When I bought my first house, one of the conditions was that it should be reasonably close to my workplace. Keeping the commute easy is one of the greatest rewards to yourself, especially if you work for long and odd working hours and if you live in an Indian metro city. I had quite comfortable commuting for almost a decade, but the streak ended when I changed my job. The new commute was torturous 90 minutes, each way. It is always a torture to drive through bumper to bumper traffic of peak hours with your foot juggling with the clutch all the time. It is very uncommon to own an auto transmission car, in India, possibly for its higher price and lower fuel efficiency, but I always wished that I should have had one, in those weary moments. The only mood uplifting thing while driving was my radio, especially in the morning commute.
The show that I was hooked on to was by RJ Aparna. The show was in the morning and the radio channel knew that their main audience was making their way through the tough traffic, so they had the top RJs for that show to keep it entertaining. The RJ Aparna herself had charming voice and she sounded always cheerful. She was one from the new breed of RJs, that we started listening to, those days. It had become quite a ritual for me to drive along with that show and I became a big fan of Aparna. And then one morning I turn on the radio and hear voice of another RJ. For first few days, I thought that RJ Aparna was on leave, but when I saw the new RJ going on for more than a week, it looked like I lost my muse forever. Anyway, I moved on, but one day, when this new RJ was literally hamming, I was irritated by Radio channel’s decision. With a rage, I sent an IM to the radio channel with just these three words “get aparna back”, of course with no particular expectation.
When I reached my workplace my mobile phone rang showing some unknown number. I picked up the call and I will never forget what happened next. The voice on the other end said, “Auparna here. May I know your name!”
(featured image: Photo by Markus Winkler from Pexels )
