“Poems are not written, they are already there and are found by poets. It is like finding constellations by joining stars in the night sky. Stars have always been there, we are just noticing the shapes now,” says Anvar Ali, quoting Swedish poet Tomas Tranströmer. The movie songs he has written – Para Para... from Kammatipaadam , Thambiran ... from Ezra and Kannu randu... from Annayum Rasoolum , to name a few – too are lost treasures rediscovered from the fringes of society.
For Anvar, a poet, writer and documentary filmmaker, being a lyricist is something more than stringing together a few words for a musician to compose.
Behind the lines
True to the poet that he is, Anvar finds joy in searching for words, lines and stories that are already out there in the world. For instance, the song Para Para .. is inspired by tales and songs of the Dalit community. “The lines in between describe the story of how a person belonging to the Dalit community was punished by the landlord for a trivial mistake during the harvest season,” he says. Thanks to a doctoral thesis on Dalits by researcher Sajitha K.R., Anvar had his work cut short. He adds, “She has used passages from books, folklores and songs sung among the community in her thesis. The first line is from a passage in Pulleli Kunju , a 19th century novel by Archdeacon Koshy, which she has quoted in the thesis. I have depended heavily on the words and phrases compiled by her to write the rest of the song.”
The song researcher
Reinventing little-known gems and turning them into haunting songs, Anvar believes, is a positive trend and he is all too happy to be a part of it. In many ways, he finds it more thrilling than penning new songs like Mizhiyil Ninnum... from Mayaanadhi and the brilliant Kisa Paathiyil... from Kismath . “During the journeys in search for songs, you get to learn a lot about some forgotten traditions, people and cultures, which you wouldn’t know otherwise,” he adds.
Anvar Ali
If the eerie Thambiran... was adapted from a Jewish wedding song, the prophetic Pokaruthen Makane... from Njaan Steve Lopez is, in fact, a reinterpretation of a popular Villadichampattu number. The song tells the tale of how Venad army commander Iravikkutti Pillai was betrayed by his own men in the battle against Madurai Thirumalai Naickan. He says, “Filmmaker Rajeev Ravi, cinematographer Pappu and I had to go in search of someone who knew the original version, which is rarely performed now. We finally found the daughter of Kochukrishnan Nadar, a pioneer scholar in compiling Vilpattu, near Kanjiramkulam and got a recording from her. I still have it in my phone!”
Poetic beginnings
Song-writing is just a recent occurrence as far as Anvar is concerned. He has and will always remain a poet. Born and brought up in Thiruvananthapuram, poetry has been with him since his childhood. “My father was an avid reader. He used to stick poems he read on the walls. I also used to write a bit and enjoyed poetry during my school days. But the thought of becoming a writer or a poet came to me after winning a prize for poetry writing at a State school youth festival. That was a big boost for my morale,” says Anvar.
It was during his pre-degree days in Government Arts college that he fell head-first into the world of literature, thanks to his college mate P.K. Rajasekharan, mediaperson and critic, who introduced him to the books of M. Mukundan and Paul Zacharia.
At University College, where he did his bachelors and masters in Malayalam, Anvar met Narendra Prasad, late actor, playwright and critic, who was a professor there then. “He is the one who encouraged me the most to be a poet and a writer, while instilling in me a ‘bad’ habit of love for plays, cinema and English literature,” he quips. The good fortune of having a big network of talented friends, Anvar adds, has been his window into different fields such as translation, documentary making and screen-writing. “Rajeev is one such friend. Though I have co-written (and won the Kerala State film award) Margam (2003) with its director Rajiv Vijay Raghavan and the late S.P. Ramesh, I have never thought about venturing into songwriting until Rajeev asked me to work on Annayum Rasoolum ,” he says. Being a poet and having been trained in different writing styles, he has found penning songs easy. There is a route, he adds, leading from poetry to songs, something he is exploring at the moment.
Yet some poets had warned Anvar about the potential “effects” of songwriting on his poetry. “Poets always make fun of colleagues who venture into movies. The other day when I met Rafeeq Ahamed, he did the same, addressing me as ‘songwriter Anvar Ali’,” he recalls with a chuckle. Anvar doesn’t think movies have in anyway affected his poetry. But he is not sure whether he can write as frequently as other lyricists do, if at all it comes to that.
For now, he is enjoying his infrequent forays into films and the search for the next song.
Short takes
* Anvar has translated poems into Malayalam from across India as well as some anglophone African poems. “I hung around Shasthra Sahithya Parishad a lot during my college days as I had a lot of friends there. Since my writing was good, I got opportunities to work on documentaries for C-DIT and translations for Parishad. That is how I came to read and translate Japanese classic Totto-chan, the little girl at the window,” says Anvar.
* Anvar has worked extensively for Doordarshan during 90s, writing commentary for the popular science programme Shastra Kouthukam.
* Maruvili (2015) is Anvar’s documentary on the life and work of poet Atoor Ravi Varma. It was screened at International documentary and short film festival of Kerala (IDSFFK) in 2015 and was also showcased at Mumbai International Film Festival in 2016.
