But despite that, he managed to leave his individual stamp. How Muthukumar longed to spread his lyrical wings like Kannadasan, whose ‘Ninaikkadherindha Maname’ and ‘Kanne Kalaimane’ brought tears of joy in his crystalline moments of inebriation! But though as a lyricist, Muthukumar, had the sensitivity, both to ideas and music to write memorably, he was functioning at a time when the lyric was only one more element in the musical ensemble, not the queen as in earlier musical dispensations. And in keeping with the art of his role model Kannadasan, he sought to express himself vulnerably in the most childlike words he could dredge into his consciousness. Muthukumar would categorise songs and poetry as either emotional or intellectual saying that he always aimed at the former. This is a facet we see in his collections of poetry too. His nostalgic celebration of a rustic childhood spent playing in the sun, in Vasanthabalan’s Veyil, (‘Veyilodu Vilaiyaadi’, 2006) is a marvellous montage brilliantly marshalled. In ‘Po Po Vaazhve Kaakka Muttaithaan’ of ‘Kaakaa Muttai’ (2015) Muthukumar’s lines for G V Prakash’s chirpy number paints the triumph of the human spirit in the squalor of a Chennai slum. His ability to parse the ubiquitous and almost hackneyed used of romance in Tamil films with interesting colours and shades was one of the reasons for his success. In his 16-year career of about 1,500 songs, he found friends who would give him the opportunity to write freely. It was this uncanny ability to sum up life’s bitter ironies in simple day-to-day words that made Muthukumar a director’s song writer. In ‘7G Rainbow Colony’ (2004), the visual of the hero being a devastated yet marginalised entity in his dead sweetheart’s funeral is matched by Muthukumar’s oxymoron ‘Nerungi Vilagi’ (close but apart) in ‘Ninaithu Ninaithu Paarthaen, Nerungi Vilagi Nadanthaen’. In Selvaraghavan’s ‘Kaadhal Konden’ (2003), the song ‘Devadhaiyai Kanden’, again for Yuvan, fleshed out the romantic fixation growing in the mind of a challenged introvert. In his first song for Yuvan Shanker Raja with whom he struck his most significant and prolific partnership, Muthukumar would plumb his knowledge of Tamil literary genres in ‘Oar Aayiram Yaanai Kondraal Parani’ (Nandha, 2001), referring to the criterion of a king having to kill a thousand elephants in war for a war panegyric (‘Parani’) to be written about him. He sometimes lapsed into juvenile joustings as seen in ‘Mutham Kodutha Maayakkaari Un Lippu Enakku Paani Puri’ but could also add fizz to a catchy bar song like ‘Vaada Va Machi’ (in ‘DeMonte Colony’ for composer Keba Jeremiah) with Omar Khayyam-like intimations of the desi variety. Not that Muthukumar didn’t have his moments of superficiality. He thought of himself as a sensitive poet who must keep the flag of creativity flying despite commercial cinema’s weakness for kitsch. As the Tamil tradition of keeping every occasion with song was ingrained in him, Muthukumar soon found his poesy getting the better of his love of film technique. He later joined Balu Mahendra as an assistant director. A bookworm since childhood, he completed his postgraduation in Tamil in Chennai and even took up doctoral research into Tamil film songs. Hailing from a village near Kancheepuram, Muthukumar, had fond memories of the bonds and affections of rural life and joint families despite having lost his mother as an infant. Whether it was a father’s ecstatic outburst (‘Ananda Yaazhai Meettugiraay’) for his young daughter in ‘Thanga Meengal’ (2013), or a young girl’s dainty ode to beauty (‘Azhage Azhage Ellaam Azhage’) in A L Vijay’s ‘Saivam’ (2014), Muthukumar’s sensitive lines seemed to be the silver lining to the ominous clouds of the Kolaveri season! Both ‘Ananda Yaazhai’ and ‘Azhage Azhage’ fetched national awards for the poet, but his shockingly premature demise at the height of his creativity seems to have set the clock back decisively. There was something in the songs and the personality of this utterly unpretentious lyricist that seemed to bring a redemptive touch to film songs. Here lies one who sought to rescue Tamil cinema songs from the clutches of cliché by embracing lyricism’ might as well be the epitaph for Na Muthukumar. Na Muthukumar’s lyrics stood apart for their deeper meaning and emotional appeal
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