The Best New Year Song Ever!

If you are wondering how you should celebrate New Year's eve - I have a suggestion for you. Watch this song - if you watch Tamil TV channels, you might have no choice but to watch it, because it is only telecast every half a second during that week. The song I am talking about is "Ilamai Idho Idho…" (Youth, here, here…) from the movie "Sakalakala Vallavan" (Master of thousand arts). The movie was released in 1982, and the song, according to me is still the undoubted anthem of the new year.

It is a club song - don't ask me what that means. In the late 70's and early 80's a lot of these songs appeared in Hindi and Tamil films - where the hero (more often than not it was Kamal or Rishi Kapoor or Feroz Khan) wearing some tight fitting leather jacket and pants studded with thousand diamonds or a serial light set danced with a ill-clad "item"-girl (very rarely the heroine) in a spectacularly lit "club". There were lights on the floor, lights on the ceiling, lights on walls, lights in every dimension possible, blinking like mental stars. Lights of every color imaginable, possible.

These "clubs" did not or do not exist in the real world. (If they existed, the occupants would burn their retinas from all the psychedelic lighting and become delirious and uncoordinated). These clubs existed only in those songs in Tamil, Hindi films. These clubs had their own type of waitresses (very little clothing) and waiters (utterly clueless), odd looking furniture, and glass surfaces for the hero to break in case a fight breaks out at the end of the song.

Coming to the song under consideration, why is it so great! Because it is loads and loads of fun. Illayaraja's (the genius who keeps surfacing again and again whenever there is a discussion of greatness) score is buoyant, superbly varied, celebratory - in simple terms - it rocks! Kamal enters the song in a golden color Enfield bullet in an all-black leather dress and wishes everyone a happy new year - now, if that doesn't make you want to have a happy new year, I don't know what can. And he circles around the club in his motorcycle with a club dancer doing acrobatics on his motorcycle. And then there are the dancers who look like they were picked from a PT teachers' conference, where they slept under a marijuana tent. Doing totally ridiculous moves - but what fun it is! There is light spilling over from every corner of the frame. Did I mention there are soap bubbles floating around?

That is not all - Kamal comes on roller-skates, he dangles from ropes and sways to the tune (actually, editing effects will add another 6 Kamals swaying, with multi-color balloons lifting off). He does the robo-dance, mimes some traditional martial arts moves and boxing moves, flexes his arms and admires his own muscles, sways to a swinging chandelier, finally invites his coy guests to come and dance with him on the floor - where they all dance away into the new year.

All aboard the fun train. Next destination: the very happy new year!