I Want to Eat Your Voice
Voice Tasting, Podcasts, and the Reverberance of my Mother's Voice
I want to eat your voice. I want to pour it into my soup bowl and take an ear-shaped ladle to scoop it up and gulp down the sizzling warmth of your voice.
By you, I mean a human who’s neither Lata Mangeshkar nor Adele. Not even Kishore Kumar. You, the person with the everyday, crooked, wobbly voice which innocently reveals what’s going on inside you, unlike your face which deserves an Oscar nomination by now.
Humans have a range of voices - tiny voices, roomy voices, and voices with curtains that open only for someone trustworthy. Then there are also those diva voices which can shape into crispy whispers over wine, and also continue a provoking lecture despite the mic breaking down. Our voices are as diverse as the food we eat.
We learned to speak when grunting wasn’t enough. Whether listening came first or speaking, the first-ever conversation between humans - seems like quite a chicken and egg situation. But we began at some point and made language in thin air as regularly as we made love. It is much later that we invented writing and reading - because we wanted the voices to remain, even after the bodies died.
Writers today are more partial to the page than to speech. They need to be reminded to ‘discover’ their voice. Poets are advised to work on tone, rhythm, and incantation. It is easy to forget the primary place of the voice. I too had neglected it for far too long. Until I took my first glorious bite of the human voice.
This was when I was enduring a period of necessary loneliness. I craved company, for the silence was enabling now and eerie then. I discovered the world of podcasts. I was no longer immobilised in front of the screen. Podcasts helped me lengthen the phone’s leash around my neck. I was joyous to eavesdrop on deep conversations, and they accompanied me through morning chores and spooky nights. Krista Tippett’s voice felt like nothing but the rich date syrup of empathy. The voice of Tim Ferriss was like a layer of boyish peanut butter covered with manly white bread.
Podcasts offered a platter of interesting voices saying phenomenal things. And yet it felt distant. Sometimes too polished. Never an accent that was closer to the geographical heart. Never a voice flowering from my own soil. I was feasting on these voices, but not satisfied.Â
Then, I got the chance to witness my mother speaking, almost cooing to her newborn grandson. She called him a new adorable name every other sentence, and her voice had an intense melody to it. I was so attracted to her sonic conversations with the baby. It took me a while to realise why. This was the exact melody I must have heard when I was in the womb! And when my brain was still developing! No wonder this voice was healing me.
Even then, it didn’t underline itself - this edibility of voices, this thirst for both makhmali and khurduri textures, the intimate voices that plant the seed of love deep into our hearts. It is only during the lockdown that I realised how voices nourish me. Zoom calls, selfies, videos - nothing brought a fraction of the intimacy I felt while listening to voice notes. Whenever I would receive one, I would take it as a cue to make a cup of tea, as if the voice note itself was a nice bhajiya, a juicy nugget.
At the end of this buffet of voices, there was a secret dessert. I have had vocal nodules in my voice since I was a kid. The huskiness in my voice isn’t original, it is hoarseness - the sign of an endangered voice. I didn’t hate my voice, but I would cringe when I heard my voice played back in any recording. As I learned to take comfort in other voices, I began to taste my own. And even through the hoarse covering, I could taste the sweet and precious pulp of kindness in my voice. How delicious!
PS: Send me a voice note! I am waiting with elephant ears.
If you’re seeing this newsletter for the first time, HEY!