Ratheesh Vega: Kalikaalam is my protest against child abuse

Those who have listened to Malayalam composer Ratheesh Vega’s tunes over the years would have never expected him to venture into rap. The music director, whose melodies from Beautiful and Cocktail are still popular, wrote and performed Kalikaalam, which he released on his YouTube Channel recently.

Speaking about the foray, Ratheesh tells OTTplay, “I wanted to do something different because people have mostly heard my melody compositions. Rap music has been synonymous with protest and this is my protest against child abuse. When I was writing the lyrics for Kalikaalam, it somehow lent itself to the rhyme and that helped make this a rap track.”

The composer says that it was the disturbing incident of Sanu Mohan, who confessed to murdering his 11-year-old daughter in Kochi last month, that prompted him to write the track.

“I was haunted by it,” he says. “So, when I was composing and performing this song, I felt all those emotions. I was thinking of my kids and how I felt when I heard someone had killed his daughter. So, the song is for such people if they ever feel the urge to attack kids; to make them realise that children are God’s gift to us.”

Elaborating on the track, Ratheesh says, “The trigger for the music video was how all of us after hearing a tragic story would wonder how things would have been different. The lyrics pretty much say that – ‘The rain and snow, the rivers and forests are for our children too and your insane thoughts shouldn’t destroy that’.”

The music video was shot just before the current lockdown was announced and Ratheesh’s team had worked on the post-production remotely.

The Malayalam music director, who last composed for Anoop Menon’s King Fish, says that he plans on being more active in the digital space. “It’s only when you do something different from what you have been doing that people notice your talents. Right now, musicians have to use the digital space. It’s through this medium that I can reach out to a young generation and thereby also giving a new lease of life to my previous compositions,” says Ratheesh, adding that he is working on an EDM track that will be released next month.