Mallikarjun K’s meme page ‘Malayalam Band Memes’ brings laughter to a certain intersection of people, who love Malayalam cinema and have knowledge of band music.

Features Music Monday, May 15, 2023 - 16:25
Written by  Cris
Edited by  Lakshmi Priya

In the Malayalam film Nadodikattu, there is a hugely popular comic sequence that involves a “professional killer” and two naive men who have no clue who this guy is. Captain Raju, playing Pavanayi, this mysterious stranger in a ridiculous costume, announces that he is not an alavalathi (loafer) as one of the men call him, but a professional killer. He opens a briefcase and names the weapons he has brought to kill the men, everything from the naadan Malappuram kathi (traditional Malappuram knife) to an ultramodern machine gun.

Mallikarjun K, an IT professional who like many IT professionals had nursed a dream of becoming a musician on stage, put the famous scene into a music meme, and tweaked the words a little. ‘Professional killer’ became ‘professional musician’ (but the alavalathi stayed). The weapons changed into everything from naadan nadaswaram (traditional trumpet) to ultra-modern flanger. The meme, one of the most popular in a page that Mallikarjun runs, brought a lot of laughter to a certain intersection of people – those who have some knowledge of band music and follow Malayalam films.

Those are Mallikarjun’s two big loves – music and Malayalam movies. Like any great chef, he combined his favourite ingredients to run his page of memes, to be enjoyed by the community of musicians. Malayalam Band Memes began, Mallikarjun tells TNM, in October 2020, when the world was in the thick of the pandemic. He made a few images and sent it to his friends who loved it.

 

 

“So I got on Instagram and began following musicians in Kerala. I too was part of a band once, during college and the first years of my IT job. But like many struggling musicians, we faded out after a few years,” he says.

Mallikarjun grew up in Aluva of Kerala but has been working in Bengaluru for 20 years now, still following Malayalam movies, and still loving independent music. From time to time, he picks up his guitar, strums a tune to match the words he writes, about summer rains or monkeys in his balcony. He also teaches his nine-year-old daughter to play the guitar. But modestly he says, “I am better at making memes than music.”

 

 

The memes thrived through the months, Mallikarjun apparently never falling short of ideas. It can be as simple as Mohanlal standing under the caption ‘Ettan’ (big brother, as the actor is often referred to in Kerala) and lying down under the caption ‘Ettan b’ (the ‘b’ being ‘flat’ in music notes). It is, as we say, hilarious to band musicians, but very likely incomprehensible to another. “It is meant to be for the music community, and it is meant to be entertainment. Those who are familiar with the stage-band-dynamics and the composing dynamics will get it faster. But then in the last one and a half years, it has served purposes other than entertainment. The page is getting enquiries about musicians, or promotions for upcoming events,” Mallikarjun says.

 

 

His luck changed too when the page led him to take up the role of social media manager for the metal band The Down Troddence for a while. He also does his bit for another metal band, Chaos, one of the memes calling the growling vocalist Jaaga a famous bhaava gayakan (term used for expressive singers of soft Malayalam songs, extremely unfitting for a metal band singer), while announcing an upcoming event.

 

 

“Sometimes I get the idea first and then I look for a template in a film. Other times I see a film and wonder what these characters would say if they were musicians,” Mallikarjun says. So when Fahadh Faasil in Joji and the character playing his brother look at each other very intensely – during an intense scene in the film – the caption goes, “The bassist and the guitarist who played the wrong chord during practice”.

 

 

Another amusing meme comes with the iconic love scene of Madhu and Sheela in Chemmeen, where he famously says he will spend the days singing sad songs along the beach after she leaves. In Mallikarjun’s version, Sheela replies, “but please don’t sing out of pitch.”

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