Amrutha Suresh on manifesting a dream with AR Rahman and breaking the silence with Pizha

Chennai knows a good voice when it hears one. The city that gave the world the Mozart of Madras, or Isai Puyal, as Tamil fans have long preferred to call him—has always held its music to a certain standard. So when Amrutha Suresh took the stage here last month for AR Rahman’s The Wonderment Tour, she did not take it for granted. She walked in, and she delivered.

Amrutha Suresh on the surprise song that won over Chennai

The concert was held in February, and Amrutha was among the handpicked lineup that included Chinmayi Sripada, Srinivas, AR Ameen, Nakul Abhyankar, and Adithya RK,  each representing a distinct strand of Indian music. 

For a singer from Kerala whose name was still new to Tamil ears, it was, as she puts it, “pure manifestation over years. I used to dream about singing for him. That was my biggest dream,” she says.

The dream, when it arrived, came with a surprise for her. Rahman assigned her Mallipoo, a song she had not imagined for herself. “Mallipoo was never my kind of song. Why did he give me the song?” she recalls thinking. The audience, it turned out, had the answer. “Many people in Tamil don’t know me, and yet they tagged me as that Mallipoo girl.” Hundreds of tags, a new city, and a name that stuck. She calls it “a gateway he (Rahman) opened for me.” 

Amrutha’s journey began on the reality show Idea Star Singer in 2007 — she did not win, but the industry took note. Playback work in Malayalam cinema came next, followed by Amrutam Gamay, the band she runs with her sister Abhirami Suresh, which has since performed across India and beyond.

Recently, the singer also released Pizha—Malayalam for fault—a solo single timed to International Women’s Day. Written and composed by herself, Amrutha says that she means every word of the song that deals with the subjugation women have been subjected to. “Women are always blamed. We are always called wrong. If we talk, it is wrong. If we don’t talk, we are still wrong. If we choose motherhood, we are judged. If we don’t choose, still we are judged. From the time of Ram and Sita to the present times, it is the same,” she says.

The song Pizha is built on folk structures laced with trance and EDM production, a pairing she chose consciously. “I wanted to give the new generation, a fresh-sounding feel with a folk mix,” she explains. The darkness in the sound is intentional too. “I wanted to keep it dark to show the pain.” But Pizha is not, she emphasises, a song about defeat. “How long are you going to carry this word mistake inside you? At some point, you have to drop it and live your life boldly— just take whatever you have and run.”

Now, Amrutha has her sights set on a new audience. “I want the Tamil people to know me. I am hoping to sing in Tamil soon,” she concludes.

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