Impromptu Troubadores...

We try to train our teams to be as flexible as possible. We try to tell them that they could literally be asked to do just about anything from speaking in public to tasting goat intestines (which, by the way, are as rubbery and disgusting as you would think… no “tastes like chicken” for those nasty little pieces of gut-hose!). True to form, therefore, the team responded with panache when Raj announced that we would be singing in church. I cocked an eyebrow. “Singing?” As in, we need to speak, but do it to a tune? “Yes, yes, yes,” remitted Raj, “just a good song that you all know and can sing easily together.” We were stumped. Humorously, an unforeseen “drawback” to attending a phenomenal church like GCC is that we don’t exactly regularly sing a repetitive catalogue of “old favorites” or hymns. We vary our worship sets so much (which is a good thing!), that when we were all pegged suddenly with having to come up with an “old favorite”, none of us were sure what to say. “No problem,” Raj said, “I will teach you a song in Tamil.” (Raj shown here doing just that... in the middle of the Indian restaurant where we were having tea). “Oh great,” I thought, “as if singing isn’t difficult enough… now we’re going to try to do it in a completely foreign (not to mention difficult) language with 10 minutes notice!” But sure enough, Raj set out transliterating the lyrics on napkins and giving us a quick walk-through. Within 10 minutes, we could at least say the words. The tune was still a little stilted for us, but we could limp through it. Attached here are napkin copies of the song (transliterated Tamil and also English).

The words are as follows:

Tamil:
Yenna yen anantham, Yenna yen anantham, sollak koodathe.
Yenna yen anantham, Yenna yen anantham, sollak koodathe.
Mannan kiristhu yen pavathai yellam mannithu vitare

English:
What a wonderful joy! What a wonderful joy!
What a wonderful joy! What a wonderful joy!
I can’t explain everything!
Christ the King has forgiven all my sins completely!