BOLLYWOODLE

My love-hate relationship with music began when I was five. My aunt, who was fifteen then, found it hilarious to make me sing "Bheege Honth." Having sung about wet lips and thirsty hearts at five, maybe I do need therapy.

I also remember Saturday singing shows on TV with my Thaata. He would lie on a mattress, balance me on his legs, and feel the music so physically that I would feel it too. If the song was upbeat, he'd wiggle his toes and I'd grab them in delight. If the song was quieter, I could sense him being moved, even through his stillness.

Then came some music-related heartbreaks.

I took to the guitar. My sister took to the keyboard and was pronounced the better one by our teacher. I told myself it was only because I'd broken the teacher's guitar. It still stung. I replaced the guitar and quit.

In first year, I got an electric guitar and decided I was going to lock in and rock on stage. Then another Iyer in college dropped a YouTube-hit cover of "Chhoo Lo." Great. There was already a better Iyer at home, and now there was Akshay, a better Iyer on campus too.

I started feeling for someone who sang really well. They casually mentioned being into a boy who could play the guitar held behind his head. Yikes. You should probably be with him. I can't compete.

In final year, I auditioned for a music club event and got a rejection email. Pfft. The selection committee is tone deaf and the Nile is a river.

Thaata died. I grieved. The memory that lingers most is his eyes going soft and wet on those Saturday nights.

Later, I met a wannabe tech bro. I taught them their first guitar song. We did Wordle and mini crosswords in bed. Work was great. It felt like I had everything until I didn't. They didn't know what they wanted, which is fair because who does, and I pushed them away.

I lost a 300-plus Wordle streak. Games, work, dates, all of it flattened into "whatever."

A while later I stumbled onto Bandle. I spent a week challenging a workmate at it and got absolutely smoked. I told them I wasn't into Brittney Spears and that if there were a Bollywood version, I'd beat them. I couldn't find one. So I hacked together a tune splitter, wired it into a UI Vineet built, and we had a bare-bones Bollywoodle.

I got bested at that too.

While digging around Wordle lore, I learnt

Josh Wardle had built the game for his partner, Palak.

Lol, you can't make this stuff up.

The dots connect backwards.

I'd met Vineet at a just-before-JEE camp when he walked into my room with a math question. Thick glasses, toothy grin, dressed entirely in blue. I remember thinking: this guy is Stitch from Lilo & Stitch. We clicked. We crammed before endsems, traded lame jokes, got hammered, and jammed Bollywood bangers shirtless because Mumbai is humid.

Just this year, we realized we'd both spent our first years in Bombay chawls while our parents were figuring it out; both our moms loved karaoke; both our dads were rage-baiting sticklers; and both of us had taken music lessons. We also realized we liked building new things we found cool.

The dost connect backwards.

Bollywoodle has come a long way since. We'll see whether making cool new things leads anywhere. At the very least, things aren't "whatever" anymore.

There's your fucking story, Vineet.