The picture looks pretty. A young woman on her living room couch, the blue and white dress she is wearing spread around her. The face is however impassive, perhaps a little sad. When Sreebala K. Menon announced she was launching a music video – Bombay Jayashri musical – for Women’s Day, few would have expected her to choose the theme viraham – pain of waiting.
“However much we say we are not like that, I believe a large part of a woman’s life is spent waiting for something, and we don’t know what it is,” Bala, writer and filmmaker, says. She chose for her music video the girl who became her first heroine – Nikhila Vimal of Love 24x7. “It was not exactly a choice,” she corrects us.
“We were a group of Bombay Jayashri fans. Viraham is a tribute to her. It is an album that came from a friends group who worked together and Kondattam Digital Media provided the platform.” The song was composed by Satheesh Ramachandran with Bombay Jayashri’s voice.
Kannan Nayar became the man and Nikhila the woman in the video. They are going to be separated for a while, between land and sea. And the song goes on with the pain of waiting, the pain of missing. “Society does not expect women to be the participants. You don’t see a woman leaving for the Gulf and the man joining her later. There were many women who called me saying they could relate to this because there is a large community of expats from Kerala. Long distance relationships may have become more common with globalisation and yet it is seen ok. I don’t know if men are even aware of the pain women go through,” Bala adds.
The song is from a woman’s point of view. Some day Sreebala would like to make music videos with women lyricists and music directors.
“It has to start somewhere. We are not making use of the space that YouTube channels allow us. When it is song in a film, you are limited to a certain part of the story. But here you get to build a concept and make a movie in five minutes. I have always wanted to do a non-filmy song like this, especially of women. I want to do a series of music videos with women becoming part of it.”
