Back when there was no YouTube or social media and no one uploaded anything anywhere and you had to wait for the right commercial break on TV just to catch the trailer of the movie featuring the dashing lead pair of Madhavan & Shalini, the trailer of Alaipayuthey itself made one want to watch it again and again! The music, the visuals, the dialogues, Shalini and her casual way of conversing and, of course, Madhavan! Even the font in which Alaipayuthey was written was stylish too!
It wasn’t just the trailer that made you go gaga over it. The official website of the movie had such great content too with a writeup on the lead characters and some amazing photos. Waiting for the Shockwave content to load and browsing through the website became a regular activity too, despite downloading all the images from the website.
Oh and the songs! But for evano oruvan which screamed of longing with a tinge of pain, all other songs were so joyful, celebrating life in itself! Back then, not a single day went by without listening to the audio cassette. Pacchai Nirame had to be listened to on a repeat mode every day. It didn’t matter if one had to patiently press the rewind button of the music system to listen to a song again and again.
Pacchai Nirame became an instant favourite and today, 25 years later, continues to remain my most favourite song of A R Rahman and the best song ever portraying such beautiful colours! It’s to Pacchai Nirame that I turn to even today for some colours to cheer me up on a random dull day. 🙂
Then the movie itself – such relatable characters looking even more relatable in their simple costumes and talking such casual dialogues, here was a story set in my very own Madras with each and every scene having some lovely colours and music that added more to every scene.There was a time when watching the entire movie itself was a regular pastime!
Today I don’t really watch the scenes of Alaipayuthey or listen to the songs of Alaipayuthey as frequently as I used to back then, but I continue to watch all the interviews of Madhavan waiting to hear some new tidbit about Alaipayuthey, I continue to turn to some scene of the movie when I want to take a pause and refocus or just plain relax, I continue to watch Pacchai Nirame first every time we buy a new mobile or a TV or a monitor, I continue to get reminded of the beautiful wedding scene of Alaipayuthey every time I visit Kapaleeswarar Kovil!
Every April when I see some content on YouTube mentioning about the number of years it has been since Alaipayuthey got released, my craze for all things Alaipayuthey does get rekindled.
Neighbourhood landlines or common telephones in offices might now have become outdated, searching for a girl by hunting down the stations or medical colleges instead of simply looking up on social media platforms might sound a roundabout way, youngsters having their own start-up might have become much more common now than it was back then, but the love story of Shakthi and Karthik continues to remain a timeless classic!