The first time I heard my voice through the small round speaker of the Sony Walkman—it was a two-tone gray handheld—it resembled nothing like the voice I thought I possessed. It is also worth noting that I did not say ‘my Walkman’. That was probably the first time that I listened to myself. Now, as I sit here in Mumbai, more than a thousand kilometers from the place I first heard my voice, my mind flips through the twenty-five plus years of listening to myself and others. Mostly others. I am reading Rilke’s letters on my laptop, flummoxed and humbled by Rilke’s outpouring of his listening to himself. Listening is a cheapened word now. Across ELT classes and IELTS coaching institutes, listening has become one among the many skills that guarrantees success. Much like learning python. Or networking in academic conferences.

I wish I could listen to myself. At odd moments, I do find myself listening to myself. Compared to the years I have spent alive, these moments constitute perhaps less than one per cent of life. And yet, these are treasure troves and I do not have to look elsewhere for material. A pure moment of listening makes me richer than Midas and fuller than Minotaur. More beautiful than Helen and more broken than Icarus. More alone and more insignificant and more at-one with others. More inebriated and intoxicated than the costliest wine and potent drug can ever make me. The blades of an engine windmilling at rest. Refilling my bottle at the water cooler, I clench my buttocks and I am reminded of my back. The curve or the lack of it even though I see plentiful behinds everyday, everywhere.

Lessons are learnt best when I listen to myself. When I walk with Nivedita down the stairs to ask the construction workers to stop jackhammering during work hours, I am reminded of why I let things slide. I cannot handle more relations. Every relation adds to the already overflowing vase and becomes yet another force that cannot be contained. Yet the vase cycles old ones to the top and new ones to the bottom and both the old and new over the top. It is an overflowing vase. New wine promises new intoxications, new drunken reposes, new escapades, new emotions, new experiences. Yet, as I drink vase after vase of sweet wine, the intoxication feels famililar. The reposes are the same, the escapades are the same, emotions are the same, experiences are the same. Now, I would be lying if I imply that there are no differences. There are differences, but mostly formal. Nobody is special, everybody is unique. The contradictions of truth.

The cieling fans run in varying loops of rhythm and pitch. Like techno music. With its own logic and without conspicuous inner divisions that satisfies my thirst for order. Techno music is perhaps the closest sonic embodiment of the beauty of grey areas. While carnatic music demands clear blacks and whites, reflected in the keys of the harmonium, techno music reminds me of the smooth turning of emotions through a rotary encoder where one turns to two through infenitisimally small gradations of the in-betweens. Maybe that is why circles, DJs, turntables, and knobs are related. Maybe that is the relation between techno music and techno culture. Bending binaries into analogues.