Palani Bharathi

Palani Bharathi or Pazhani Bharathi (pronounced  or ) is an Indian writer and lyricist who works in Tamil cinema. Palani Bharathi was born in Karaikudi to Sami Palaniappan, a poet, and Kamala. He has a brother and four sisters. Palaniappan was an assistant of orator/writer Kundrakudi Adigal and follower of poet Bharathidasan. When Palaniappan moved to Madras (now Chennai) with his family in search of work, he got a job in the government newspaper Tamil Arasu. As a result, Bharathi studied and grew in Chennai. He initially studied at a municipal school, and later at Ganapathi Higher Secondary School till the twelfth grade. Aspiring to become a film editor, he tried joining the M.G.R. Government Film and Television Training Institute, to no avail. Bharathi began his career by editing articles, mainly correcting factual errors, in publications including Neerottam and Porval. He later got a job in the Tamil Nadu Textbook Corporation, of checking and recording the account of volumes of books transported in vehicles from the book warehouse, with his salary being ₹10 (equivalent to ₹73 or 91¢ US in 2020) per day. Bharathi was not very interested in that job, which did not last for more than a month. Unlike his father, Bharathi liked listening to filmi songs, and aspired to become a film lyricist. He was eventually introduced to director Vikraman, and wrote a song for the film Perum Pulli (1991) which did not appear onscreen.