Very few things make you believe in anything divine, but surely SPB deifying Rafi and his voice ... when he himself perhaps more than anyone else was the the person that talent and torch got passed to ... https://twitter.com/NagpurKaRajini/status/1309418163201650693?s=19 #SPBalasubramanyam

No tribute is enough. What do you say about him? I went and downloaded (and trimmed) that video from the first Sun TV interview of AR Rahman; where SPB, already a star in the industry, has such nice things to say about an up and comer. Always a nice word. #SPBalasubramanyam

Anyway, what more can I say that everyone has not already said? His departure has taken a part of our childhoods, our adulthoods, every mood and many memories. And he will be mourned and missed like none other. #SPBalasubramanyam

Going back and listening to familiar #SPB songs is producing flutters of anxiety and deep, piercing pangs of sorrow now. He seems to be beseeching you directly, calling out from the beyond. It is so now - will it ever get better?

Now I'm listening to "En Veettu Thottatthil" from Gentleman. That modulation in his voice ...

"Aadikku Pinnaalae Kaveri Thaangaathu
Aalaana Pinnaale Allippoo Moodaathu
Aasai Thudikkinrathu... "

Only SPB possible.

... and now that final bit of laughter and humming along at the end of "Raakamma Kaiyya Thattu" from Thalapathi. What a man.

And so SPB is gone.

It is astonishing how much he meant to so many different generations.

My aunt (mom's elder sister) has been crying all day after hearing this news. To her, and to everyone else, it feels like losing a close family member; someone who was there through this and every other stage of life.

Through radiosets, little transistor radios, black & white TVs, the early cable TV channels, and now on cellphones and on Whatsapp.

My mom feels very much like I do, but when we speak about it, our vocabularies are completely alien to each other.

My mom is talking about songs and movies I have never seen or heard in my life; and I am talking about music from much later in life that has barely registered as a blip on her radar. We can both see that we are struggling with the same feelings, the same emotions ...

... yet our languages are strangely alien.

And the only thing that unites them -- unites us, in this case -- across time, generations, eras, and many different pasts ... is SPB.

He had something for everyone. He was something to everyone.

For me, I will remember so many things. I will remember SPB the actor, SPB the policeman - the high-ranking IPS officer from Thiruda Thiruda; yet also the doting police constable father from Kadhalan.

I will remember SPB, Rajini's voice - in Veera, in Dalapathi, in Muthu, in Sivaji...

I will remember those little flourishes that he made his own; and that he used to make his songs -- and our hearts -- his own.

The bits of laughter. The way he said "God" as "Gaad".

The praise he had for an upcoming AR Rahman.

The praise he had for every up and comer trying to sing.

And his grace and his generosity and most of all, his smile.

That we should lose him in this time is an especially cruel injustice. It will feel like the loss of a part of ourselves that we never quite had the opportunity to fully mourn. Grief is the first step towards healing ...

... but in this case, should even the larger world heal and come back from the brink of this awful pandemic that has taken so much that we love and cherish, this hole that his departure has left will almost certainly never go away fully.

And so one day many years later, when we sit down for the accounting and they ask us - "What did you lose, what did you lose in the great pandemic?"

We will take a breath, and steel ourselves.

And then we will say:

"That day, we lost a part of the music that fed and sustained and saved our souls. That day, we lost SPB."

Go well into that gentle night, dear #SPB. We will always listen for you. We will always listen to you.