Noise, has rarely bothered me. I've had most of the music to which I listen, described as "noise" by various parties. I don't particularly find the noise of traffic grating or tiresome. Noisy little babies on aircraft don't annoy me very much either. Hell, I can even put up with those blithering idiots in Yorks bellowing at the top of their lungs (like gladiators in a contest to ascertain once and for all who is the stupidest in the coliseum of idiocy), as if the slightest decrease in volume would trigger their immediate demise.
Crowds at a football game or cricket game or the audiences at metal shows, people goingclickety-clack with their pens or sucking on the end of them, folks yawning loudly or cracking their knuckles in my midst. None of this bothers me. This time of year, however, is one of those rare occasions when noise doesn't just bother me. It irritates me to the point of frothing at the mouth and spewing venomous insults at the men and women who brought those imbeciles into the world that are ruining my peace and tranquility with their noise. I refer, of course to fireworks.
It was the autumn of 1997 in Delhi-... well, I'm not sure it can be defined really as autumn, because in Delhi, it feels like there's only summer and a few months of winter. Anyway, I'll call it autumn, because it was then that I took the decision to not just stop "celebrating" anything with fireworks, but to sever my ties with them forever. Child labour practices, the toll on nature and the impact on general health and well-being drove me away from them.
Ever since, every Diwali, it seems to be a case of people trying to compete with one another (just as they do with weddings, birthday parties and such) to see who can be bigger, louder and perhaps, even more lavish in their "celebrations". The bottle-rockets are cool. At least, they look pretty. The anars or flowerpots as they are sometimes called, are pretty as well. Rammstein's pyrotechnic display — now that's good fireworking! But what is the point of those hydrogen bombs, cherry bombs or those infernal colossally long braided strings of flash bang crackers or ladis? Honestly, what part of Ram's homecoming to Ayodhya has anything to with being noisy?
TANGENT: The Simpsons were, as always absolutely right:
"Celebrate the independence of your nation by blowing up a small part of it," says a store clerk (not Apu) to Homer as he buys an M-320 firecracker in the episode titled "Summer of 4ft 2". Admittedly, Diwali has little to nothing to do with the independence of any nation, but you get the point of the reference. END TANGENT
Then, the government sets forth and the High Court passes some stupid order about no crackers after 10pm as it is detrimental to peace and quiet. As if to rub it in your face, you then have a police van patrolling the area, with some paandu hollering at the top of his lungs at 11pm urging the public to keep it down as they will be fined if they keep up with the noise. What about his noise through his crackling speaker? Finally, a representative for Mumbai Police has the audacity to throw figures around claiming x number of arrests. But how many of those were actually for disturbing the peace and how many were unrelated, possibly drunk and disorderly charges?
Therein lies the source of my malice this season.
On a different note: Shoaib Akhtar, Pakistan cricket's bad boy, as the media would have you believe, (and why? Because he whooped a wussy teammate's leg with a bat?) is going around India performing acts of philanthropy with children's charities. He went to meet the underprivileged, the differently-abled and now, he's talking of adoption. I don't know whether it's a PR stunt to clear up his image and project him differently or not. Frankly, I don't want to know. What I do know is that PR had little to nothing to do with the looks on this children's faces as he held them, played cricket with them or just talked to them. For all the talk of "Jung ke maidaan mein.." and L.O.C (Lions of Cricket, apparently) and what a "Ghamaasan Yudh" there was going to be when India and Pakistan "locked horns" on the cricket field, I've yet to see a happier little non-Pakistani kid in a Pakistan jersey than the one Mr Akhtar draped his jersey over. The kid proceeded to wear it and run around. Why, you may well ask, should that be so surprising? After all, you see a lot of Indian kids wearing England football shirts, Australian cricket shirts, South African rugby shirts. The writer of this article was even considering, at one point, buying a Togolese football jersey! But an Indian wearing a Pakistani team-shirt?
HEAVENS FORFEND (!)
Never mind the philanthropy, never mind the PR, never mind Togo. The image of that kid makes it seem like the holiday season to me and brings a smile to my face. A smile that blowing up half my eardrum and about 3 square feet of land, in a plume of noxious, sulphur-tinged smoke never could.
Pictures courtesy:
Wikipedia
