I'm a big fan of music from Ilayaraja's timeless melodies to the raw energy of rock, metal, and everything in between. I don't just listen to one era, I move between the 80s, 90s and the present too.

Recently, I stumbled upon a song. From the very first note, I knew exactly who it belonged to KABER. Yes, Kaber Vasuki's FRANGIPANI.

I didn't check the duration, I rarely do. But this song kept going and going, as if it refused to end. Out of curiosity, I finally checked, it is 10.10 minutes. I felt unusual, but I was surprised and certainly not bothered.

Why? Because the song wasn't just music. It was a poetic space, a setting where the narrative and the character breathed so vividly that time itself dissolved.

While listening, thoughts rolled endlessly in my head, until I knew I had to write this down. Not because I was simply "impressed" this word is too small. This felt real. It was like Kaber was sitting right next to my bed and singing.

And yet… after it ended, I felt lonelier than before.

(I'm not going to summarize the whole song, but a few moments remain etched in me)

It's about a girl named Nila, a close friend of Kaber. She was kind, especially to lost souls. She was a kind of hope. On a full moon day in 2013, she handed Kaber a flower and said:

"This flower's name is Frangipani. Remember me whenever you see it."

After that, she appeared and disappeared from Kaber's life, like a drifting light in a fog. One day, she saw Kaber's torn shirt and told him she'd buy him a new one. They talked a lot. I felt like she mothering Kaber. But in the middle of the song, the truth surfaced, Nila was gone. Disappears again. After long time, Kaber and we get to know that she had jumped from her room. A neighbor heard the fall. She lay in the parking lot, wings spread. And after knowing that Kaber felt betrayal then anger then sadness and then guilt.

That's where the song leaves us. (Though there's much more than what I've written here.)

I knew some of Kaber's music before "Nee Vekkam Kori" was my favorite but this felt entirely different.

But after I listened, I kept wondering WHY FRANGIPANI ? I did some research. I learned it's a common name for Plumeria, a genus in the dogbane family. Beautiful, fragrant flowers, yet the tree often looks lifeless.

And then I felt a metaphor. Nila was the Frangipani. Frangipani resembles Nila.

The flower's beauty is stunning, but short-lived and fragile. Like Nila's life, she bloomed briefly, yet powerfully, leaving behind an emotional imprint as lasting as a scent. A Frangipani tree may appear barren, lifeless yet it gives birth to beauty. Nila was the same, offering hope to others even as her own soul faded.

Nila felt strangely familiar to me, as if I'd seen her, heard her or read her somewhere before, oh yes but not in reality, in fiction.

Then I hardly remembered the short novel "In the Cafe of Lost Youth" by Patrick Modiano. In it, there's a character named Louki, mysterious, elusive, never truly known to anyone except herself. There were four perspectives about her, but none of them truly revealed who she really was. She gave light to the hopeless souls, simply by her mere presence.

Louki, like Nila, was a "கரை விளக்கு" a shore light for lost souls. Even Kaber didn't fully know who Nila really was. Both women shared same life somehow. Louki, too, leapt from her apartment, smiling as she said, "Let go of yourself."

Louki wasn't just a girl passing through a café. She was unrevealed to the world. So was Nila. She too unrevealed. I hate to say something as pure, even Kaber said "அவல் ஒன்னும் புனிதமல்ல, மனிதரில் யாரை புனிதம் சொல்ல" but I want to say this song is way more than "புனிதம்". That because of Kaber's verse pulled me deep into that realization.

The second time I listened to Frangipani, one line made me to remember,

"இந்த பூ, இந்த பூ பேர் ஃபிரங்கிபானி, இத பாக்கும் போது, என்ன நெனச்சிப்பியா நீ"

And my mind leapt to the opening scene of "5 Centimeters per Second" by Makoto Shinkai, where Akari tells Takaki that cherry blossoms fall at a speed of five centimeters per second.

In my mind, these moments — Nila giving the Frangipani, Akari speaking of cherry blossoms, existed in the same universe. They might even be the same person.

Maybe this is all just my imagination, and maybe nothing here "means" anything at all. But this is how the song made me feel.

I've never felt this way before — not even with Ilayaraja's music, and I'm a huge fan. Kaber, with this one song, threw me into an ocean of thoughts.

Frangipani. Louki. Akari. Nila. They keep circling in my mind, doing something I can't quite explain.

This might sound exaggerated, but even after reading Dostoevsky, I find this song too philosophical to handle.

Thank you, Kaber, for creating this.