Sixteen and a half years ago I moved to Northern Ireland with a suitcase and a job contract, leaving all my friends and family back home in India.
No mobile phones, Skype, FaceTime, Facebook or Viber. E-mails were in their infancy as the internet was a revolving wheel with very little dependability.
Making phone calls home was very expensive and all I could afford were a few brief conversations every few days. I missed hearing the voices of my loved ones and the sound of my mother tongue, Hindi.

Within a few weeks of being in Antrim I discovered BBC Radio 2 where I found a very funny man with a wonderful voice. My week days started with listening to his hilarious anecdotes, comments and one liners. I connected with him instantly. His name was Wogan, Terry Wogan.

I listened to his Breakfast show on the drive to work. Sometimes I had to pull over to the side of the road and stop because I would be laughing so hard that I could hardly see where I was going. At other times there would be a chance exchange of glances between drivers on the road with the same grin on their faces as me, instantly giving away the programme they were tuned into. Often it would be difficult for me to turn the car engine off when I got to work as that would switch the radio off too. My favourites were his ‘Janet and John’ stories.

His voice soon became a friend.
RIP Sir Terry.
You have and will always put a smile on my face.

The voicemail on my phone had saved 3 messages from Saagar. I would often listen to them – the casual ‘luv you’s, the way he said ‘Mamma’ and in jest ‘Motherrrrrrrr’, the sweet intonations in his sentences, the gentleness in his words. I could hear the purity of his Being.

The messages disappeared last week.
The engine must have been turned off by someone cruel.

His was the voice of my ‘home’.
RIP Saagar.
You have and will always put a smile on my face.