𝓐𝓲𝓼𝓱𝔀𝓪𝓻𝔂𝓪 𝓑𝓱𝓪𝓻𝓰𝓪𝓿

Nature & Animal lover | Photography | MBA @Quanticschool l Sustainbility enthusiast

[Shekar Iyer @SHEKARSUSHEEL]

😄😄😄

[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.

[The Kaipullai @thekaipullai]

I was listening to Illayaraja songs on my drive today and I realized a few things about Illayaraja and his music and why he probably is one of the greatest music directors of all time

1. The songs stay in your sub conscious memory even if you have listned to the song once, And if someone even mentions that song in passing, you remember the movie, the setting, the context, the tune everything, even if the movie had released before you were born.

OTOH you don't remember any of the songs made by Anirudh and other latest music directors

2. You will never tire of Illayaraja's songs. You can listen to them on the loop, and they still sound as amazing as they did when you listened for the first time. You never get tired of them

With today's song, as pulsating as they may be while you listen to them, you want to move on from them as quickly as possible.

3. Illayaraja ensured lyrics of a song got its due respect and position in the song. Which in turn inspired lyricists to give their best. They wrote songs with great depth and meaning, which were then elevated thru his music.
Thereforr most Illayaraja songs made you think and introspect

Today, lyrics are meant to be a background buzz, meant to be drowned by a cacophony of electronic noise and beats. So they lyricists have nowadays stopped trying. I mean what's the point of writing good lyrics, when all people care about are the beats.

4. Illayaraja never lost consistency. He was as good in 1976 as he was in 2016. He never lost his musical acumen and never sounded repetitive. Is there any music director who gave a diverse album like Hey Ram 24 years into his career? You already can't distinguish a Beast From a Vikram from a Jawaan of Ani in the 14th year of his career.

Truly Illayaraja is a maestro who was probably sent by God to make music so that plebians like us got some peace and happiness.

[Katyayani Shukla @aibytekat]

He literally explained the Black Coffee Theory and why it changes how you approach life.

[BALA @erbmjha]

There is only one movie in the history of Indian cinema that I know of which has displayed the sheer scale in which we connect with our Devtas. #Kantara and #KantaraChapter1 are truly a game changer when it comes to displaying our culture not just on a surface level, but what actually lives inside us.

Before this movie, people were quite hesitant to accept it, but this movie has let us embrace our regional ethos without being labelled as superstition.

This is the change that Kantara has brought, and for that I will appreciate Rishab Shetty.

[World of Statistics @stats_feed]

BREAKING: 🇮🇳 Gukesh Dommaraju becomes youngest world chess champion! ♟️

[ISRO @isro]

Chandrayaan-3 Mission:
'India🇮🇳,
I reached my destination
and you too!'
: Chandrayaan-3

Chandrayaan-3 has successfully
soft-landed on the moon 🌖!.

Congratulations, India🇮🇳!

#Chandrayaan_3
#Ch3

[𝓐𝓲𝓼𝓱𝔀𝓪𝓻𝔂𝓪 𝓑𝓱𝓪𝓻𝓰𝓪𝓿 @WaterWhizzy]

Unfair 🥲 It's a tie 🫠

[♬·♪·✰ℤ𝕖𝕟𝕞𝕦𝕘𝕙𝕚𝕤𝕙𝕢 𝕄𝕒𝕤𝕥𝕒𝕟𝕒✰·♪·♬ @YouGoManWhyMe]

Mukkala Mukkabla (Kaadhalan):https://t.co/BbDnlU01fq

Varaha Nadhikarai (Sangamam):https://t.co/Wr8fgC5B7O

[Noah Smith 🐇🇺🇸🇺🇦🇹🇼 @Noahpinion]

This is just an incredible graph. India is making absolutely amazing strides against poverty.

(ht @scienceisstrat1)

[Guneet Monga Kapoor @guneetm]

We just win the first ever Oscar for an Indian Production!

Two women did this! I am still shivering ♥️🐘♥️🐘♥️

[Netflix India @NetflixIndia]

Whispers turn to roars!
THE ELEPHANT WHISPERERS JUST WON AN OSCAR 🥳🥳🥳

[Roja Selvamani @RojaSelvamaniRK]

Raghu & Ammu 🐘 your whisper just got us an #Oscars congratulations @guneetm @EarthSpectrum for winning the best short documentary for such a beautiful documentary #elephantwhisperer 🐘

[A.R.Rahman Loops @ARRahmanLoops]

On this day, 14 years ago... @arrahman 🔥

https://t.co/5cht9HfQIz

[Vedic School @SchoolVedic]

Today is Mahashivaratri, dedicated to Bhagavaan Shiva & Maa Parvati, who protect all beings and lokas, and are worshiped by all devas & asuras.

नमः शिवाभ्यां पशुपालकाभ्यां जगत्रयीरक्षणबद्धहृद्भ्याम् ।
समस्तदेवासुरपूजिताभ्यां नमो नमः शङ्करपार्वतीभ्याम् ॥१२॥ - उमामहेश्वरस्तोत्रम्

[Swaminathan P @swami2005]

Spotted in Kapaleeswarar sannidhi street, Mylapore, Chennai … the Tennis legend Bjorn Borg. His son is playing Chennai open.

[Curiosity @MAstronomers]

Helix Nebula, also known as Eye of God

[Curiosity @MAstronomers]

Whirlpool Galaxy ❤️

[Curiosity @MAstronomers]

The Carina Nebula, 7500 light-years away.
📸 NASA