sarigama padanisa

This post has been in the bench for a long time. Finally I have decided to allocate a project to this ( if meera jasmine had been here,she would have told: "konjam standard joke para da mone"...:-)
The legend of south Indian music: Ilayaraja ( He knows this and thats why in 1980's he had the guts to put on airs with songs like " raja ..rajathi rajan intha raja" and the lines in song "kadhal kasukudaya" in which he asks young couples to sing his duets). Nayagan(1987) is his 400th film, Anjali(500th), Devar magan(600th). Devar magan came at the same time when ARR debuted (1992). Now I guess Rahman would not have composed more than 100 films(in 15 years). Inferences are left to readers :-). Ofcourse I m a rahman fan as well. However Maestro is a step apart. In 1970's when the whole of Tamil nadu was singing to the tunes of RD burman and listening to hindi songs (ofcourse hindi agitation could not take on sharmila tagore :)...aradana, sholay..., a single man from Theni district changed the tastes. A man who debuted with the film Annakili and got his break with 16 vayithinele( kamal,rajni,sree devi, bharathiraja and Maestro went on and on after this movie). I remember a funny incident about this. A age old man came to the college and asked for Music club secretary(Sec). When the Sec asked him what he wanted, he said " I was the person who started this club"(For ppl who do not abt PSG Tech: My college is more than 50 years old. I stayed in a hostel opened by none other than mahatma gandhi. My father is an alumni.I know families with 3 generations of Psg-techians..more on this later). He then asked "do u still put hindi songs ?". The Sec replied: "no..very rare". The oldie " In those days when we put tamil songs, they used to pelt us with stones. The only songs allowed were Hindi..". The whole college now prefers the melodies of maestro. We never felt the need to listen to something else. I can appreciate that something else is good. However I can never appreciate something else is close to Raja's. Infact most of the guys I know have this Raja syndrome. They can never accept that someone else can be better. Just this sentence of prasanna(the famous guitarist) is what I remember and relate to the most. "its not folk, its not carnatic, its not earth, its not wind, its not Bach, it is Ilayaraja". Singing off ...sorry signing off......:)