How I Became A Radio Jockey

Although it may seem like it, it this isn't a love story.

I am not aware of any explicit rules of when a set of incidents qualify as one, but I am sure there must be some unsaid ones. For example, in this story:

1. The girl already had a boyfriend.

2. I had already been “rejected” by means of the above fact having been communicated firsthand.

3. She was a co-worker – a golden rule that I was afraid of breaking but didn’t have to thanks to the first 2 rules.

4. I had a personal rule of not seeking love against my own mental peace and each of the above 3 rules were meant to protect myself from it.

   
   

Here, there could have been no love, and none could have, or should have, been pursued. Hence, this story is not a love story, but whatever the rest it is, I shall leave to you, the reader, to judge.

Here’s what happened.

______

It was the times of Covid. I was alive, and hence, working in an office, which was otherwise a routine experience except that everyone alive and healthy was required to attend an extra-curricular meeting every morning that served only to remind everyone that they were still employed (and hence, obligated to work).

In one of those meetings, I presented a talk on managing money (to break the above obligation, eventually) in which I wasn’t expecting some audience. But a fan? No.

So, when a girl called me asking to learn more, I was intrigued. Any girl who makes her own money and learns to invest it makes my heart miss a beat, which it did. That her voice was earnest was as much a hook as the sweetness in it. Slowly, our conversations grew, and so did my interest.

But it was the times of Covid. Who knew how short-lived or unrequited such a one-sided crush could be? Either that or my rule number 3 was going to kill it, but before either of that could happen, we both ended up in Goa on our individual workations. Of course, I wanted to meet, but there are still too many beaches to hope for a random run-in, and being a co-worker, I couldn’t risk revealing my wish to meet her by asking to meet her. Divine intervention ensued – another colleague who lived in Goa and was placed exactly in the middle of our North and South whereabouts (and fates) decided to call us both for a lunch meet, completely unaware of my feelings.

______

Have you ever had a broken music player? Sometimes, the funny thing with fixing one is that you realize, after having fixed everything else that may have been broken, that the volume knob was the one really, really broken. You won’t know if anything got fixed, until that got fixed first. I had a heart like that; deeply broken, or so I liked to believe.

Talking to her had cause a faint beat, something that could be written off to chance, or a misread. Meeting her had made it beatbox; not totally unaware, but not necessarily indicating something worth salvaging. But all the frequencies started ringing out loud when I got back on my bike to ride back to Bangalore, and the volume rose as the distance from Goa increased. I was ecstatic to hear my heart singing out loud once again.

By the time I reached home, my whole being was buzzing so loud that I was afraid it would reveal itself. Before I’d even sat down to relax, I found myself on a call with her, for reasons I cannot recollect. I know as much that I didn’t plan to tell, but it so happened that she was as high as anyone in Goa would be, and it seemed that she wouldn’t remember anything the next day. This was a Get Out of Jail Free card, and I availed it.

In response, I got to know that she is seeing someone already.

I was kind of happy. Remember rule number 4?

Yank the power cord out of the boom-box before it gets anyone into trouble, including itself, right? Case closed. Or so, I’d thought.

______

I woke up in peace the next Monday. I wasn’t expecting a personal conversation, and I was expecting the eagerness in her professional voice with me to drop. But it had seemed to have grown! Whatever she had drunk, hadn’t helped her forget, but since I hadn’t had any to have forgotten that she had a boyfriend, I knew I couldn’t have, or rather shouldn’t have ended up doing anything more than what would have seemed usual from a friend.

Yet, on one of those days when she said that she’d been feeling down (it was the 1^st day of her periods) and was having trouble sleeping, I made a claim that confounded me as much as it confounded her, albeit for different reasons.

I told her that I had a radio channel where I read stories from books to help people sleep and that it was her lucky day because the latest one was scheduled for that very night!

I’d thought (no, wait, I hadn’t been thinking! Read: expected, afterwards) that she’d catch my bluff. Instead, she said she’d like to join in.

______

In love, you don’t make false claims. If you do, you must, by every means necessary, live up to them. But what’s the point of living it up here? Not like she’d know it was fake, and neither could there be any reciprocation! I pondered as much, and yet, proceeded to do it anyway. If it brings her some comfort and me some laughter, that’s much to gain with nothing to lose, right?

Between that and the meticulous preparation that followed, there was no space for any self-doubt about whether I could pull it off. Friends and family, including two mothers (mine and a friend’s) had been desperately confounded into joining as my (fake) audience. By dinner, my room had been converted into a studio, broadcast platforms tested, doors and windows soundproofed, and quality approved. The only thing left to chance was the book. As per my claim, I was to pick a random book and turn to a random chapter to read for 30 min. I didn’t expect that to go wrong, or rather, too wrong.

So, after the opening (fake) ritual and (sincerest) greetings for my audience, I went to my collection of mostly self-help books. I stood there for a few seconds and finally placed my bets on The Panchatantra. I hadn’t yet read it, but, as anyone would agree, it would have seemed the safest bet, right? I opened a random chapter (somewhere after the middle of the book to ensure it wasn’t number 13) and started reading in a calm yet animated voice. I was totally prepared to feel the story myself and read out each of the characters in a slightly different way. The first paragraph made me feel like a winner. But the second? Oh, the second was where the real characters were introduced.

It was the story of Hiranyak and Tamrachuda. IYKYK.

There was no turning back. I was already committed to the characters.

______

For the next 30 mins, I couldn’t afford even a pause to reflect on my audience’s reaction or my own; they were muted, but my imagination wasn’t. The girl that mattered had joined and the act had to be completed, for better or worse. With deep breathes and a focused mind, I narrated on the story of that these characters (and now my life) was a part of.

After I signed-off as if this was my 100^th time and 100 more would follow, I kept my headset down, shut the monitor down, and walked out into the hall.

My friends, in person, on WhatsApp, and on call, were as entertained as anyone could be. I definitely hadn’t failed at that; they were only too glad to have joined. As for the family members that had joined, I could only have hoped that none of them would have made any sense of it and would write it off as the most boring 30 minutes of their life, ever. but my friends were as entertained as they could have been. Gladly, I never heard about it from them. The night gradually absorbed itself into my friends’ many deliberations, while I absorbed myself into what my main audience, that girl, must have thought about it.

It was only the next morning when she mentioned that she had slept sometime through it. Since that was the intention behind the fake show, I’d say, compliment well kept!

Of course, my friends were curious, what next?

______

Like I said, this wasn’t a love story. We never dated (for obvious reasons), but many conversations followed, over months, till life came back to its boring normal. No one at work found out, ever (or so I believe), for both of our sakes.

My heart, having already been so broken in the past, felt that conversations with her, even with the impending dead-end (or rather, no beginning), were a healing experience. Sometimes, being able to feel anything at all is a beautiful thing, isn’t it? And sometimes, being able to do something for someone, knowing that it wasn’t (and couldn’t have been) for anything in return is even more beautiful, right?

My friends disagreed. They’d asked, “What did she say when she got to know it was just for her?”

“The beauty,” I’d said, “is that she’ll never find out.”

The Heart Pees Where It Breaks

Once upon a heartbreak, I lost a tea-shop to the very romance that had led me to it. She-who-shall-not-be-named lived close-by, and before I’d drop her home after our dates, we’d share a cup of tea, holding each other, by the side of the road, just outside it. By lost, I mean - collaterally damaged - by memories around it that turned into those of a bitter ending.

But this phenomena wasn’t limited to just one place like that. It wasn’t even limited to one breakup!

Cafes, parks, roads; books, notebooks, movies; even trees!

And across cities!

In fact, one whole city!

Oh, and the flight path between 2 cities, albeit, thankfully, in just one direction.

And an airport.

____

I remembered the airport as I crossed it’s turn on the way to Fort Kochi. It wasn’t my first time here, but it was the first time after the only time that I’d been to the airport on a visit here. On the morning of my last visit to this town, I had gone to the airport to receive another she-who-must-not-be-named. On the morning of our departure, we had been engaged to each other, at this very airport - for all of 10 minutes.

Don’t ask me how I knew it was exact 10 minutes.

I know it sounds weird. But it is true.

I had proposed, she had accepted, and 10 minutes later, she changed her mind.

What happened in those 10 minutes? Nothing related to her changing her mind, at least from my side. Whatever I had to have done had already been done in the illustrious past of our relationship. It is my belief that her brain may have only just been catching up.

Alas, I don’t blame her, and neither am I ungrateful. It had happened a long time time ago, enough to have been forgotten, and it had been forgotten, except for when I saw the turn on my way to Fort Kochi, this time.

____

Some time ago, I had had a pet. At time, it had been his privilege to have my company, for I was easy to tug around along his adventurous wanderings and taste of vegan roadside snacks which his usual company was already trained to avoid.

On these walks did I observe a silent pee-war between him and other members of his species. Trees, roads, cars - some of the very things that I’d attach romantic moments as meanings to - were regularly peed over, one after the other, to mark and win territories, without so much as a bark or any bitterness. That is used to happen everyday, irrespective of the time or the order of who peed after whom, or without any apparent irritation from each member as to the momentary nature of territorial ownership was, least to say, very thought-provoking for me.

I didn’t know then that this ritual was going to serve as an inspiration for me in life.

____

Moving cities is easy. Get someone to pack your stuff and book you a ticket, if you can afford such privileges, and hopefully, like in my case, if you’re moving back to your hometown, you’d probably have your family waiting to cook you your beloved home-made recipes.

What is tougher is unpacking your life in a new city; routines, social circles, a sense of belonging, a sense of culture, an arc for growth, hobbies, societal surveillance, culinary appetites, and of course, dating pipelines - simple nuances that go overlooked unless you’re a trained nomad or a sworn saint, and that get destroyed without any sensory signal. You realise what you’ve lost only after countless morning of waking up without a sense of what you are going to do with your day, or how you’re going to manage to live through it without what could be called as a life.

So, when faced with the daunting reality of needed to replace that tea-shop stood ahead of me, along with all the others that connected to each other in the fabric of my new life, my nervous system revolted with the whole of the rest of my being, “NO! We’re not redoing months of effort to rebuild another life here. Each space is scared - found through serendipity as much as sincerity. We shall not let it be written away as collateral damage!”

But, how do we do that?

____

Late one night, it finally dawned upon me, as I got into my car, put on the new Spotify playlist that I’d named as ‘Pivot breakup 2024,’ and decided to go for a long drive, with a route, and a ritual in mind. The music was important; while I drove the car, the music drove my spirit.

Together, we reached the place where the tea-shop was located. Together, me and the music, still ringing in my head and singing in my heart, stepped out, and walked into the shop. Together, we read the menu, and ordered everything that we liked. Everything was yummy, everything was enjoyed wholly, everything was enjoyed slowly, with all the condiments and the add-ons, yet, zero guilt.

Once we were done here, I ordered the tea. God bless tea. It tasted even better alone, even while standing in the same spot as where she and I used to hold each other while having it. Maybe I was hallucinating how better it tasted, but that’s better than hallucinating much else.

Ah, there was an ice-cream shop, too! A great one! It made ice-creams with only Jaggery or Honey. Not that my guilt was concerned today, but it’s good to know when you’re ordering 2 scoops and then a third, one over the other. It was Winter. I had it slowly; it melted only down my throat, and not once over my hands.

Phew. What next? Back in the car - I knew where to - it’s a drive that I was used to; there was another shop where I used to go after dropping her, where I used to have ice-cream all by myself, but with memories of our days and weeks and months together, reflecting upon how I could do better to keep her.

I drove, I parked, I ate more ice-cream, and made better resolves. Water flushed the sugar down my throat before I felt ready to move-on - the night was done, a ritual evolved.

Mission accomplished.

____

Fort Kochi is a much smaller place than Delhi. I hadn’t ever thought about it - about how the same fabric would feel much heavier here, with heavier memories connected by stronger threads woven all over each other - until I walked through it again this time. So many roads, cafes, warehouses, trees, hotels, reminded me of meanings that I had subconsciously attached to in a past that held no meaning to me anymore, yet there was a weight to all of them.

It was as if this town itself had a memory that it wanted to remind me of. That meant only one thing to me, this time.

That my bladder had something larger than itself to take care of.

But this time, it wasn’t with an undertone of bitterness, and neither did it feel like it needed a mission. I realised this only as I wrote, that there had been a transformation inside me, albeit so gradual that I had failed to acknowledge it thus far - that it didn’t take a mission for me to claim, or reclaim, my happiness in the spaces that I occupied, inspite of whatever meanings that may have been attached to them in the past through mine or anyone else’s life experiences. It also didn’t need anymore of a resolve to make happiness, as much and more of it, through moments experienced in the present.

Hence, all that I needed to do in Fort Kochi, this time, was to not control my bladder in any way. Like my gut, it beaconed me towards places and experiences that mattered to me, and when a worthy moment arose, I didn’t stop happiness from flowing out & marking its territory.

Except for this one Italian Gelato place. They closed it, in the middle of the day, for a few minutes, exactly when I went to make my happiness there.

I wonder how they saw me coming?