Her playback debut was nothing short of a cameo. In a seven-minute-and-14-second song, her share was just about two minutes. But Bhadra Rajin is over the moon. She has sung the portion, ‘Kaathale…’ in Anthaathi… from this year’s sleeper hit, ’96 . Composed by Govind Vasantha, the promo track from the Trisha-Vijay Sethupathi-starrer has been receiving plaudits for its fine blend of singing, orchestration and lyrics.
“I know this is a small feat. But I haven’t still got over the excitement of watching ‘96 . My happiness has more to do with being part of such a beautiful movie than anything else,” she says over the phone from her home at Tripunithura.
Bhadra is familiar to music buffs for her appearances on Music Mojo series on Kappa TV, with Stephen Devassy, Siddharth Menon and, her own band, Storyteller.
Initiated into music at three, she calls her mother, Meera Jayaprakash, her guiding light. “I wanted to become a Carnatic musician because everybody at home listened to Carnatic recitals throughout the day. But I didn’t pursue the classes for long because I couldn’t find the right guru,” says the 29-year-old.
What put her life on a new track was a music reality show, the second season of Super Star aired on Amrita TV (2008-09). “My mother had entered my name. The show changed my outlook towards music, thanks to the groomers and judging panel comprising M Jayachandran, Deepak Dev and Alphonse. And then there was Stephen chettan [Stephan Devassy], who went on to play a crucial role in my career,” she says.
After she got eliminated from the show, the first thing she did was to start training in Hindustani music from Ustad Fayaz Khan. She still learns from him.
But then she has never had a prolific career, in spite of having a trained, free-flowing voice. “There have been several gaps in my journey. That’s because I sit on a project for long. However, I consider myself lucky that Stephen chettan thought of me when he did that episode of Music Mojo. I sang the evergreen classic, Vellaramkunnile… that is still garnering likes on YouTube,” she gushes.
Narrating a tale
Storyteller, meanwhile, works around a concept. They take one story and the songs are worked around it. “Our first story was Nalacharitham . We presented eight own compositions, in addition to four cover songs,” she avers.
And it was this project that got her the song in ’96 . Kaathale... was later composed as a separate song, with two versions, sung by Chinmayi and Kalyani Menon. “I still can’t figure out how I came into the picture. Nevertheless I felt very proud about travelling on my own to Chennai, that too for the first time, for a recording. Now I am waiting for the 100th day celebration of the movie so that I can meet the entire crew!” she says gleefully.
A die-hard fan of compositions of A R Rahman (his compositions of the 90s) and Santosh Narayanan, Bhadra is looking forward to the release of a Malayalam song she sang for Bharat Bala’s documentary.
Fact file
A native of Aluva, Bhadra is an electronics engineer. Married to Rajin Chandran, a techie, she has a four-year-old daughter, Ambika. Core members of her band are Sudeep Palanad, Shankar Sharma, Liboy Praisly and Rijoy Johnson with Deepa Palanad, Naveen M P and Baiju Raveendran as guest artistes.
