When I first imagined an ‘eye-pod’, I imagined that it was shaped like an eye. In my overactive daydreams as a child, it looked like an eyeball with earphones connected to it. I liked to think of it as a certain real-life manifestation of sense organs – a living object with eyes and ears.
For this very anatomical observation, I had my doctor parents to blame. I first heard about the ‘eye-pod’ from my mother. Working as a doctor at a local government hospital that day, the ‘eye-pod’ had been a distraction from sickness.
“I plugged the wires in my ears, and it felt like the music was playing all around me,” my mother twirled in awe.
When I think about it now, I don’t think we truly fathomed how casually we would go on to take this very sensation of being at the centre of music. It was only much later that I realised that this whimsical object of my imagination was, in fact, an “I” Pod.
I sometimes wish I could recall the first moment I had felt butterflies in my stomach. It has been too long since I felt so giddy. My memory, however, has preserved a certain flutter of time. I must have been 14, with a raging crush on a boy. That week, our school was conducting a run through of all the performances lined up for annual day. This meant that the school hours ran longer, and we were allowed some indulgences. I had sneaked in with a MP3 player my mother had bought.
As the performances carried on, and I was designated to the role of a volunteer, I stood bored and alone in a corner. There was nothing for me to do. Or perhaps, I stood particularly in a corner where teachers couldn’t assign work to me. Accidentally, of course, this also happened to be the corner that let me catch glimpses of my crush.
As I plugged in my earphones, I played ‘I Am In Love’ by KK. While swaying to the beats of the song, I would grow light-headed at every point of potential eye contact. This song from Once Upon a Time in Mumbai was all around me. The MP3 played might not have been an “I” Pod, but it ran on the same mechanism — it placed me at the centre of my own life. It could be – I was made of butterflies.
Also read: Some Voices Will Stay: A Tribute to KK
Over the last few days, following KK’s death, the internet has been flooded with a singular sentiment – that KK’s loss feels too personal. On Twitter, there are endless threads about songs of his that are underrated.
I think they’re related: the personal nature of losing KK, and how many of his songs are not that recognised.
Songs are not made to fit our personal lives, but sometimes, some of them – we like to believe – are meant just for us. Somehow, they are there, at the right place, on the right time. The lives of all those in my generation were somehow meant for KK. ‘I Am In Love’ was right there in my life – at the right place as I hid as a volunteer, at the right time – as what I would recall as my first memory of falling in love.
As we graduated from flimsy feelings of love, to very elusive feelings of loss – KK was right there. Unless you went to a very elite school, you would believe that no batch of Class 12 in an Indian school has graduated without KK’s ‘Yaaron’ featuring their cheeky photos. His songs, laid palimpsest with our photos, gave many of us, along with the freedom of leaving, the vision to imagine our lives – around ourselves. Suddenly, blocks of our black and white photos made us feel more seen, even if a lot remained invisible. Suddenly, all of us shared feelings of departure.
Also read: In College, KK Sang Only Western Music, But Then Began to Appreciate Indian Music Too
For all their exposed lives, KK’s songs are also densely cocooned in privacy. We don’t talk a lot about what KK made us feel. From my first school in Class 10, I vividly remember friends I didn’t know I would never see again. I remember Sakshi, with her cropped hair. We came from intensely opposite worlds. Where I was the nerd drowned in books, Sakshi ran marathons. Where she would always talk about how quickly she would get married, I never had to think of marriage at that age.
During our last few days as Class 10 students, I remember many of us playing antakshari. This was the same day someone sang KK’s ‘Abhi Abhi’. This was also the same day Sakshi gave me her phone number, asking me to keep in touch with her no matter where we went. When I called the number two years too late to ask for Sakshi, a man answered. He said, “Sorry, she doesn’t talk to anyone.” I don’t know what exactly that meant, but for me, it was also too late to comprehend.
Another friend of mine has often reminded me that we don’t remember things as they happen. We remember them as we tell them. I remember Sakshi as I tell her – in the same breath as KK’s ‘Abhi Abhi’, and then, lost forever. ‘Abhi Abhi’ is an underrated song because it is too tainted with memory — we may know what it made us feel, but we may not be ready to share it. And so, I conceal this song. The longer it remains underrated, the more it will belong to me. It’s intimacy will be my personal matter.
I don’t know what really is the story behind the I in the “I” Pod. Or the “eye” in the “eye-pod”. However, I think often about how it lets me tell my story, the way my eyes see it. On some days, it places me at the axis of life, and I feel like butterflies.
As I casually walk around with my earphones plugged in, sometimes in concentric circles, I find ways to articulate loss. On other days, however, the I is elusive, as is the eye. During those days I cannot put a finger on who I really am, because sometimes I don’t remember life as I saw it, but as I remember it – intricately braided with KK’s songs, and laden with too much loss. I keep running around in circles. How do you find the centre of a self that is always on the precipice of loss? I don’t know.
In the meantime, I listen to KK.
Muskan Nagpal is an English Literature graduate and a Young India Fellow.
Featured image: YouTube