Recently I met Kamal Haasan at a book release function at Book Point auditorium in Chennai. After glancing through the book, he asked few queries on the basics of Carnatic music. I hope he would have gone through the book at his leisure.

 

A short review of the book by Shrinidhi Hande in this link

I met Tamil writer Sujatha and handed him over a copy of my book. Within a week, he went through the book and was kind enough to mention about the same in his "Katradhum Petradhum" series of articles in Ananda Vikatan.

The book was released on 20.11.2005 at Bharathiya Vidya Bhavan Mini Hall, Mylapore, Chennai. It was released by Kalaimaamani Mrs.Revathy Krishna, Veena Artist and the first copy was received by Mr.T.S.Ranganathan, SUN TV News Reader associated with Sapthaswarangal, Surangani Studio and Giri Trading.

RagaChintamani is a compilation of Tamil cine songs based on classical ragas. First, an introduction to the general pattern of ragas and their varieties have been given. Then, brief introduction of around 160 ragas are made and the cine songs based on these ragas are listed. The Arohanam and Avarohanam of the ragas are also indicated against each. As people in orchestra troupe may need this kind of information , this may perhaps be useful to them. Once again 'Songs Vs Ragas' are given in an alphabetical order. With this anyone can easily locate the raga for a particular song and vice versa. So far, the Tamil cine world have produced millions of songs and as a first step I have brought out the details for about 1800 songs only. I hope this will be very beneficial to those who are not well trained in Carnatic Music but try to enjoy the cine melodiea without knowing the basics behind them. And I humbly feel this will help them to understand the fundamentals of Carnatic Music happily without much strain. I will be happy even if a few people are benefitted with this book.