When a young woman in Chennai came across a Twitter poll asking her to pick an AR Rahman song between the peppy ‘Elay Keechaan’ from Kadal (2013) and joyful ‘Madrasa Suthi Paaka Poren’ from May Maadham (1994), she instantly voted for the former and even went on to campaign for it. Because why not? It is one of the most popular AR Rahman albums in recent times, one that’s somewhere at the top of the playlist even after a decade of release. But later, when she had a conversation with her mother about the songs, her mother strongly sided with ‘Madrasa Suthi Paaka Poren’. While it was just an old single for the daughter, the song rekindled sweet memories for the mother. In the late 90s, when she had just moved to Chennai after her marriage, the song was the guiding light, something that helped her embrace the madness of the city and her new life with love and hope. When the daughter heard the song after the conversation, the lyrics and beats hit a different note, and she ended up campaigning against her own campaign.
That’s what the bracket was all about, Ajai Ramana, Srilakshmi Indrasenan (aka Sri) and Abinaya Swaminathan, the moderators/creators of the ARR Tamil bracket on Twitter, tell us. The aim of the exercise was to make people rediscover Rahman’s magical beats and create new memories as much as it was about picking the ultimate ARR song. “If we had just dropped a playlist of 256 songs or even asked influencers to share those, it wouldn’t have encouraged people to listen to the songs, discuss them or hark back to some wonderful moments. Instead, when we did a whole bracket, people got to do all of these,” says Abinaya (aka Abi).