Nakul Abhyankar: When I heard the tune for ‘Uyirey’ I instantly visualised Ramya and I singing it

We have often heard the saying, “In the rush to get something done, we sometimes stumble upon perfection.” For Ramya Bhat Abhyankar, it was the struggles of maternity that made her rush and render the latest chartbuster melody, ‘Uyirey’ from Amaran, in a single take. “We were asked to record the song when we least expected it. Nakul and I were on the way to Bengaluru from Chennai to my mother’s place, for the last month before my delivery. I was nine months pregnant. When I was asked to record the song, I could only do one rendition of it, due to my pregnancy woes. While I was initially cranky about not giving my best for the song, I now realise that it all turned out to be good,” she shares, before quipping that her super mommy powers probably kicked in to help her.

Nakul shares that he has been working on the song since April. “GV Prakash sent me the song, back in April, for production. It had no lyrics, just a piece of composition sung by him, which I was asked to musically arrange with my instruments. I had roughly cut visuals of the song, featuring the wedding portions of Sivakarthikeyan and Sai Pallavi's characters from Amaran. Back then, I didn't know it was Mukund Varadarajan’s biopic,” he recalls. 

Amaran is a film about a real-life soldier and the love he shared with his wife. It is serendipitous that a real-life couple crooned the melody for a film that captures the love between couples. “I think it was meant to be. I never promoted my wife and have never recommended her name to any composer. But when I heard the tune for ‘Uyirey’ I instantly visualised Ramya and I singing it, and told Joe, GV’s engineer, that our voices would best suit the song,” says Nakul.

Nakul was uncertain if their version would be the final version to end up on screen, up until October. “Apparently a few other singers were also made to sing ‘Uyirey’. Our version and other versions went through multiple levels of approval and disapproval before it was finalised,” says the singer. He then recounts the excitement when he got the confirmation. “It was late in October, ten days before the film’s release that I was told the news. I was in the airport, on the way to Australia. We were new parents, and Ramya was still getting used to it. I was sitting at the boarding gate and making changes to the programming of the song.” he shares. Currently, the song features an interlude that reflects the Sai Pallavi introduction track. Nakul reveals, “Initially, that was not a part of the song. GV made me add it when I was sitting in the airport, as the track was doing really well by then.”

Further, there were some changes that Ramya was also asked to re-record, and it was once again not easy for her, as she was just getting used to nurturing a one-month-old newborn. “At 1 am in the night, I asked my mother-in-law to babysit my son, and I recorded my improvisations for the song. I was still very tired and was worried my voice wouldn’t be the same, as I was just regaining my voice after delivery. But somehow, I managed to record it,” says Ramya. The song, which features the wedding of Indhu and Mukund after the obstacles they faced to convince their parents, was coincidentally a struggle-filled journey for Ramya and Nakul as well. But the singer-couple wouldn’t have had it any other way. “While we didn’t understand the lyrics fully, the lines, “Uyirey uyire, uraiyum uyirey inimel needhaanaa,” were enough for us to understand the essence. Our son, a gift of our 17-year relationship, is who we first think of, when we hear these lines,” Nakul signs off.