The Sound of My Voice

They say your voice sounds different to other people. It’s always slightly more shrill to their ears than it is to your own.

Or so they say. How could anyone know for sure?

I’ve always had a good ear. Sensitive to patterns, pitches, accents and tunes.

I remember wincing when a music teacher at school was going slightly off-key as she demonstrated a song. It was more of a wobble than a mis-step, but in that whole class of 42, only two people knew that she had wobbled. She…and me.

I remember our eyes meeting and her noticing me wincing. And then, a few seconds later, she noticed me trying to cover up the wincing. Neither of us said anything then. But at the end of the class, as she left, she stopped at my desk and pinched my cheeks with a smile.

‘Koral sumaaru…aana kaadhu pramadham (an average voice, but a superb ear)’, she said, just loudly enough for both of us to hear, a quiet little inside joke between a teacher in her mid-thirties and her ward, not yet ten years old.

I understood music intuitively. And I could hold a tune. But I was terrified of the sound of my own voice. I was terrified that I would be off-key. Terrified of being out of rhythm. And terrified that I would only know, a fraction of a second after I’d made the error, by which time it would be too late to correct myself. Terrified of colouring outside the line. Just terrified.

And this wasn’t a reaction to some traumatic incident. This was just me. I feared my voice being out of tune in the way that some people feared heights. Or water.

Every time I tried to hit a note, it felt like I was jumping out into a black void with my eyes shut, hoping to land on something safe. And the possibility of missing that safe landing spot terrified me. It sounds bizarre, I’m sure, but the fear was very, very real. And most fears can't be explained in proper rational terms anyway.

I remember being a part of a choir in school, one among thirty or forty other kids singing in front of just three microphones. I always managed to find a place as far away from the microphones as I could. I’d allow my voice to be drowned out, as the eager, confident voices of those around me would rise in unison.

What made it even harder, was that I loved music. I loved how songs played in my head. And they would play there all day long, in dolby digital fullness. And yet, even when I hummed, it would always be very softly, so softly, that even if I went off key, I’d be the only one to know.

I grew up listening to music, never having the courage to sing. Not even when I was alone. Because even when I was alone, my harshest, most ruthless critic was always around.

Kaadhu Pramaadham, to borrow my teacher's words from all those years ago, was a curse.

Things changed when I taught myself how to play the guitar as an undergraduate. I could now create a tune without singing. And if ever I felt the need to sing, my voice wouldn’t be alone, all by itself, trying to balance melody, harmony, and rhythm. It would have company. I trusted my fingers more than I trusted my voice. But even then, I’d sing softly and strum loudly.

The guitar wasn’t just an accompaniment. It was a bodyguard. It was my fig leaf. And my comfort blanket.

I played the guitar with a few friends—we used to call them ‘jam sessions"—but we weren’t particularly good or creative. We performed at a few intercollegiate festivals, creating music so terrible that I’d cringe if I heard it today. We even recorded a few songs in a studio because others in the group thought we were creating something truly special. And I allowed myself to be swayed into thinking that perhaps the mediocre wasn’t so mediocre at all. You’re allowed to be foolish when you are young, arent you?

Tanya still has a few of those songs on a hard drive somewhere because she loves me. And all the embarrassing, silly things I did back then.

But anyway, I was twenty-one. Life was moving on. The guitar was consigned to the loft. Other adventures beckoned. In Pune, Ahmedabad, Baroda and Bangalore. Songs would play in my head every day. All day. And I’d occasionally hum a few lines.

I remember my last night in Pune. Three of my roommates and I sat around in our apartment, guzzling Fosters, Zingaro and Godfather — brands of beer that left lasting, indelible memories because of the headaches that were guaranteed on the morning after.

We were all leaving the next day, off to pursue careers in different cities, and were all packed up. This was our final evening together as roommates, and, although none of us wanted to acknowledge it, we were feeling more than somewhat sentimental.

I found myself humming a few lines of ‘Blowin in the Wind’

‘Zor se gaa, na (Sing loudly, no)’, said one of my friends, and I found myself singing aloud, fueled by Zingaro-induced confidence... safe in the knowledge that even if I sang it terribly, it would be years and years before I saw the three of them again. And they were too drunk to notice anyway.

And besides, Dylan’s original was messy, at best.

…………

The guitar stays in the loft. The humming is as soft as ever.

My wife and I are driving to Pondicherry, a newly married couple, to escape Madras, and all it’s pushes and pulls, for a weekend together.

‘Ennavale... adi ennavale...’, sang Unnikrishnan on the radio, and I found myself humming along.

Tanya turns down the volume

‘Why don’t you sing loudly?’

I can only sigh. And mumble something about how I can’t sing.

‘So what? Enjoy the song, no? Sing out loud.’

It seems like too much effort to explain to her that the instant my voice rises in a tune, the Critic wakes up, ready with his whip.

If I could sing any better, would I hate myself any less when I sang? Does the self-loathing have anything to do with the quality of the output?

I don’t know.

……………..

I’m forty-one now.

And sometime over the last year, I discovered a wonderful group of friends on WhatsApp. A group of people who allow me to be me and who make me feel safe enough to make a fool of myself. In my forty-first year, I am learning that the best way to live with myself may be to laugh at myself and not take myself too seriously.

I am learning that a particular blend of Irreverence, Laughter, Kindness and Hope may be the secret recipe to the Elixir of Joy.

On my forty-first birthday, Tanya gives me one of the best gifts she has ever given me. She takes down my old guitar from the loft and gets it refurbished, restrung and fully repaired.

My fingers reacquaint themselves with it, pressing against the frets like old friends and the steel strings like old foes. Before I know it, I’m finding my way through familiar old paths. I’ve missed this. So much.

I wait until my wife and son are asleep, and then I actually try singing along now that my comfort blanket is in place. I play ‘Blowing in the Wind’, singing it loudly this time, thinking of that boozy night in Pune.

And then I do something I have never done before. I record a song on my phone and share it with my friends. I don’t even play it back to myself because I know that if I do, I will probably hate it.

They are encouraging. Loving. Kind. Keep going, they say.

I don’t stop.

I spend a few happy, idle minutes every day thinking about the song that I will attempt to play at the end of it. The tips of my fingers are getting callused again from pressing down on the strings, just like they were back in college.

I actually summoned the courage to listen to my own song, with Tanya by my side. As the song winds up, she looks at me with happy eyes.

‘You have such a nice voice’, she says, her voice so full of love. Its probably the first time she has actually heard me sing a full song. After sixteen years of marriage.

And yet, deep down, the guitar is still my safety blanket. I tune it down when I am afraid to sing a song at an uncomfortable pitch. I delay the strum just a fraction when I know that I am late for singing. I play fast and loose with the rhythm. The old me would’ve dismissed this as some form of ‘cheating’, but thankfully, the Critic, while still alive and vocal, seems to have lost his whip.

I record songs anyway—none of them perfect, all of them fun.

Fun. Something I’ve never had with music... And something that Tanya always wished for me. Simple, easy, and fun.

I have fun parodying lyrics, twisting tunes and words out of their original pristine compositions, committing acts of irreverence and heresy with gay abandon. This seems important to me, because if I take the song itself too seriously, I take my own endeavour too seriously. And once that happens, the fun goes out of it. The whip comes out, and I go back to humming softly, so softly that the critic within will ignore it if I make a mistake.

…………..

Mohan and I are sipping our beers at the Hyderabad airport bar.

We were originally brought together by our love for cricket…. but quickly discovered a shared love for so many other things, not least among them, music. Mohan loves music as much as anyone has ever loved it, in all its forms, across all its genres. He’s always listening to something new, some new ‘earworm’, as he calls it. And he is blessed with both koral and kaadhu.

Mohan explains what ‘Smule’ is all about and walks me through the features of the app. And he shows me some of his creations on it.

Smule is a platform that allows people to create music socially, where each user sings one part of a song and leaves the other part open for anyone else to join in and complete. The app gives you accompaniment in the background, like a karaoke machine would, and you are expected to belt it out.

This is not a guitar where I can tune down, delay, speed up, and ‘cheat’. This is much more demanding. I have a whole background score that tells me when I am off tempo or off-key. And I have to perform alongside a total stranger. And everyone on the app can access the song.

Smule may be the most terrifying thing on the Internet.

Mohan doesn’t think so. He is a veteran, with a following that runs into several thousands, a voice that he is able to command, seemingly at will, into all sorts of uncomfortable acrobatics, but, rather more importantly, Mohan has a heart of gold. He is kind, loving, encouraging and empathetic.

He nods when I explain my fears, my unwillingness to ‘go where the music takes me’, and the fear of failure that keeps me within a narrow comfort zone.

‘Smule isnt so much about the music as it is about enjoying what you do. There are days when I am shit. But that’s okay. I accept that. And I move on...’

He pauses, looking for the right phrase.

‘Smule is about...’ he pauses again

‘Hating yourself less’, I venture, at the exact same instant when he completes his statement with ‘Loving yourself more’

Each of us hears the other. We both chuckle.

After forty years, I don’t know if I am finally ready to begin a normal relationship with music—a relationship that is based on joy — as opposed to one based on insecurity, suppression and longing.

But the guitar is out of the attic. And it’s not going back anytime soon. I am surrounded by love, support and kindness.

And for the first time, in as long as I can remember, I no longer fear the sound of my voice.