurthy Janaki. Born 23 April 1938 in Pallapatla, a village in Guntur district.

Her father was an Ayurvedic doctor and a teacher. She spent most of her childhood in Sircilla. She sang on a stage for the first time at the age of nine.

In her twenties, an uncle told her to go to Chennai and try working with a composer named R. Sudarsanam at AVM Studios. She went.

She got her first film song in 1957. A Tamil film called Vidhiyin Vilayattu. She was 19.

In that very first year, she recorded songs in six different languages.

Six. In year one.

Across her career she recorded around 48,000 songs. In roughly 20 languages. Kannada the most, then Malayalam, then Tamil, Telugu, Hindi, Odia, Tulu, Urdu, Punjabi, Bengali, Konkani, Sanskrit.

She also sang in English, Japanese, German and Sinhala.

Yes, 48,000.

Her career ran about 60 years. That works out to more than two songs a day, every day, for six decades.

Including the days she was sick, travelling, grieving, tired.

While her mother tongue was Telugu, but she could speak and write Tamil, Kannada, Malayalam and Hindi. Malayalis claim her as theirs. Kannadigas claim her as theirs. Tamils claim her as theirs.

All of them are correct. :)

They called her the queen of expression and modulation. Meaning she could change how a song felt with tiny things.

A slight break in a word. A softer breath. She could sound like a village girl in one song and a heartbroken woman in the next and a child in the one after that.

That is why composers fought to book her.

Infact, Ilaiyaraaja Ji had heard her voice while assisting the composer G. K. Venkatesh. When he got his own first film, Annakkili in 1976, he asked her to sing three songs. All three became huge.

That started something. For the next two decades, Ilaiyaraaja and Janaki produced hit after hit. He knew exactly what her voice could do and kept stretching it.

She became the first choice for anything with a village setting, anything that needed rawness.

Ilaiyaraaja sang around 200 duets with her himself.

Three of her four National Awards came from his compositions.

And eventually she became the only singer to have won state awards under all three of the giants. M. S. Viswanathan. Ilaiyaraaja. A. R. Rahman.

Imagine, three generations of music.

Three completely different styles.

She worked across all of them and was excellent in all of them. A 40 year span of staying relevant while the entire sound of Indian cinema changed twice.

Her first National Award came in 1981 for a Malayalam song, Ettumanoorambalathil, from a film called Oppol.

She won four National Awards in all, and 33 State Film Awards. Thirty three.

She also had a Hindi chapter that almost nobody remembers. Bappi Lahiri heard her singing a Hindi song for a Tamil film at Prasad Studio and was floored.

He brought her to Bombay. She ended up singing duets with Kishore Kumar.

Now, her personal life was much harder than the discography.

She married V. Ramprasad in 1959. He backed her career fully and used to travel with her to recordings. He died in 1997 of a cardiac arrest.

Her son Murali Krishna died this January, just six months ago.

She is survived by her granddaughter, Apsara Vydyula, who announced her death on Instagram.

She wrote that to the world Janaki was an iconic voice, and to them she was a grandmother whose warmth and humility they will carry forever.

She ended her singing career in 2017 with a concert in Mysuru. The last song she chose was a Malayalam lullaby, Amma Poovinum.

She picked a lullaby to close out 48,000 songs. :)

Now back to the Padma Bhushan.

In 2013 the government offered it to her. It is India's third highest civilian honour. She said no.

She said it had come far too late. And she said if the country actually wanted to recognise her work, it should have been the Bharat Ratna.

At the time, plenty of people called that ego.

But look at what she was sitting on when she said it. 48,000 songs. Twenty languages. Four Nationals. Thirty three state awards. Six decades. Work with every major composer across three generations. A voice that raised entire regions.

Lata Ji got the Bharat Ratna in 2001. Bhimsen Joshi got it in 2008. M. S. Subbulakshmi got it in 1998.

Janaki was 75 when they offered her the third best one.

She had every right to feel that the country had taken her for granted. And she said so out loud, without an agent or a PR team softening it.

But honestly, what bothers me is that she is being introduced to half the country today, in a condolence tweet, at 88, after she is gone.

She was not obscure. She was not niche. Her voice was in millions of homes for sixty years. She was just South Indian in a country where national fame is still mostly decided in Hindi.

If you have never heard her, do not scroll past this.

Go put on Thumbi Vaa Thumbakudathil. Or Vasantha Panchami Naalil. Or Singara Velane Deva. You do not need to understand the words. You will understand the voice in about ten seconds.

That is the whole point of her. She never needed you to know the language.

[KRK @kamaalrkhan]

Director @ssrajamouli film #Varansi budget is ₹1000cr! He was expecting ₹600CR for Digital rights. But #Netflix offered him ₹110CR only. All the Digital companies have decided in a joint meeting that they will not pay more than ₹150CR for any film. So now Raja Mauli has become #DonaldTrump of Telugu industry. He doesn’t know, what to do and how to do?😜

[Press Trust of India @PTI_News]

VIDEO | Recalling his earlier visit to the Art of Living, actor Rajinikanth (@rajinikanth) brought the house down with his humorous take, said, 'nobody even looked at me'.

#Rajinikanth

[Janaki Ram @R_JRam]

@TrollywoodX @TVKVijayHQ I have always been Thalaivar fan. What Vijay did is so much daring and courageous. Thalaivar missed the bus and Ajith never had the intent I guess

[Janaki Ram @R_JRam]

@TrollywoodX @TVKVijayHQ What bro, why bro?

[Janaki Ram @R_JRam]

@AsokanMuthu @vijay27anand Won by allies

[Janaki Ram @R_JRam]

@bellsbell11 @vijay27anand TVK didn’t lose deposit in any of the 233 constituencies it contested

[𝓼𝓪𝓷𝓴𝓪𝓻 @yansan]

Swami Ranganathananda, the 13th President of the Ramakrishna Math and Mission(1998-2005), on politics and religion.

[MR.Anil @Saffron_Anil_]

ஹிந்துக்கள் இருக்கக் கூடாது, அனைவரும் அந்நிய மதத்திற்கு மாற வேண்டும் என்ற கொள்கையோடு இருக்கும் திராவிட கழகத்திற்கு, சோற்றில் உப்பு போட்டு சாப்பிடும் ஹிந்துக்கள் யாரும் ஓட்டு போட மாட்டார்கள்.!

[iMac_too @iMac_too]

गॉड की मेमरी

[Janaki Ram @R_JRam]

@TheCineprism What series is this ?

[Christopher Kanagaraj @Chrissuccess]

Wow👌

Superstar’s veraion of ‘Kanmani Anbodu’🎶

#Guna

[Revathi @revathitweets]

IT TAKES A LOT TO BE REVATHI…!!!

While the whole country is celebrating the landmark judgement of death penalty for the NINE policemen in the Santhanakulam custodial torture and murder of Jeyaraj and Bennix, you should know about Revathi.

Revathi was a constable in Santhanakulam police station in 2020 when the gruesome incident took place. She was the key witness and the sole reason for all the arrogant officers getting punished today.

The police men involved in the brutality were all big men, Revathi was a small time constable. But she stood unperturbed.

When Magistrate Bharathidasan, who initially investigated this case, arrived at the Santhanakulam police station he had no clue that constable Revathi will help close the case.

"Sir, I will tell you everything, every detail, the truth that is being hidden. But I am the mother of two young girls... can you guarantee the safety of my children and my job?", she had asked the magistrate.

Revathi was on night duty when the cruel incident took place. She witnessed the brutality being inflicted on Jeyaraj and Bennix and narrated every single detail.

She told how SI Balakrishnan, inspector Sridhar and SI Ragukanes, kept beating the father and son with whatever they found, and how they also stomped on their private parts with their shoes.

She remembered their screams. She saw how the officers took pause only to sip alcohol while the victims withered in pain.

When the father and son were semi-conscious, unable to bear it, Revathi asked Jayaraj if he needed anything. She gave him coffee which the officials spilt it immediately.

Revathi couldn’t stand the brutality but being a woman constable there was only so much she could do. She then offered water to the victims.

The so called policemen then stripped Bennix naked, tied his hands and legs separately, and beat him up. They did the same to Jeyaraj. Revathi couldn’t bear the pain of their screams, she left the place.

According to the postmortem report, their entire back was skinned, iron rods were inserted and they bled from their rectums.

When the case was being discussed by the media, when even the CM of Tamil Nadu tried to brush it away, Revathi knew the truth.

The police officials, cleaned up the station of any DNA evidences, erased the CCTV footage and warned everyone to shut-up and not try to become heroes.

But Revathi didn’t just narrate the entire ordeal in exact detail…she even helped the investigating officials obtain other crucial information.

Despite everything being cleaned, Revathi gathered DNA of the victims in crevices of the walls and floors, on furniture and other objects.

She was questioned, threatened, intimidated, bribed and even abused. She stood by justice. She had to go against her colleagues for justice of comman man.

In the time when police force is often looked upon with reasonable suspicion, there are people in uniform like Revathi.

Today court could pronounce death sentence to nine police officers - only because one woman decided she will stand by truth!

Kudos to Revathi, an amazing woman and an absolutely fabulous police officer.

The world is a better place because of her courage.
Salute ma’am 🙏🏽🙏🏽🙏🏽

[Black cat @Cat__offi]

Match day😂
#RRvCSK

[Janaki Ram @R_JRam]

@PraseethTweets @natrajpvb @ThisIsAnantha Exactly

[Janaki Ram @R_JRam]

@jigarmehta165 @thekaipullai Also another crux - he wants today’s students who are tomorrow’s officers to be devoid of corruption and kindles a reform movement.