Iruvar or Vandicholai Chinnarasu?

Around 1997-1998

Melody Audio & Video Centre
Lebuh Ampang, Kuala Lumpur

In my visits to the Lebuh Ampang audio shop in the 1990s, I never once went to the first floor of the shop – that’s the floor where they sell the audio CDs. All my visits were restricted to the ground floor where the cassettes were sold due to my student budget but on this particular visit, when I was on my way out, I saw they had a bargain bin table setup, and the CDs were selling for an unbelievable price of only RM10 each. The recommended retail price of a Pyramid CD was RM35 at that time.

I quickly browsed through the selection of titles in the bargain bin, and I managed to find to my surprise – the Pyramid CDs of "Iruvar", and "Vandicholai Chinnarasu". I already had bought the Mani Osai cassettes of "Iruvar", and "Vandicholai Chinnarasu". In my home in 1992, my father had bought an Aiwa sound system that plays CDs but I could not afford to buy CDs. This was an excellent chance for me to start building my CD collection of A.R. Rahman soundtracks but I had one big dilemma – I only had RM10 plus just enough coins for me to take the bus back home to Kelana Jaya from Lebuh Ampang.

I had to make a choice of which CD I was going to buy – "Iruvar" or "Vandicholai Chinnarasu"? At that time, I never realized how rare the Pyramid CDs of A.R. Rahman will become in the future. The "Iruvar" movie was released in 1997, and I saw the movie in Johor Bahru when I was studying in my university. I vaguely remember seeing "Vandicholai Chinnarasu" in VHS tape in my home. Of course I had warm feelings towards the "Iruvar" soundtrack – it was after all a Mani Rathnam movie, and the fourth consecutive movie with the director by A.R. Rahman after the success of "Roja", "Thiruda Thiruda", and "Bombay".

I decided to buy the "Iruvar" Pyramid CD. I must have reasoned that I could always buy the "Vandicholai Chinnarasu" CD later when I could afford to buy CDs but little did I realize how rare it will be to even find a second hand copy of the "Vandicholai Chinnarasu" Pyramid CD later.

The irony in all of this now is that it’s so much easier to obtain a new old stock of the "Iruvar" Pyramid CD in the year 2013 from various online websites compared to "Vandicholai Chinnarasu" Pyramid CD.