I do not know if the song is indeed a pièce par excellence or if I am just allowing music and words to play havoc with my mind a little more freely than I used to. But when the speakers blare “Yello jogappa ninna aramaane” (it is the remixed version of the song that’s doing the rounds lately), I get this rush regardless of where and how preoccupied I am.

This is a popular kannada folk song that is a conversation between a newly-married couple where the wife is demanding her husband (who is Jogappa I presume) for whom she left the warmth and comfort of her maternal home where the palace (aramaane) he promised her really is. So the line quoted above roughly translates to (at this point I know I must apologize for how it is going to sound) “Jogappa, where is this palace of yours?”

However, every time I hear the song, I go away on a tangent at the chorus and the images it evokes in my mind are of a different nature altogether. Before I had heard the words carefully, I thought the song was about a wiser and older person asking someone younger if all the happiness that the latter had promised himself is in fact in sight. For some reason, even after having listened to the words and knowing what the song is about, it is this original impression I had that has lingered.

Whenever I hear the powerful voice of the female lead question “Yello jogappa ninna aramaane”, I get images of joys unacknowledged and wounds untended, all because I was busy planning an “aramaane” to be built in some indeterminate future, and I am jolted to the fact that with adulthood having arrived, I have run out of time to plan and prepare.

It stirs, spins, scintillates and singes – this song. Or maybe I am unduly reading too much into an innocent folk song, maybe it is an overdose of caffeine.

Whatever be the case, here’s wishing luck, peace and contentment to everyone else trying to build their respective “aramaane”.


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The reason for posting this on Schazeb’s blog: him mentioning something about ‘grown-up-osis’ added to the thoughts the song had brought into my head.
But then you know what, Schazeb? What with the kind of fights we have, if we are feeling all adult-ish and old, all we need to do is have a class reunion at IGIDR and we’ll all be 12 year olds again…no time machine needed for that! What say?


POSTED BY PADMA RANJINI SHARMA