Kamal Haasan said in an online chat where this journalist at ETimes met him this evening, “I am not here to grieve or mourn, I am here to celebrate the man. We spent such wonderful moments together. We travelled by train to Vizag. I wish we had more time with each other.”

Was Balasubrahmanyam happy with today’s music, we asked? Read between the lines of Kamal Haasan’s reply. “He thought it was not his position to ridicule. If I asked him if he liked a particular (new) song, he would…” and Kamal shrugged his shoulders in Bala Subramaniam’s inimitable way, which denoted neither a ‘yes’ nor a ‘no’. He would admire talent but never get into the mediocrity of others.”

Kamal further said that the ‘Ek Duuje Ke Liye‘ song ‘Tere Mere Beech Mein’ was the legend’s best song for him. “If COVID-19 hadn’t hit him, he would have been still doing music. I would say, he died with his boots on. And you know what? He would at times say that he is a fan of me and I would get so embarrassed.”

Beautifully put by the legend Kamal Haasan himself, the actor said that he cannot recall his first meeting with Balasubrahmanyam. “When you are a part of each other’s life so much, it’s never about how you met and where you met first. Audiences were in love with us and we soon became brothers.”

In the chat which was attended also by some other sections of the media, Kamal Haasan also said, “I remember telling him to celebrate when he completed 30,000 songs. He told me that muscles are not meant to be flexed, they are meant to lift weights. Humility was one of his biggest virtues,” but not before adding, “Balasubrahmanyam was a huge fan of Mohd Rafi and he admired Kishore Kumar a lot.”