A treasure trove of lyrics

KOZHIKODE: This music teacher might never have imagined that his craze for collecting lyrics of Malayalam film songs would make him the owner of a ‘treasure trove’  that music buffs envy. Satheesh G Bhaskar, hailing from Chakkittapara in Kozhikode, now has in his possession a collection of around 1,500 film songs in a written record format, right from the film ‘Balan’, the first talkie in Malayalam.Named as ‘Pazhaya Eenangal’, his collection includes ‘Bharathathin Ponvilakkam’, a song in the film Balan to the romantic hits of 90s. His craze for keeping the written record of lyrics began in the mid 1980s. “I have been doing it for the past 25 years. During a stage show, one of my colleagues refused to give me the lyrics of a song. After this incident, I decided to collect and create a lyrics book which will help me in this profession.Later, it became  a craze for me to collect the lyrics of old and rare Malayalam film songs,” said Satheesh. He has in his collection, lyrics of vintage musicians including K K Aroor, Thiru Nainar Kurichi,Brother Lakshman,Vijay Bhaskar, Devarajan Master, Salil Chowdhury and Shyam. Today, he possesses lyrics from the period between 1938 to 1992 with details including the name of the film, music director and singer. “It was very difficult to access the lyrics of some of the old songs, of which even gramophone records are not available.I collected all these lyrics by visiting and interacting with several musicians and through my friends in the music world,” he added. He had to face some setbacks in his efforts too. Two of his diaries with more than 400 lyrics lost some years ago. But he has regained most of these lyrics.As he possesses such a large collection of lyrics in written form, many seasoned musicians of the present generation approach him to clear doubts.