Dhanush with wife Aishwarya

Yo boys… I am sing song…
Soup song... flop song….
Distance’la moon’nu… moon’nu…
Moon’nu… colour’ru… white’tu…
Hand’la… glass’su…
Glass’la… Šcotch’chu…
Èyes’su… full’la… tear’ru…

 

If you have hit upon these lyrics on a social networking site or have been humming the music this week, then you must have been bitten by the Kolaveri di bug.

Ever since it released last Thursday, Why you Kolaveri di? — a song from the unreleased film 3 starring southern superstar Dhanush (also known as Rajinikanth’s son-in-law) and Shruti (better known as Kamal Haasan’s daughter) — has become an Internet phenomenon.

Downloaded by millions every second, the song written and sung by Dhanush himself and composed by newbie Anirudh Ravichander, has become the most searched Indian video on YouTube this year and has been trending on Twitter this whole week.

“It’s completely crazy. I can’t imagine that something that we came up with so casually and out of the top of our heads has actually become such a worldwide rage,” Dhanush told t2 from Chennai on Wednesday afternoon.

Peppered with lyrics that make little sense, the catchy tune was composed in less than 25 minutes, with Dhanush and music director Ravichander not even having a ready lyric sheet in hand. “We knew that the tenor of the song — a laid-back drawl in colloquial words — would work with the younger crowd, but we were not ready for the fact that people of all ages would take to it so well,” says 21-year-old Ravichander who makes a smashing debut with Kolaveri.

Dhanush at the recording of Kolaveri di

Sung in ‘Tanglish’ — English words in a Tamil accent — Kolaveri di registered 83,000 YouTube views within the first 24 hours itself. Till Tuesday night, the song had amassed a whopping 14,65,522 views... and counting.

“Everyone seems to have taken to the song. I really can’t pinpoint why it has worked, but I think just the casualness of the number and the fact that it sounds like we are having fun is what has really caught on,” says Dhanush.

Celebrities too are playing Kolaveri di in loop. “Even Amitabh Bachchan Sir has tweeted that he loved the song. It’s so overwhelming that something that we created in so little time is being appreciated so much,” says Dhanush.

“Finally heard! Aiyyo! I lou! Hittu!! Soopera!” was the tweet from singer Shreya Ghoshal. Industrialist Anand Mahindra posted: “And going viral in India is now #KolaViral.”

“The randomness of the song really works for me. I love the fact that the makers have created something out of nothing. The tune is catchy and so are the mindless words,” says Anurag Hira, co-owner of the Calcutta-based One by One Design Pvt Ltd, who has listened to Kolaveri “at least 15 times” in 12 hours.

For Dhanush, the final stamp of approval comes from none other than pa-in-law Rajinikanth? “He heard the song much before it was launched. Even then he had predicted that it would be a massive hit”.

Mind it Chammak challo, Kolaveri di is here!