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9th Anniversary: Free Tote & Mug

From DJs to aartis to weddings—Indians force their noise on everyone

In our already noisy cities, where the soundtrack of incessant honking is only punctuated by the din of rampant construction, clamour also follows a schedule.

Well-known musician Chongtham Vikram Singh went down three flights of stairs of an apartment building in Kilokri to dispose of the household rubbish last Sunday, a little before midnight. The ground floors of the dense urban village – located a few minutes from where the Yamuna bifurcates Delhi – are full of dhabas and cloud kitchens that keep no particular hours. The upper floors are residential apartments.

That night, a group of delivery executives and workers at nearby eateries had been shouting and drinking. Singh objected to the ruckus. A few days later, his friends and family received his body in a coffin at Imphal airport’s cargo bay. 

The 55-year-old Manipuri artist, teacher, and guitarist of the rock band Phoenix had lived in Delhi for nearly two decades. When Singh asked the drunk men to bring it down a few notches, they followed him home and beat him outside his own front door. Singh’s family rushed him to Holy Family Hospital – along the way, he told his son Yaiphaba that he recognised the men and had once before made the same request. He died soon after due to haemorrhagic shock.   

Seven men have been arrested in connection with Singh’s murder, and a 15-year-old boy has been detained. It remains to be seen if there was a racial motive to the killing. What requires no clarification, however, is that Singh challenged the men over what is considered an Indian birthright: the entitlement to make noise. 

Ganesh Chaturthi to wedding season

We are a boisterous, rackety people; we tell each other fondly, indulgently, as if talking about errant children having a meltdown in a mall. It’s a national characteristic – like our famed hostility toward women – that we’re simply supposed to accept. The real problem is the killjoys who choose to object to the cacophony that’s simply a part of Indian life.  

In our already noisy cities, where the soundtrack of incessant honking is only punctuated by the din of rampant construction, clamour also follows a schedule. The festive season stretches between August and December, with high-voltage events like Ganesh Chaturthi, Navratri, Kanwar Yatra and even Christmas. 

Several of these are accompanied by truck-mounted boomboxes, blasting right through the 90-decibel limit imposed in most areas. Between November and February, as the wedding season takes off, the mantle of rambunctiousness passes to the baraats that wind through residential areas at all hours of the night. And then there are the year-round cricket calendar’s fireworks.

But this fondness does an excellent job of obscuring what the noise is for. Turning up the volume isn’t merely an irritant – it’s also how we stake a claim to public space. It’s how dominance is asserted. It’s how we announce who a place belongs to and dare anyone to say otherwise. 

In the last few weeks, several Pune residents have rallied against noise pollution. The city police has recorded 15,000 noise-related complaints this year. Last weekend, responding to a call from Punekars Against Loudspeakers........

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