I rarely host radio shows on FM Gold now.
People who listened regularly noticed this long before I did. Over the years, a few wrote to ask where I had gone, and why the voice they were used to hearing had become occasional, almost absent.
This piece is not an explanation in the formal sense. It is a reflection—on a time when radio was central to my life, and on how that relationship slowly changed.
For more than a decade, from around 2003 to 2014, radio was not just work for me; it was a space of play, curiosity, and imagination. I presented a wide range of shows during those years—music, conversations, journeys, late evenings, early mornings. The exact count matters less than what they represented: trust.
There was room to create. To think on one’s feet. To let a thought breathe before shaping it into sound. Radio then felt alive—unpredictable, imperfect, human.
What I valued most during that period was not visibility, but freedom. The freedom to approach a programme as something that emerged rather than something that was assembled. A show was not merely delivered; it unfolded.
Over time, that rhythm began to change.
The shift was gradual, almost quiet at first. The emphasis moved from creation to production, from exploration to adherence. The work became more defined, more controlled, more measured. Processes multiplied. Templates hardened. The space for surprise narrowed.
None of this happened overnight, and no single moment marked an end. But something essential was thinning out.
Radio, at least as I had known it, had relied on presence—on the ability of the presenter to respond to the moment, to trust instinct, to carry uncertainty without fear. As expectations became more fixed, that presence was harder to sustain.
This is where I realised a simple truth that had always guided me, even if I hadn’t articulated it before: art and jobs do not operate in the same way.
Art is spontaneous. It resists predictability. Its outcome cannot be guaranteed in advance—and that is precisely its strength. When an artist is allowed to work without fear, something unexpected can happen. Something that moves people.
A job, on the other hand, depends on clarity, repetition, and compliance. There is nothing inherently wrong with that. But when creative work is treated only as a task to be completed, something subtle is lost.
Radio, for me, belonged firmly to the first category.
My resistance to compromise did not come from ego. It came from training.
In 2002, I spent months learning radio the slow way—cueing cassettes, collecting cue sheets, filling production forms, moving between studios and duty rooms, doing whatever was needed. There was dignity in that apprenticeship. A sense that every small task was part of a larger craft.
I was fortunate to be trained by Mr. Vijay Deepak Chhibber, who once asked me to take my training seriously. I did. The lessons he shared—about sound, silence, responsibility, and respect for the medium—stayed with me. They still guide my work as a voice artist today.
That grounding made it difficult for me to treat radio as something mechanical. I had seen what care looked like. I knew what was possible.
So I didn’t leave radio in anger.
I stepped back quietly.
I chose distance over bitterness, and silence over forced participation. Occasionally, I still return—when the space allows, when the work feels honest. But I no longer feel the need to be present at any cost.
Radio gave me much: discipline, imagination, confidence, and a way of listening to the world. For that, I remain grateful.
Creating radio shows, I believe, is an art. And art, by its nature, asks for devotion rather than efficiency.
I remain devoted to the art—even if I appear less often in the studio.