If "Kolaveri di" isn't in your vocabulary, it will be soon; quirky Tamil song ("Tamglish", actually) goes mega viral

Tamil singer Dhanush and a group of Indian producers and writers have produced a song in “Tamglish” that has gone viral in a major way. What does Kolaveri mean? Even Tamil listeners are asking. Urbanictionary.com has been nice enough to provide a definition. According to the website kolaveri means — “A strong urge to kill someone, popularised by Dhanush in his chart-buster 2011 song ‘Why this kolaveri di”. Okay….So …“Why do you have this murderous rage against me?” is the actual meaning of the main chorus of the song, and ‘di’ is a way to call a girl.

The song is catching on around the world. Here’s a Japanese dance video:

What does it mean?

APunkChoice.com has it figured out:

It doesn’t happen every day that a Tamil song becomes a rage and the entire nation sways to the common beat. Why This Kolaveri Di is a superhit track with over eight million views on youtube in just 10 days. Some give credit to the simple and immensely catchy tune by music composer Anirudh Ravichander. Others have credited Dhanush for his tipsy rendering. But almost everyone is intrigued by the song’s lyrics. Here we decode them for you.

Tamil star Dhanush who has given words to the song never expected that it will be appreciated so much by the masses. He sings it’s a ‘flop’ song, however, ironically, it isn’t. We tried to decode what’s the meaning behind the bizarre words of the track, like ‘soup’, ‘holy cow’.

As the song is in Tanglish, those who couldn’t understand the Tamil words easily followed the English lines, but one of the most asked question after the song became a hit was, “What is the meaning of Kolaveri Di”?

What’s more funny was when we came across some people, with no knowledge of Tamil, who thought that it’s about sister as in Hindi ‘di’ stands for elder sister. Well, Kolaveri di as Dhanush penned it is for the killer rage, the murderous rage. “Why do you have this murderous rage against me?” is the actual meaning of the main chorus of the song, and ‘di’ is a way to call a girl.

And “soup” is a kind of informal Tamil word used for the boys who are losers in love, while “holy cow” has also colloquial connotation. Interestingly the line “you showed me bouv-u” means rejection — when a girl rejects a boy and shows the door. “Sariyaa Vaasi” in proper Tamil, means “play the music properly”.

This kind of words are commonly used by Tamil youth. In fact, Dhanush, quite self effacingly, said that the song is “absolute nonsense”.

But do we really care? ‘Nonsense’ does make sense when millions lap it up.

Other versions:

A female version:

The hilarious little kid dancing has been remixed to it: