This might seem like an exaggeration, but it’s not. Imagine talking to people from various countries who share your interests and resonate with your ideas?
Without worrying about processing passports and visas, you gather in the virtual room, listen to the best in the business and even have a chance to put across your point about a subject that you deeply care about.
Now, wouldn’t that be fun?
That’s what Club House, the ‘drop-in audio app’, offers to people who’d like to hear each other talk real-time on a platform.
I discovered Club House on iPhone at a time when I was still processing my aunt’s death. On the morning of February 19, it appeared as if she was complaining about a mild headache, but in no time the pain intensified into something more sinister. Umakka, as we call her fondly, said her head was feeling heavy and failed in her attempt to get up from bed. It later turned out to be brain hemorrhage. Umakka slipped into a coma and died on February 22.
For days together, I sleepwalked across the hall, caressed the bed she slept in and sat among her meagre belongings, wondering how we could’ve allowed someone to go that way. Umakka practically lived with my family for the best part of her sixty years. Once as she packed up her clothes and prepared to enter my sister’s car to get a drop at our place, my two nephews Shyam and ram, all of seven and three, tugged at the hem of Umakka’s sari and pleaded her not to go.
Did I tell her that I loved the same way as I did my mother? Would it have comforted her, or probably strengthened her will to live? Were the tragedies of her past pressed hard enough on her that she couldn’t survive? Everything I did triggered a memory about her; the hollowness at the centre of my heart seemed wider and deeper with each passing day.
Lowering myself on the chair at the workstation days later, I felt short-breathed and stiff-fingered. I worked hard to focus on the copy sent to me for editing by colleagues at office. I got up from the chair almost every tenth minute and gulped more water than usual. Nothing relaxed my restless mind and heavy, gloomy heart.
Logging out after work that night, I realized I was on the freeway to depression. If I allowed this gloom to continue, it wouldn’t be long before it snowballed into a serious mental issue. I couldn’t afford to trudge through the fog of grief and loss, land in a dark alley and complicate my life that’s already riddled with challenges. There’s only one way out.
The next morning, holding a steaming glass of coffee in one hand and my phone in the other, I speed-dialed Pranav Savla, all of fifteen and a whizz-kid when it comes to computer programming, to check if the writers’ camp we discussed earlier could be organized. Pranav, blind by birth, is the head of http://www.vidyadrishti.net, a platform we established together to promote creative writing. Never the one to say no, Pranav readily agreed to the challenge, and we discussed with newfound enthusiasm the list of authors we could invite to hold sessions.
Before I could put down the phone, it vibrated in my hand indicating the arrival of a text message. Nancy, my blind friend from Salem, Origan had sent me an invitation to join Club House, the drop-in audio chat platform that allows thousands of people from across the globe to share ideas and experiences on virtual rooms.
I shuddered as Voiceover, the screen-reader software that read out content appearing on the iPhone screen, remembering how Club House had been at the centre of a political storm a few days ago in India and wondered if I’d unwittingly find myself fighting trolls and slipping further into greater depression.
On the positive side, I’d be able to speak to Nancy and other friends Cathy, Cindy and Keith if I install the app. In the end, I decided to go for it. Club House felt right from the word go.
(This is part 1 of my blog series on Club House. Watch this space for more)
Want to know about Club House and participate in the awesome discussions there? I’ve prepared a simple DIY. Drop your email by clicking the below link to get it.