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Pandemonium personified

 Published in The Hindu Open Page

Pandemonium personified

Noise as the common denominator in both urban and rural India

THOMAS PAUL

January 13, 2019 12:05 am | Updated 12:05 am IST



It’s a serene 5.30 a.m., till a blast of high decibels surgically strike through your window panes, startling you awake, and have you looking out for shattered glass. A loudspeaker has erupted outside your window. There’s nothing to be done except wait out the hour-long commotion to end. The day has begun.

In our land, it is a truth universally acknowledged that the owner of a sound system will be in want of an audience — willing or otherwise. It’s his entitlement to deliver turbulence over a radius of at least a kilometer from his equipment.

Noise is the common denominator of urban and rural India. Not only on the city streets, but also as you travel through small towns and one-bus-stop villages, the recurrent feature is the shriek of cone-shaped loud speakers, banned since 2005 but permanently fixed on housetops, either in ignorance or in defiance.

Owners of these noise-delivery systems compete fiercely over whose loudspeaker can rupture your eardrums faster, the tinnitus hissing in your ear lifelong. During festival season, loudspeakers go insane every fifty yards, each one belting out a different number, the aim being area-domination rather than connoisseurship of music. Technically, these manically clashing sound-waves should result in noise-cancellation. Instead, due to some freaky physics, they pulsate with sonic booms that reverberate through your viscera. If you are passing through, you can escape by raising your car window and flooring your accelerator. Too bad, if you are on a slow bus, halting at all stops.

You can’t escape, though, if you are a wedding guest and are automatically the captive audience of a wedding orchestra. Once the orchestra has been hired and has pocketed the advance, it is a law unto itself, and delivers a high noise-to-music ratio, without interval. While the musicians are in the throes of drumbeats and heavy metal, they inhabit a parallel universe; and your tearful request asking them to shut up for five minutes only confuses them into greater frenzy.

Some say, all this noise livens up the occasion. That is a noble interpretation, but not when you can’t talk normally to the people around you — you have to yell into their ears over the sound of crashing music. And if you try to amuse them with your life story, you have to repeat yourself several times, which defeats the purpose. To be understood over the cacophony, it is better to keep your sentences short, accompanied by a lot of gesturing and body language.

If you’re already suffering tinnitus from earlier functions, then you dread the prospect of someone telling you a joke over the commotion of the orchestra, expecting you to laugh, when you can’t hear a single word of what he is saying. From his expression and a bit of lip-reading, you guess his punch line has been uttered, and laugh uproariously. But he looks confused. Apparently he has asked you a question.

It’s a stalemate, and your man edges away from you nervously, doubting your sanity. One reluctant conclusion emerges: wedding functions are not the place to conduct conversations.

The safe thing is to keep moving around, keeping a smile pasted, and waving across the hall to people who can only wave back.

Functions are an opportunity for social interaction. Instead, we have the de rigueurracket of amplified decibels and seismic pounding of drums, drowning out all normal speech.

On second thoughts, this apparent kolaveri might be serving a purpose. People who are conversationally challenged prefer amplified music that discourages conversation. Noise is their default ambience, and gentle speech an aberration that needs rectification.

Their comfort zone is one of raised voices and yelled-out dialogue, as in a TV debate. The soft-spoken citizen doesn’t fit in where everyone is grabbing a mike. Loudness seems to be a winning trait in contemporary India, even a survival skill to strive for. Those with powerful throats backed by a lungful of air get away with substituting content with high volume. Decibels are their weapon. They shout, therefore they exist.

sagitex@gmail.com

              https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/open-page/pandemonium-personified/article25980438.ece

 

 

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