🌺A Lullaby of Love, A Lament of Loss
Prologue — The Fragrance of Memory
The Tamil song “Poove Sempoove” from the 1988 film Solla Thudikuthu Manasu stands as one of Ilaiyaraaja’s most soul-stirring compositions — at once a gentle lullaby and a deep confession of love. Penned by Vaali and sung in two versions — by K. J. Yesudas and Sunanda — it transcends gender, era, and circumstance to become something eternal: an ode to love in its purest and most painful form.
I first heard it on AIR Vividh Bharathi and Doordarshan’s Oliyum Oliyum in 1988, the era when songs lingered longer than memories. Over the years, I have come to realise that Poove Sempoove is not a single song but a dual revelation — two hearts echoing through the same melody, two souls bound by the same words, yet worlds apart in meaning.
Musically, the piece is a marvel of rāga architecture:
it opens in Śaṅkarabharaṇam, flows into Nāṭabhairavi, brushes Kīravaṇī, wanders through Gaurimanōhari and Harikāmbhōji, and returns home again — like a pilgrim revisiting each shrine of emotion before resting in peace. The tonal transitions are seamless, almost cinematic, as if Ilaiyaraaja were painting feelings rather than notes.
Part I — The Lover’s Lullaby (K. J. Yesudas for male protagonist)
Yesudas’s version is sunlight in sound — a lover’s lullaby draped in reverence. His voice glides through Ilaiyaraaja’s orchestration with devotional poise, carrying the gentleness of affection that seeks neither possession nor promise.
The lines —
Poove Sempoove un vāsaṃ varum / Vāsal en vāsal un poongavanam
Nizhal pōla nānum nadai pōda nīyum / Thodarkindra sondham nedungala bandham
— evoke love as fragrance, love as shadow, love as something that walks beside but never overwhelms.
Here, love is tranquil, not turbulent. It comforts rather than consumes. The rāgas flow like silk: Śaṅkarabharaṇam’s stability, Nāṭabhairavi’s meditative melancholy, Gaurimanōhari’s gentle wistfulness, and Kīravaṇī’s fleeting brush of pathos. Yesudas renders all of this with a serenity bordering on the sacred.
But beneath that composure lies the confession of a man who has loved deeply, erred silently, and now redeems himself through music.
Naan seitha pāvam ennodu pogum / Nee vāzhndhu nāan thaan pārthalē pōthum
This is love purified by renunciation — the selfless readiness to suffer so the beloved may smile. It is Ilaiyaraaja at his most Bach-like, weaving counterpoint and conscience into one seamless fabric.
If Yesudas’s rendition is a hymn, it is a candle burning steady in a quiet shrine — a flame of devotion, not desire.
Part II — The Penitent Mother’s Lullaby (Sunanda for the female protagonist)
Then comes Sunanda’s version — the same score, yet another world. Recorded not for the film but pressed quietly onto vinyl, it carries within it a different universe of ache. Her voice emerges from a duskier register — lower, earthier, unvarnished by glamour. It is the voice of one who has seen too much, borne too much, and still finds within herself the tenderness to sing.
What in Yesudas’s timbre felt like tranquil affection here transmutes into trembling contrition. The “Poove” she addresses is no longer the beloved — it is her own child, the unblemished flower she prays will never inherit her thorns. Every syllable is laden with unspoken pain, as if she dare not confess aloud the weight she carries within. The lullaby is her only permitted language — soft, evasive, but saturated with sorrow.
Her phrasing lingers. Between the words lie breaths heavy with history — the pauses themselves are poetry. Ilaiyaraaja’s orchestration recedes to the background, allowing the tremor in Sunanda’s tone to stand bare, unadorned, vulnerable. The song becomes a secret dialogue between mother and daughter: one too young to understand, the other too broken to explain.
When she sings,
Naan vaazhum vaazhvae unakaaga thaanae
it is no longer a lover’s pledge but a mother’s penance. She lives not for her child but through her — hoping that the purity she lost may continue in the life she has given birth to. The line
Naan seitha pāvam ennodu pogum
becomes her quiet confession; not shouted from rooftops, but whispered into a cradle.
This woman — perhaps once a mistress, perhaps merely misunderstood — is trapped between guilt and grace. She hides her tears beneath her melody, lest the child awaken. Her love is fierce but forbidden, her redemption half-earned. In that haunting refrain of “Poove Sempoove”, she plants the only legacy she dares to leave — a promise that her daughter will bloom in sunlight, untouched by her shadow.
Ilaiyaraaja’s raga transitions — from Śaṅkarabharaṇam’s maternal warmth to Kīravaṇī’s penitential dusk — mirror her own transformation. It is as though the music itself bends in empathy, bearing her burden when her voice can no longer do so.
If Yesudas’s version is a candle lit at a lover’s altar, Sunanda’s is that same flame trembling in a storm — fragile, flickering, yet holy in its persistence. Beneath its glow lies a mother’s unuttered prayer:
“May you sleep free of my sins, my little flower. May your dawn never remember my night.”
Before the cradle quietens, listen to the two lives this melody has lived — the same song, two souls, two destinies:
Male version (K. J. Yesudas):
Female version (Sunanda):
🌸 Coda — The Cradle That Remembered:
When the violins fade and silence breathes again,
only a mother’s hum remains — unrecorded, unremembered.
She rocks her child in rhythm with her regrets,
singing softly so the past won’t wake.
Her lullaby is a wound stitched with love,
each note a teardrop disguised as comfort.
And though the world hears merely a song,
the heavens hear her plea —
“Let my daughter sleep beneath untainted stars.”
For in Ilaiyaraaja’s music, even sorrow kneels —
and every Poove still blooms,
not from joy, but from the courage to love again.
🌙 Epilogue — Beneath the Bloom :
When the song fades, what remains is not the echo,
but the ache that gave it birth.
Somewhere between the strings and her sigh,
a mother folds her sorrow like linen —
tenderly, so the creases won’t show.
Her voice trembles, not from weakness,
but from carrying too much silence for too long.
She does not wail; she withholds.
The world hears melody — she hears memory.
And in that private hush,
her love grows roots beneath grief,
reaching toward the one life
she prays will bloom untouched by her own ruins.
Perhaps that is what lullabies are —
not songs to put children to sleep,
but prayers whispered so they may wake
into gentler worlds than ours.
© Dhinakar Rajaram
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