Waiting to board the flight at the gate, multiple phones are blaring entertainment. Earphones? What’s that?
I overhear a video call between a man and his young daughter. Some others are talking with the phone near their ears, the forgotten way. Several ringtones sound off insistently. I’ve heard nary a ringtone in the four years in Bangkok but here I am at the gate and all kinds of popular music tracks are announcing one person’s phone call for everyone.
One thing is clear. No one loves to talk on the phone as much as Indians.
Another thing is clear. Smartphones have played right into India’s desire to make a racket.
🔊 Horn. Ok. Please
Coming from the airport in Bangalore, my taxi is briefly stuck at the toll gate behind another cab whose FAStag isn’t working. The operator, visibly annoyed, slowed down by the apathy of his mind-numbing job, is bringing a handheld machine to scan. It’s only minutes but a pandemonium of honks ensues.
On Indian roads, we solve all problems with Horn. Ok. Please.
Honking, at this point, is an involuntary reflex. When I learned to drive at a driving school in Coimbatore more than two decades back, the instructor would chide me for not honking before every turn. Put an Indian driver in a vehicle without a place to press for a honk and the vehicle wouldn’t move 100 metres.
They annoy me to no end but sometimes make me laugh. Once, standing at a red light in Banglore, an annoying honk sounded behind me. There was nothing to be done, no space left and the signal hadn’t turned. I turned to give the best approximation of a glare I could muster only to find that the guy wasn’t even looking straight. The man on the bike was idling, enjoying something to his right but his fingers just pressed the horn as some kind of reflex. He wasn’t even aware he was honking!
A honk for announcing you exist. A honk when blowing past an intersection. A honk to signal “move faster”. A honk to say “What the fuck”. Long, insistent honks to express frustration. Quick little honks to pass the time. Musical honks from large private buses covered in liveries. A honk for the idling thumb.
🎤 Time is a construct; Sound is the reality
The garbage collector is on the street and he blows his shrill whistle that zaps the households into action. Surely, there are processes for coordination that involve less sound? But no. The one thing that we Indians love as much as making noise is the idea of real-time coordination.
The spinach vendor in a bicycle, with a QR code hanging on the front, begins playing a pre-recorded announcement on speakers to let the households know he is here. Depending on the decibel, you judge if he is in your street or the adjacent one.
Plans and schedules are mirages. Time is a construct. Sound is the reality.
“When will you come?”
“Not sure. I will come and call you”
Remember the days when this used to be missed calls as a signal? Free noise.
💨 Whistleblowers
World over, cars backing up use mirrors, smart sensors, and general driving abilities. Occasionally they might use a beeper if they are a massive truck or bus. In India though, backing up is a celebration. Popular tunes play as monophonic electronic tones as the car backs up. When you hear AR. Rehman’s Airtel tune blaring in the neighborhood, you’ll know that someone’s getting their car out of their house.
Standing at a paan shop opposite Annapoorna, I watch the ‘parking coordination’ guard blow his whistle fifteen times a minute to help parked cars turn. Like a bat, the driver triangulates basis the sheer physicality of the sound emerging from that whistle. Single short bursts indicate ‘keep coming’ and a long shrill blast means ‘stop the fuck now’.
The intensity of his whistle is typically proportional to the tip amount. The security guard sacrifices a bit of his eardrum every day to make a living.
🗣️ Everything, everywhere all at once
In the house, the TV blares, a cooker lets out steam and the maid is washing vessels - all stainless steel and metal - a jangle for this urban jungle.
Inside the TV, animated characters are saying things. No. Screaming thing. In the news, six angry people in a studio shout at each other. My dad is also talking to the TV adding his own commentary to the chaos.
In the movie theatre, I count at least seven separate phone rings and five people having conversations right there, while the movie plays. Almost comically, a phone rings right at the beginning when the slide that says “turn off your mobile phones” plays. No one sushes anyone. If a phone call comes, it has to ring. If it rings, it has to be picked up. What can one do, really?
As I run every day around the little apartment, I hear religious songs blaring from various houses along with sermons and the occasional snippets from an astrology show. Someone on the top floor sneezes with such ferocity that everything seems to vibrate.
📢 This album is called Aural Trauma
Loudspeakers are playing devotional music at the temple. As I park my bike nearby, the speaker is literally tearing holes in my ears and making my heart tremble.
In festival season, new loudspeakers are erected everywhere. At another time, I am woken up at 5 a.m. in Bangalore when the speakers come alive playing devotional songs. Shankar Mahadevan’s voice is carrying all the way up to the 8th-floor apartment from the street behind. As the clock strikes 6, fulfilling the devotional song quota, the tracks change to film music. Here I am at 6 a.m. listening to the loud, shrill voice of SPB singing some kind of semi-lurid thing to a woman.
The taxi driver is playing his favorite film music whether you like it or not.
You don’t get music choices in India. You hear everything and it slowly becomes something you hum, to your own horror when you are sitting quietly. “What the hell was that?” you ask yourself. It’s the music that you hear on the streets burrowed deep into your subconscious, like an aural trauma.
Standing at a signal, I see that the traffic police have installed loudspeakers as well. They are announcing something, presumably important, but it is lost in the din of traffic and honks.
🐟 So long, and thanks for all the fishmarket
I remember as a kid the teacher saying ‘Why are you all shouting? Is this a classroom or a fish market?’
This is terribly unfair. I don’t think any fish market is an exemption to noise in India. This is probably another hangover of a Macaulay Education in India. Sounds like a terribly British thing to say. In India, fish markets, if anything, are likely to be less noisy than homes, streets, temples, mosques, marriage halls, and government offices.
“Be quiet! Is this a classroom or a temple during the festival?” is what the teacher should be saying.
Noise is India’s love language.
So, beat those buckets. Clang those paatharams. Sing your favorite hero’s song. Honk that honk.
Eardrums are overrated, anyway.
Could be Worse,
Tyag