The Man Who Never Got the Memo

Observations on returning to unfinished dreams

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On YouTube, there is a behind-the-scenes video of composer Ilaiyaraaja recording his symphony ‘Valiant’. At one point, he looks at the performers and says, simply: “We are going to work more and more. I am 82 years old man.”

Not with pride. Not with wonder. Just a fact — the way you’d describe the weather.

That moment stopped me.

Ilaiyaraaja grew up in a small village in Tamil Nadu, in sheer poverty. No family connection to music. No exposure to western classical traditions. No obvious path to anywhere remarkable. And yet, somehow, he taught himself the grammar of multiple worlds — Indian classical, western classical, jazz, funk, folk, fusion — and went on to compose music for over a thousand films. And in idle moments, he composed some outstanding non-film albums spanning fusion to experimental to oratorios.

There is a reason composers like Bach, Mozart, Beethoven or Schubert are spoken of in hushed tones of reverence. Symphony composition is an entirely different discipline — demanding, unforgiving, with its own rigorous architecture. That a man from where he came from even dared to attempt one is not ambition. It is something closer to defiance.

In 1993, Ilaiyaraaja became the first Indian composer to write a symphony. The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra performed it in London. Then — silence. He never released it. Never spoke about it publicly. It was only a sound engineer from those sessions who revealed, years later in an interview, that the opinions of some critics had hurt him.

He returned to film work. Quietly. No explanation offered, none owed. For the next decade, fans asked. They kept asking — at interviews, at concerts, in letters. When will you release the symphony? He remained silent. Eventually, people stopped asking. The dream, it seemed, had been quietly folded away.

Then in 2025, at 82, he announced a new symphony. He called it Valiant. Somehow, no other word would have done.

He composed it in 38 days.

Let that land for a moment. Symphonies take years. Sometimes decades. Composers agonise over them the way sculptors agonise over marble — one wrong movement and the whole thing fractures. Ilaiyaraaja wrote his in 38 days. Whether that is staggering discipline or something closer to divine, I genuinely cannot tell.

Valiant was performed first in London. Then in Dubai, in October 2025.

I was at the Dubai concert. I want to be honest about why I went. Not because I understand symphonies deeply. Not because I could stand in judgement of whether this was his finest work — I am simply not qualified. I went because I wanted to be in the same room as him. In the same time and space, while his lifelong dream finally unfolded in front of an audience. It was my way of witnessing his resolve. And more than anything, it was my way of saying thank you — for decades of music that shaped something in me I cannot fully name.

When the performance ended, Ilaiyaraaja walked to the front of the stage and bowed — alongside the conductor and the performers — to the audience. I found that quietly devastating. The man who had given a lifetime of musical memory to millions of people, bowing to the very people he had moved. It should have been the other way around. We should have been on our knees. There was no ego in it. Just deep, quiet service to something larger than himself.

Then, two weeks ago, he posted on Twitter that he had just finished writing his second symphony. My jaw dropped.

At 83, this is not a farewell lap. This is not an old man tidying up unfinished business. This is an active, restless, still-hungry creative life — one that most artists four decades younger would struggle to match. His is what you would call a purpose-led life — spent in devoted service of an extraordinarily deep gift, affecting millions, never fully spent, never fully satisfied.

Most film composers in India retire gracefully when the industry moves on. Trends shift, the hits dry up, and legacy becomes its own kind of comfort. I don’t fault anyone for that. But Ilaiyaraaja seems constitutionally allergic to comfort. And the thought that I sat with is: Can someone learn this refusal of comfort, or is it simply how certain people are built? Because if it's learnable, then I have to reckon with what I've been avoiding. If it's innate, then I'm off the hook—but that feels like another form of resignation disguised as acceptance.

For Ilaiyaraaja - to return to something that once wounded you — not because the world is asking, but because you are still unfinished with it — that requires something I can only call an age-defying hunger for a lifelong dream.

Most of us, somewhere between our first wound and our forty fifth year, quietly learn to want less. We call it wisdom. To be selective. We call it perspective.

Maybe it is. Or maybe Ilaiyaraaja simply never got that memo.