Govindan Namboothiripad

We chanced upon one Govindan Namboothiripad, an engineer by profession, who is a flautist by choice. This man, is a self taught flautist who has played with the greats in the malayalam music industry. He is closely related to one of our patrons, Dr. P.Muralidharan Namboothiripad. One of us have had the fortune of singing to his accompaniment on the flute at the good doctor's residence sometime back. Impressed with the playing, we had requested him to perform for our regular mehfils and he had readily agreed.

Thus, we chanced to meet him on a Thursday and he agreed to perform for us that Saturday. The venue as usual was the Beach Hotel. This time we used their bar hall. He was accompanied on tabla by his brother Krishnan Namboothiripad.

Now a word about these two. They are the owners and promoters of Krystal Group of Companies based in B’lore (www.kristalgroup.com). They own resorts, hotels, construction divisions, plantations and what not. In short, these guys were top shots and they were there just for the music! Now that’s what I call love for music! 

Govindan Namboothiripad started off with a semi-classical song on flute, ably accompanied by his brother. He then went on to do Karimukil Kattile, Unarunaroo and many other old melodies from malayalam and Hindi films. He then asked some of us to sing whereby they would accompany us on the song. Thus some of us sang Gori thera, Jab Deep Jale, Chandanathil, Kannai Kalaimane, Shyama sundara and so on. Adv.P.S.Murali did a tabla solo at the end as a special performance. There was also a karaoke session in the end to round off things. 

Dr.Satheesh Chandran gave a memento on our behalf to Mr.Govindan Namboothiripad and Adv. P.S.Murali gave one to Mr. Krishnan Namboothiripad.

Later on, they mentioned that when they were asked to perform at a small gathering they had expected a crowd of some 10 people and not 30 people. They said that had they been informed of that they would have taken a keyboard along and brushed up a bit before the program. Well, there’s always a next time! 

The crowd enjoyed the program. Many realized the difficulty of playing the flute only on that day. The ease and dexterity with which Mr. Govindan Namboothiripad handled that delicate instrument was a treat to watch.

The date was 18th December 2004, the venue was the Beach Hotel, Calicut and the photographs are by Dr. K.G.Ramakrishnan.