Snehidhane ??? Yearning for a Secret Friend

This probably has to be my toughest post ever. For a song that came out in the 2000 in the Alaipayuthey, it shows no signs of aging at all, and this probably has to be my all-time favorite song, with it topping the total number of listens by me for a song ever, for sure.

First noticed in the Bru Coffee advertisement for Alaipayuthey, it sure had a charm in the rendition or rather a loving utterance of the word ‘Snehidhane’ itself. The context is where a wife addresses her husband as a secret friend, while they are married but living separately.

In contrast to Sadhana Sargam’s ‘sweet’ rendition, there is another male voice for breaking this slow momentum, and I saw it was Srinivas (I was surprised at this choice), with yet another form of A.R.Rahman’s experimentation.  With numerous instruments used by Rahman in this song, and perfectly complimenting Vairamuthu’s excellent lyrics, this song has a subdued feel of yearning accompanying it. With some lovely anklet sounds featuring in most parts of the song (especially first interlude), this is quite aesthetically picturized (for most part) and choreographed by Mani Ratnam and Saroj Khan respectively.

While I still try to figure out why the song found such a fan in me, I think it is the overall feel of the song, which definitely floored many fans like me. While the more popular Vaseegara had a similar feel, this one still was a notch higher in terms of composition and to some extent rendition and lyrics too. Madhavan and Shalini made a perfect just-married couple on screen, and the expressions of both of them in this song added a lot of weight to this song.

For Sadhana Sargam, this was a big break in Tamil, and she soon became my favorite female singer of all time (thanks to A.R.Rahman for many songs including Udhaya Udhaya and Naina Neer Bahai). A pity that she didn’t win a National Award for this song (maybe due to some mis-pronunciations in the rendition).

Lyrical cuteness at its best ‘Undhan chattai naanum pottu alaiven, nee kulikaiyil naanum konjam nanaiven, uppu moottai sumappen’ (I’d roam around wearing your shirt, I’d get wet while you have a shower too, I’d carry you on my shoulders…)

Alaipayuthey is a classic album and a movie, and we’ll surely have a couple more posts about other songs in the movie. And here’s a post on the movie published on Passion For Cinema

–Viju