Rahman’s new version of old song a big hit

Oscar award winning music director A R Rahman, known as the Mozart of Chennai, re-sung a popular song from his 1994 Tamil film Kadhalan to celebrate his 50th birthday at the MTV Unplugged music show on January 11 has gone viral on the Internet. Rahman’s new version of the song Urvasi Urvasi has contemporary lyrics that comment on the US elections, the woes of demonetisation in India and the effect of mobile phones and Internet on today’s youth. The words were crowd sourced from his fans. He is accompanied by Suresh Peters who sang the original song with him. The original lyrics were written by poet Vairamuthu. Rahman worked with renowned Tamil music maestro Illayaraja before setting up his own band and debuted as an individual composer in the 1992 Tamil/ Hindi film Roja. With this film, Rahman set a new benchmark for fusion music by amalgamating Carnatic, folk, Western and jazz genres into Indian movie songs in the next two decades.Woman commits suicide after Rs10mn lossFive people were arrested for abetting the suicide of a homemaker who lost over Rs10mn in the share market in Coimbatore last week. Visalakshi hanged herself at her home at Perur Chettipalayam.Visalakshi had borrowed the money and invested it on the advice of her friend Jothilakshmi. However Jothilakshmi was unable to the pay either the dividend or capital but instead urged Visalakshi to pay Rs3.5mn more to recover the losses. This apparently drove Visalakshi to suicide.In a separate incident, a couple were arrested for swindling a doctor of Rs700,000 by pretending to be insurance agents of a nationalised bank in Coimbatore. Police learnt that the couple were business graduates who had lost their previous bank jobs for embezzling funds.Jaya’s niece urged to join politicsEveryday dozens of All India Anna Dravida Kazhagam activists throng late chief minister Jayaram Jayalalithaa’s niece Deepa Jayakumar’s house at T Nagar in Chennai, urging her to join politics.Deepa Jayakumar, a journalist, is the daughter of Jayalalithaa’s elder brother. The visitors have covered the empty building adjacent to Deepa’s house with posters and placards pleading her to float her own party. Deepa often waves to them from her balcony but has not given any positive reply.However the group is hopeful because of her open hostility to her aunt’s companion and current AIADMK general secretary V K Sasikala.Bird trading racket bustedOfficials of the Wildlife Crime Control Bureau and Tamil Nadu forest department have unearthed a racket in illegal trading of wild birds from a house in Aynavaram in suburban Chennai.They caught Mujib Hussain with 187 Alexandrine parakeets that he had stuffed into congested cages to be sold online and in pet shops. He admitted to have sourced these protected birds as chicks and eggs from Andhra Pradesh.He promised the officers to give contact numbers of other poachers.Actress cancels shoot over jallikattu rowLeading film actress Trisha Krishnan cancelled her shoot for Tamil film Garjanai, fearing security threats from jallikuttu supporters at Nemathanpatti village in Madurai district last week.The pro-jallikattu group threatened to disrupt the shoot because Trisha had recently endorsed animal welfare group Peta.