💬 Everyone says my music is too loud. It's normal volume.

Sunday, 10am. I'm making tiffin and I put on old Kishore Kumar songs, volume 12 on the speaker. Within 4 minutes my daughter is standing in the kitchen doorway with her laptop held up. There are 14 faces on the screen. One of them waves at me. That's her manager. I turned it down to 7. Ten minutes later I looked and it was back at 12. Volume 12 is normal to me. Where I grew up, music played from 6am till the last light went off. Radio in the kitchen, cassette player in the hall, my mother singing over both of them. A quiet house felt like everyone had left. So I fill it up. It's just how I'm built. Nobody else in this house agrees, and apparently they all get a vote. I tried earbuds for a week. The kitchen felt empty and the onions didn't even sound right. My daughter put a sticky note on the speaker. It says, 7 is the limit, with a sad face. My mother, who lives with us, took my side and said she can't hear it at all. She's 78 and has a hearing aid she never wears, so that vote doesn't count. We've agreed on one thing. After 9pm everything stays low, and I mean low. I've kept to it for 11 days now. Whoever catches me gets to pick tomorrow's playlist. So far I've lost 3 times. We listened to a lot of pop I don't understand. The sticky note is still on the speaker. I haven't taken it off.

14 faces on a screen and one of them waving at you, that is a moment you remember forever. My father has the same rule with the TV, volume 25 and not a number lower. We tried 18 for a week and he asked if the TV was broken.