Voiceover

"I can do a recharge for you!" offered Pallavi. She smiled remembering how desperately she was, and how clearly too, trying to buy her way into a circle. "When I call, come and pick me up from this gate", she stated to her driver and got off the sleek Civic. In her barely green, and nothing else but dead green kurti and palazzo, Miss Saikia walked up to the lift. When she walked into the studio, the customary greetings were exchanged and soon enough she was handed with her script.

In a matter of the next one hour, where the actors were wrapping their shoot, she stood behind the microphone. Summoning the entire universe's conviction into her voice, she began the copy:

"New Dettol / For all your needs / From cuts to cures / Also available in Lime & Glycerine"

No retakes were required. She was a veteran, her pronunciation polished by the experts at Assam Valley School. As she got back into her car for the next voice-over for an adoption agency, she dozed off. 

It must have been the clarity of her dream which woke her up. The night light-post next to the front porch made the shadow of the tree fall on her white house like a pencil sketch filled with shading. The road was empty, couple of car horns could be heard. And then, there was a voice. She was inside the house, trying to run away from it. No, they were voices. "What do you do?", "Your father must be rich!", "Sing a song!". She felt her voice deserting her in the company of those voices. And the sheer helplessness of that loneliness awakened her. She was in the midst of a traffic which hardly moved.

As she drank water, she thought of how ashamed she was to tell people who questioned her earning, of her real profession. People had a notion that an Assamese could never slay the demons of improper pronunciation. The car whirred back to life. Its been about six years. Why am I reminded of it all today?

When she gifted her parents with a refrigerator that evening, six years ago, she was ashamed to admit that she had done the voice-over for a sanitary napkin in vernacular and English. Her reticence gathered a lot of assumptions and led to the most expensive decision the Saikias had taken in their life. They disowned her. Their daughter went on to be heralded as the undisputed 'Queen on the Microphone' in the advertising industry. 

She got back to the car after championing "Act! Adopt!" two dramatic renditions. She owned the voice which millions bought. I do not like you, voice. She popped in a tranq to sooth her nerves, nervous of this recent phenomenon of a beautiful voice within her, trying to buy her soul. They buy you, while your own bye you. As her eyelids became heavy, she saw the two spellings, 'buy' and 'bye', being air-written with a wand. Sleep, Pallavi.