Of prayers and songs

I happened to see a video of a group of ladies singing a song, in celebration of Independence day in their apartment complex. It was shared by the husband of one of the ladies who happened to be an acquaintance of mine. To my sweet surprise that song that they were singing was one of the prayer songs during my school days. After nearly 3 decades I got to hear that song. I never realized that I still remembered those songs, if not fully verbatim. The school that I studied from 6th till eleventh had a set of prayer songs, starting with the Saraswathi vandhana song, that was/is still the de facto standard song in most of the schools in my neighbourhood. After that there would be some songs about India or based on patriotic theme. This song was one amongst them. It had a nice catchy tune that would become an immediate ear worm for anyone who hears it for the first time. When I listened to that song after so many years, it brought back several repressed memories as well. 

The first five years of my schooling happened in a school where I was treated like Royalty. I was always on the top three ranks and whenever I “slip” to third rank, during the badge distribution ceremony the HM will admonish, warning to improve on the performance the next time. The prayer songs were mostly in tamil and thirukural used to be recited as part of the morning prayer. There used to be a song called “Ore ezhuthu manthirathi Om endru solluvom”  which literally listed a mantra for every increasing syllable starting from one up to 9. It used to be my most favorite song for several years even after I left that school and I had long forgotten all about it. Yesterday, suddenly, while talking about something else with junior, the first line struck me. I remembered upto 3 lines and beyond that had to google for the lyrics and luckily landed up on the full list. When I was narrating the song and how our school prayers were conducted, junior listened to the whole thing in rapt attention. He is extremely fond of how me and his mom did our schooling, our teachers, our fears about subjects and naughty things, especially we did in our childhood and more importantly how we were scolded or punished for the same. He read the lyrics along with me 2 times and started saying that song by heart from third time onwards. He was so proud that he picked the whole 9 lines in his third attempt that, the very next minute there was an audition, first for his mom, then followed by one to his paati and aththai. Having studied in same school it was a happy surprise for her as well and junior added a line of his own to the song, concluding it as “indha paatu paadinal ellarukum nallathu” or something on similar lines. 

I really wish schools start including Thirukural in their prayers, compulsorily, irrespective of the medium or the type of school they are – be it convents, missionary, State, central or whatever other umpteen types that are in existence. It is not just a treasure trove of knowledge and wisdom, improvement in tamil vocabulary being a happy bonus, but also, I personally feel, helps in getting the pronunciation and vocal control.