My ebook: Journeys with the caterpillar

My ebook
"
Journeys with the caterpillar: Travelling through the islands of Flores
and Sumba, Indonesia
" is available at
this link


Monday, August 22, 2005

Loud love

My weekend was almost spoilt... A devout Hindu family, in the apartment below mine, decided to get rid of some of their sins..So he called a group of faithful and started loudly singing Bhajans...They sang crazily over loudspeakers which were placed outside their house so that they could rid the sins of all of Kandivali..The whole complex got hassled and all pleaded with him to at least switch off the loudspeakers..The family said that their Gods were hard of hearing and so they couldn't oblige our request..Only when push came to shove, the relented..

But has our society become loud in general?...In the streets, one honks every second...Sidhu makes it loud whenever he comes on TV...Advertisements are broadcast at higher volume than normal TV sound...In the US, Jim Cramer has a MTV style show on CNBC-wherein he loudly (very loudly indeed) says which stocks to buy or sell...Sunny Deol's loud "hiyaaaaaaaa" gets him all the kudos..And MBA education and group discussions encourage us to keep it loud and simple...Loud ring tones, loud dandiya music, loud muezzin calls...Deliberately loud 50-cents and "sukhbir" music coming out of open car windows...

In today’s age, we are flooded with so much information and noises (commercial, religious etc.), that one thinks he has to be loud to rise above everything else..I wish I had a volume control knob for my ears...Things are only going to get worse..

1 comment:

Charukesi said...

Information overload = shout to be heard. but often it works the other way, when someone shouts over the din, makes me shut that noise out very consciously...
but I know what you mean about the bhajans. grrrrr.
Charu