Bhale Bhale Renuka

For Renuka Arun, a Perumbavoor-based software engineer, the entry to film music was quite dramatic and err... it even hurt at first. Ace music director Gopi Sundar was looking for a singer with a strong Carnatic base for a Carnatic-fusion song in his Telugu film Bhale Bhale Magadivoy when guitarist Sumesh Parameswar suggested the 34-year-old singer who was popular through her concerts.

Renuka, meanwhile, was hospitalised with a fractured leg after she had met with an accident, but it did not get in the way of her dream debut. She travelled straight from the hospital bed to record the song in Kochi. “I did not hear of it for some time since then and I thought that I had sung a track,” says Renuka, who has just received GAMA award, 2015 for the best singer in Telugu for her soulful rendition of Endharo Mahanubhavulu. “However months later, I got a call to re-record the song as there were some changes in the lyrics.”

The rest was history. Endharo Mahanubhavulu became a hot favourite of Tollywood and remained on hit charts for months. Gopi Sundar has also been selected as the best music director for the same song. The final nomination list for the award had Shreya Ghoshal and Chinmayi, among others. The award was presented to her in a colourful function at Dubai.

“I owe much to Gopi Sundar for this,” Renuka says, adding that he had done every little thing to keep her comfortable. “He is a perfectionist and is extremely quality conscious. A really nice, friendly guy; and his team was equally wonderful,” she remembers. Bhale Bhale... was Gopi’s second film in Tollywood.

Renuka started her music lessons at a very young age and has been practising for 30 years under her guru Chandramana Narayanan Namboodiri. She has performed more than 600 classical music concerts and was a live presence at some fusion bands during 1999 and 2000 until she felt that the fusion concept had changed and she needed to concentrate on Carnatic music. “However, I am not a puritan. I am a terrific listener of all genres of music,” she says. Her greatest inspiration is Greek musician Yanni. Renuka, a software engineer at Kakkanad Infopark, spends around three hours per day solely for music, thanks to her supportive family consisting of husband Arun, a software engineer, and a daughter.