I am coming from the south of India (Tamil Nadu), where this song originated recently. I am born and brought up throughout my life in Chennai, but my father’s family roots from a small village near the shores of Pondicherry. When I heard this song, the words used in the lyrics created a bond and brought back some memories of my childhood. And I was so happy to see talented artists getting mainstreamed and reaching a wider audience (a cultural renaissance in the making as an initiative from Maajja). After hearing the song on repeat mode for so many days, I finally thought of penning down portions of lyrics that mesmerised me with its political insights. This post can also help non-Tamil speakers understand the context of the song better. This post won’t be a lyrical explanation or English translation as the translations are already available.

The title “Enjoy Enjaamy”. Enjaamy is a colloquial slang of En Saamy (which means My God). We still refer to the loved ones as “My World”. For people living in villages, God has been their world, and they refer to their loved ones “En Saamy”. Arivarasu Kalainesan (aka Arivu) has tried to share the story of his grandmother (Valliammal). She comes from a generation of people forced to relocate from India to Srilanka to work as tea plantation workers during the British regime(approx 200 yrs ago). After a few decades of slavery, as the economic status in Srilanka stabilises, these people were sent back to India. Knowing only tea plantation works, they migrated to tea plantation estates and competed with the local plantation workers to earn their bread. Valiammal is one among those. The beauty of this song is that it can be related to any timeline. Even today, people migrate from one state to another or from one country to another to win their bread.

The song starts with the beats of Parai and the soil rumbling to its beat. Parai is so inherent part of people in North Chennai. Here is an interesting political argument. The sounds of South Chennai is different from the sounds of North Chennai. The former is soft, more of classical type, whereas the latter is more of folk(people) style. Classical failed to penetrate the hearts of the masses and settled with elite groups.

I always feel that the beauty of lyrics lies in their scope for interpretability and ability to explain bigger things in simple words.

The above lines can be interpreted in two ways. We can think that the author is setting up the scenes of his village in a poetic way. The other way is to see from the eyes of the cuckoo bird itself. I felt the cuckoo bird version is sweeter as the lyrics made more sense looking from its eyes. And these lyrics are similar to the songs taught to us in elementary schools. Even in the next paragraph, Arivu tries to establish the scenic beauty of his village.

Then comes the introduction of his grandma. It’s such an elegant intro, where he captures the distinct character among the native grandmas.

Our society is inherently built with the thought that we should leave behind something good for the next generation so they can be happy. But the sad part is some people get greedy and try to accumulate more hence creating a social rift. Ancestors left things so we can lead a happy life, but are we in harmony? We live in an era where countries fight over international waters, ripping the other countries resources, violently expanding their territory in the name of nationalism, terrorising others using their powers and even the states try to restrict the water to the neighbour states. Then follows the discrimination on race, colour and caste. The list is endless, and the ones who voice for harmony get tagged as jokers.

Arivu voices out the current global issue in the previous line and then follows it with a solution. We people have to get united and live peacefully like kings. Get on the ride with an elephant may signify how Indian kings used to ride on elephants.

As I told you earlier, certain words in this song gave me chills. “Oodhangolu” is one such word too. Maybe I haven’t heard it before, but this word tells what we do with flute. The very next line tells us the origin of human civilisation. I recollected my favourite line from Vairamuthu’s pen, “Thanneer Kudathil Pirakiroam Thanneer Karaiyil Mudikiroam”. These six words explain the human cycle where he/she gets born out of a women womb and ends with their ashes getting dissolved in the sea (a Hindu custom).

Oppari is a kind of art form in villages, where people get together and grieve the death of their beloved ones by reciting about them and their memories with them in a crying tone. Arivu uses this art form in this song and tries to sing in his grandma’s voice. He has used some lyrics from the classic opparis. In this section, Arivu grieves for the farmers who produce food for all but end up with a small portion, with the middlemen taking a big chunk leaving the farmers throat dried and their belly starved. And we are moving towards a world where the agriculture industry occupied by capitalists.

I feel these lines have a deeper meaning owing to the sequence of the words. As we go away from the sea, we end up at shores. And moving from the shores, we end up in forests. As the population went up, we cut down forests, made lands out of them and dug lakes and pond.

Rooster crows as the earth make a spin (as the day begins). And the excretions from such creatures created forests which we cleared to make our home. That’s a take on real estate where we build our houses on lakes and complain of being drowned by nature.

Oppari returns, this time Valliammal enquires about his grandson and grieves for nature. “Perandi” word is close to me as still, my neighbourhood Patti (grandma) calls me that way, and I guess she is the only one who calls me in that slang. “SeeniKarumbu” is also common among the native grandmothers, which translate to sugarcane. And then comes the word “Vithaikal”. There is some beauty in interpreting seed as stone from which another creature germinates. On a political note, seeds are vital for any generation to sustain, and now with the use of pesticides and genetically modified seeds, we are steadily poisoning our food chain.

Let’s all be united in our diversity and bring harmony to our lives.

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Revan Kumar