Back in 2013, when Alphonse Puthren's Neram hit the screen, its Run Anthem - Pistah had become a rage in the country, effortlessly transcending language barriers—the first Mollywood song to do so, albeit not Malayalam.
It has been three years now, but it seems the Pistah fever hasn't quite died down yet—and rightly so, as an IPL 2016 promotional video has featured the song in all its grandeur.
Pause for a moment please. Let the whole Neram team, Alphonse Puthren, music director Rajesh Murugesan and singer Shabareesh Varma take a bow. (Guys, you made us proud. Goosebumps!)
The video features a carnival-like atmosphere, swamped by hordes of people cheering for their respective teams at the IPL curtain raiser while huge mannequins of Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) skipper Virat Kohli, Sunrisers Hyderabad skipper Shikhar Dhawan, Gujarat Lions star Ravindra Jadeja and finally, India and Rising Pune Supergiants captain MS Dhoni make their way into the parade.
The song, a revamped version of Jagathy Sreekumar's popular gibberish in the 1983 movie Kinnaram, has over 2 lakh hits on video Youtube.
On how team Neram landed on the song, Alphonse Puthren said thus in an earlier interview: "Shabareesh used to sing the song whenever we guys used to have a get-together. So I thought why not use the song and Rajesh came up with the peppy tune. That's how it happened. We three added few more lyrics and fixed the tune and it sounded fantastic."