'People ask for Janaki amma's songs more than mine': Gayatri Asokan remembers the singer's enduring appeal

When news broke that S Janaki had died on Saturday night at the age of 88, Gayatri Asokan found herself thinking not of the countless songs the playback singer had given Indian cinema, but of one quiet exchange over a Malayalam lyric. It happened during a reality show, where Gayatri performed one of Janaki's most loved Malayalam songs, 'Thaane Thirinjum Marinjum'.

Composed by M S Baburaj for 'Ambalapraavu', the song has travelled across generations, finding new life in concerts and music competitions long after the film's release. Gayatri had sung it many times before. But on that day, Janaki was in the audience.

The correction itself was small. What stayed with Gayatri was something else entirely.

"Just imagine," she says, still sounding amazed years later. "Janakiamma wasn't a native Malayalam speaker, yet she corrected the lyrics of a Malayalam song to me. That's the level of perfection she carried into her work. There was so much dedication behind her craft."

That memory perhaps explains why Janaki became "Janakiyamma" to Malayalis. Affection was earned not only through the sheer number of songs she sang, but through the care she invested in every syllable. She approached Malayalam, a language not her own, with the devotion of someone determined to make every word feel as though it belonged there.

'Thaane Thirinjum Marinjum' has long outlived the film it belonged to. Janaki never tries to overpower the song. She trusts Baburaj's melody, allowing every word and pause to do the work.

Baburaj found in Janaki a singer who could inhabit his melodies without disturbing their delicate architecture. She understood that emotion did not always demand volume. Sometimes longing could live inside a whisper.

For Gayatri, those songs have never stopped travelling with audiences.
Though she has built her career largely around ghazals, there is one request she can almost always anticipate before stepping onto a stage.
"Even today," she says, "I can't finish a ghazal concert without singing an S. Janaki song. Wherever I perform, people ask for her songs more than my own."

It is a curious phenomenon. A singer celebrated for one genre repeatedly finds herself returning to another artist's repertoire because listeners refuse to let those songs fade. Janaki's music does not belong to nostalgia alone; it continues to circulate, demanded by audiences who have carried it into new generations.

In the years Gayatri spent with Janaki on television reality shows, another impression stayed with her. The singer whom millions revered never carried herself with the weight of her own stature.

"When you're with Janakiamma, you never feel like you're in the presence of someone so celebrated. She was always warm, always soft-spoken."
Perhaps that gentleness explains another paradox. Janaki's voice could inhabit almost any emotion, romance, grief, devotion, playfulness and innocence, yet the woman behind it remained disarmingly unassuming. She allowed the songs to command attention, never herself.

That versatility became one of the defining characteristics of her career. Over decades, she moved effortlessly between composers, languages and musical moods, yet listeners seldom spoke of technique first. They spoke instead of feeling. They remembered where a song found them, how it lingered long after the film ended, how it seemed to understand emotions they themselves struggled to articulate.
For Gayatri, the measure of Janaki's reach lies not in awards or records but in the faces she sees at concerts.

"When I go for musical programmes today," she says, "I see everyone singing her songs, from older people to little children who are five or six years old."
There are very few singers whose audience renews itself without effort. Janaki's songs continue to arrive before each new generation as though untouched by time, inviting yet another listener to discover them.

As news of her passing spread on Saturday night, Gayatri found herself thinking less about loss than about continuity.
"She'll have fans even a hundred years from now. People who are yet to be born will be her fans. That's the kind of impact she has had. Everyone has to leave this world at some point. We can only cherish the memories they leave behind. Her contribution to music is immense, and I consider it a privilege to have known her."