Sounds of silence

There's something very warm and inclusive about our countrymen. I have a t-shirt that endorses it with the statement “Come to India, one billion people can't be wrong.”

This morning I woke up to the not so mellifluous strains of music blaring, loud enough to wake the dead but not of course my husband. On the other hand he describes my gentle breathing as snores comparable to a train rattling down rusty tracks. (Once, he cunningly recorded a train screeching down it's tracks and had me half convinced it was me but I'm made of sterner stuff and have high self esteem, so I didn't fall for it. I knew, without needing any proof, that the high decibel volume could not have emanated from my gentle being). Be that as it may, devotional tracks being played at high volume didn't seem to jarr him one bit and he slumbered through most of the morning.

It's an Indian trait to include everyone in festivities. Knowing them or of them is not even a prerequisite. Which is why since a new deity was to be installed in our locality, everyone had to participate in the gaiety. Fortunately, our pantheon of Gods is pretty large so for the next four days devotional songs can be played continuously through the day without worrying that it might be repetitive. So Ganesha, Hanuman, Aiyappa everyone gets to hear a song in his name.

Bracing myself for the continued onslaught to the ears, I tried to find a way to drown out the noise. I'm a social misfit, not being a believer in communal living plus I'm agnostic and it stands to reason that I  hold viewpoints associated only with the selfish fringe elements. These various character traits induced my own internal screaming “Is it too much to want peace and quiet in the morning?”

The internal cacophony disturbed me as much as the external one and I decided to drown out all sounds by producing a competing sound. I switched on the fan.

Ask any reasonable middle class person living in subtropical regions and he will concur that the gentle whirring of blades is like a mother's lullaby. It soothes your sensibilities and vanquishes your fears (especially of mosquitoes). However Bangalore is a misfit for ministrations by the inanimate 'mother substitute,' being entirely too cold for a spinning fan all year round.

The problem with women trying to become sleek and slim and thus fatless and hairless is that there is no protection against the cold. So obviously once I got the sound under control, the temperature was out of whack. I was shivering like a Bollywood actress shooting in a sheer chiffon saree in snow clad Alps.

I resolved my issue by switching the heater on as well. No wonder India stands at the fag end of the green index.
If we can just resolve to stop being so warm by including everyone in our joyous occasions, I'm sure we can be an energy surplus nation!