Saturday, February 06, 2010

Noise, regionalism and a bad start to a Sunday




So I woke up early morning and was catching up on a movie. Suddenly I hear a loud speaker from the temple behind the apartment. This temple is a habitual offender and time and again has prevented me and others from sleeping peacefully early morning. This time I thought I had had enough and so went to the temple personally and asked them to switch off the music. They did, and after I was 100 mtrs from the place on my way back it started again. So instead I made it straight to the HSR layout police station.

At the police station I found one guy sleeping, one awake. The awake one reluctantly asked me what was wrong. On hearing about my complaint he tried to wake up the other guy who scowled at him in Kannada probably asking him to not bug him anymore. When I insisted he write a complaint down I was asked "What is you native? Kannada nahi aata?".

My instant reaction was to not answer the question and I kept insisting that he write a complaint down and he scribbled something on a register and told me that he will wireless the message to his staff and the matter would be taken care of and I should not worry. It has been about an two hours since then and the speakers are still full blast.

The country of noise silences out the voice of its taxpayers in more ways than one.

Picture courtesy: http://www.crestock.com/blog/design/propaganda-design-aesthetics-soviet-retro-posters-118.aspx