A scene from the animated video based on Tygaraja’s Nagumomu
An autorickshaw that bumps along in tune with Tygaraja’s Nagumomu , a popular number composed by him in Abheri, has taken its 31-year-old animator Anand Babu to instant fame.
“It was just something that was at the back of my mind for some time. During a break, I created this micro short animated video of an autorickshaw, its driver and two travellers. It was done as a fun shot but the composition has been treated with respect,” says Anand, working as animation director of a show, Lamput , at Vaibhav Studios, Mumbai.
The number had been used in a scene in the Priyadarsan hit Chitram (1988) and so it is a familiar number to most Malayalis. After it was posted on Anand’s Insta account on Sunday, it has been seen and shared in thousands and the number of views has crossed 13 K. In 2015, he had done something similar with the ‘Pista song’ from the film Tamil-Malayalam bi-lingual film Neram . Composed by Rajesh Murugesan and sung by Shabareesh Varma for the Nivin Pauly-Nazriya starrer, Anand’s animation short features nuts of different kinds: almonds, pistachio, peanuts and cashew! However, that one did not achieve this kind of fame. The original lyric of the song has been credited to Jagathy Sreekumar who is said to have composed the lyrics for a lark in the Malayalam film Kinnaram (1983).
Lines of art A scene from Anand Babu’s take on Nagumomu ; a self-portrait of Anand Babu
A native of Thiruvananthapuram, Anand had worked at Toonz Animation India for about six years after he completed a course in animation at Toonz. Then he moved to Vaibhav Studios as animation director, on the show Lamput , a micro show on Cartoon Network, Hong Kong. Lamput , created by Vaibhav Kumaresh, Anand’s boss, got nominated for the International Emmy Kids Awards 2019. This is perhaps the first time an original Indian animation has been nominated.
