It begins with a soft rendition of the Hindi song ‘Gum sum gum’, moves on powerfully to the Tamil version ‘Sangathil’, and then the Malayalam song ‘Thumbi vaa’, all in the span of a minute. Four young singers are on the Instagram reel singing the same song in three different languages, all composed by the maestro of film music, Ilaiyaraaja. Singers Zoe Siddharth and Urgen Yolmo collaborated with Arunaja and Shaur to bring out this reel, which has gone a lot viral in only 10 days. Last checked, it had more than 2.34 million 'likes'.
There are no instruments in the video. The singers take turns to sing, alternately humming and producing instrumental sounds, doing an A cappella in an energetic performance.
The songs in all three languages have been quite popular, coming out in different years in three different films. The first to come out was the Malayalam song, in the movie Olangal, written and directed by Balu Mahendra. The song ‘Thumbi vaa’ plays out in the backdrop of a family setting, with a couple, played by Poornima Jayaram and Amol Palekar, and three little children. It was sung by S Janaki. Olangal came out in January 1982.
A couple of months later, the Tamil film Auto Raja released, with the song ‘Sangathil’, having a more or less similar tune as ‘Thumbi vaa’, with only small variations. Sung by Ilaiyaraaja himself along with Janaki, ‘Sangathil’ is a romantic song enacted between the couple Vijayakanth and Gayatri.
The Hindi version of the song, ‘Gum sum gum’, was the last to come, made for the film Paa in 2009. Ilaiyaraaja's daughter Bhavarathni sang the song, which revolves around the relationship between a child, who was born with a genetic condition called progeria, and his parents. The movie made big news with Amitabh Bachchan playing son to Abhishek Bachchan, reversing their roles in real life. Vidya Balan played the mother.
Interestingly, a fourth version of the song in Telugu was also released, years before Paa, composed by Ilaiyaraaja for Nireekshana, also directed by Balu Mahendra. The film is a remake of another Malayalam film made by Balu Mahendra called Yathra, and came out in 1986. The song ‘Akasam enatido’, also rendered by Janaki, shows the relationship between the lead actors, Archana and Bhanu Chander.