Na Muthukumar one of Tamil cinema's finest lyricists, passed away in Chennai on Sunday.
He was 41 and was suffering from jaundice for the past few days.
He won two national awards for the songs "Ananda Yazhai Meetukiral" in "Thanga Meengal" and "Azhage Azhage" in "Saivam" and has written over a 1000 songs.
He was introduced as a lyricist in Seeman's "Veera Nadai".
He has written dialogues for Ajith’s starrer "Kireedam", directed by A. L. Vijay. He also wrote a novel called "Silk City".
He has penned over 40 songs for director Vijay's films and called him one of the best directors to work with.
Celebrities, many of whom worked with him, reacted to his demise on twitter.
Can't believe this #namuthukumar is no more ...He's written more than 200 songs in my films A huge loss May god give strength to his family
— G.V.Prakash Kumar (@gvprakash) August 14, 2016
Shocked by the news of lyricist NaMuthukumar's demise ! Such a terrible news , a national award winner , too early to go #RIP
— Shanthnu Buddy (@imKBRshanthnu) August 14, 2016
In an interview with Rediff, Muthukumar says he gets most of his satisfaction from philosophical songs.
He considers his songs "Azhagu Azhagu" from "Saivam" and "Veyilodu Vilaiyadi" from the National award-winning film "Veyil" as very special to him.
Na Muthukumar hails from Kancheepuram where his tryst began with Tamil literature. His father maintained a collection of 5000 books which Muthukumar would read voraciously in his youth.
After moving to Chennai, his interest in direction led him to work under Balu Mahendra for four years. He continued writing on the side and landed his big break with Seeman’s "Veer Nadai" as a lyricist.
Over the years, he has written lyrics for more than 1000 songs and worked with almost every contemporary Tamil film music composer.
Most of his work features in Yuvan Shankar Raja’s songs. He had also worked with composers Ilayaraja, A R Rahman, Harris Jayaraj and GV Prakash Kumar.