Gulabi (the movie in Telugu). Starring: J.D.Chakravarty, Maheshwari.

It was somewhere in the month of February 1995 that one fine day a friend and aspiring director Venkat had come along with his choreographer friend Rasool ellore to my office cum residence.

They were suggesting that I should be doing music for films and they exactly have the right film coming up for me and said one of their friend vamsi would be directing it.

I was absolutely raw and new to film music industry and hardly new only a few names but for seeing an array of chiranjeevi films in childhood I was not aware of the Various stalwarts of the then Telugu Film Industry.

One fine day a young guy came up to meet me and said he was Krishna Vamsi and said he liked my samples given to him by rasool.He then asked whether I, would be interested to work on a film in telugu. Obviously, I said fine but when I said that I hardly knew the magnitude of the person who approached me and the size of the project it would be.

It was about 11 am as far as my remembrance goes when he started narrating the story in detail.By the time he finished it was afternoon,quite gripping and fresh was the story line and I asked what should I be doing for this.

He then cited four song sequences of the film and wanted me to start on the hardest of them all..

The hero is stabbed in his stomach and he is subconscious with the memories of his girl friend fragmenting in his sub conscious levels and he barely knows that someone is putting him into an auto and helping him away….

Vamsi said he wanted an absolute vaccum, emptiness inside and a sudden shock of losing ground under the feet.This was his explanation for the tune. 

Quite hard it was for someone like me who always tried only my kind of music and never custom designed tunes for situations and emotions beyond my understanding and experience.

I checked with him again for more clarity and he gave a tip of getting such feelings. He said, when we travel in a lift or a sudden dip in the road, we feel emptiness in the stomach…

I started to travel and experience it… I remember this when I was traveling in Banjara hills road no 2.. opposite KBR park and a couple of other places and one fine evening I sat and decoded the whole feeling by breaking it into something that cuts our stomach like a drone of the double base or cello the one I used to start the song “YE ROJAITHE”, then some memories fragmenting like those bells ringing and as some starts to help him the story starts playing the notes on the piano .. ting ting ting ting ting ting ting ting ting … the rhythm is just very symbolic to the heart beat with the base kik hitting once and twice …well that was the first song I have ever composed .I remember vamsi and JD chakri coming and listening to the tune at 1 am in the morning and they all liked it.

So that was the start for my first film album “GULABI”.

  

One fine morning we all landed up in Ramanaidu Film Labs where they had just installed the digital audio recording theatre and Madhusudan Reddy was the audio engineer who just came in to work from Kodandapani studios in chennai. He too was absolutely a novice at that time. It looked as though the whole team was young, new, aspiring and ready to give in their best.

So ones the tune was recorded after a few days vamsi broke the news of  the project being produced by RGV.

However, I was half way through my composing but it definitely boosted the spirits and helped in being more cautious and alert.

The hardest of all was the song, “Meghalalo”,for which I remember doing fourteen variations before I hit on the final one.I did this song on my “Amiga commodore” system using Octamed software for programming.

For the first song that is “Yerojaithe” I used my Yamaha QY10 sequencer.

Except the song MEGHALALO all the other songs were only single tunes I composed which were right in the first instance.

After a long while in between the shooting schedules Vamsi felt that all songs are male voice dominated and he felt like having a female solo in the film… he then picked a song from the samples I gave him before to rassol.

This was a song I had composed years back probably in the year 1991/92 when I was traveling in an APSRTC Bus, but I rightly remember the place when I struck on the tune, it was opposite TV tower moosrambagh just before disembarking the bus at Dilsukhnagar depot.

The song I comsposed was, “Sampangela neevu virisaavu na kosam”.Now try singing these lyrics in the tune of “ee velalo neevu em chesthu vuntaavu” as written in the film Gulabi by Sirivennela Seetarama sastri.

On the sets of gulabi I happened to meet a galore of artistes and technicians out of which those who were close to me were Cherry( one of the Producers of the recentYAMAGOLA),  Subbaraju garu ( brother in law of RGV),Raju & Praveen ( who later started their production banner RPG).

One of them became a very close friend whom I have not mentioned above is Madhu Varma who off late has been part producer of the film Gajini with Amir Khan in Bollywood.My association with Madhu has been long and there were quite a number of instances when he was closely involved in many of my next projects.

 If I were to write I could end up writing volumes of Gulabi itself but to keep it short There are definitely some important things about it that I have to share with you

Specially when I had to mix the songs with Vocalists, It was a great day with Hari Haran, Suchitra Krishna murthy, Suresh Peters, Gaytri Iyer , Nagur babu ( Mano).

Quite a few more singers were tried out for the songs amongst which I have to mention the names of Music director SREE who was ind enough to record his voice too for the song “ee velalo neevu”, before we finalized the song in the voice of a novice singer then that is Sunita.

There were two voices which engineer madhu had recommended to me and vamsi to try from local talent and made us here the samples and I chose sunita who sounded better amongst the two.

A full day of recording the song had given us exactly what it required for the song. The song has another peculiar trait that is the instrument flute which was played by an upcoming artiste Nagraj quite fabulously.

This was the first film song recorded by sunita and it stood strong over the years as a remarkable melody in tollywood. Thanx to vamsi to pick this song from my bank and also thanx to suneeta for rendering her melodious voice and special thanks to Sastry garu for such simple yet effective lyric.

My first meeting with RGV

After all the songs were recorded at Hyderabad the songs definitely sounded good but not great as I had few resources to deploy in the very minimal budget vamsi offered me to prove my abilities. Then one day I was informed to meet the Boss.

The time given was 11am, I was always my usual being late but somehow the very first meeting meant a lot and I ensured that I was 5 mts before the given time.

Bang on Look who was there RGV himself in his Punjagutta House absolutely casual and calm as he seemed to start of the conversation without wasting any time.

His first question was to me, The tunes are very strong then why is the orchestration letting it down..is there something you could do to it?

Well my immediate reaction, Please give me a decent budget and freedom and I shall do justice.

He gave me full freedom and said “no limitation on budget as I want the best and with this album I would be launching varma audio company too.”

So it was a challenge for me and I took it up.

However this move helped me to work best on the music but in the bargain I had severed my relations with Vamsi to some extent and a couple of other Unit members. This is my observation as far as my practical experience goes that probably I had bypassed certain protocols and have not conferred with the director before voicing my opinion to the Boss.

Whatever the differences I took it optimistically and hope the same happened on both ends before we met up for the Background music of the film again.

Background Music

I am yet to write on this one. It is interesting and one of the best experiences which I have to share with you all. 

Other films in my career:

1. Mahatma Gandhi autobiography – JD / RGV
2. Warning – nageshwar rao
3. Hello I love You – veera shankar and Ks Rama rao
4. Pelli pilupu – Sridhar & sudheer babu
5. Aho Brahma Oho Sishya – Gopal Rao
6. Medhavi - Subhakar
7. Samudram - Danaiah
8. Hands up – jaya sudha
9. Bachelors – ravi chavali / sana yadi reddy
10. College – ravi chavali / taranga subramanyam
11. Love – ravi chavali /
12. Cash – ravi chavali / sudhakar
13. Premante – ramana reddy / jakkula srinivas reddy
14. Karthik – Murali raju
15. Sivudu – subba rao / suresh
16. Raghava – ys nageshwar rao / suresh
17. Raave na cheliya – kishore / sandeep jain
18. Padma – Hari Babu – song got nandi award to Usha singer written by sirivennela
19. nenu ninnu premisthuna – Hari Babu

Aashique – anil kumar / Inder kumar

Amdani athani Kharcha rupaiah – padmalaya studios

16 December – mani shankar

Rudraksh – mani shankar / nitin manmohan

Mukhbir – Mani shankar / sudheesh rambhootla