Today has been declared No Honking Day in Mumbai. I think it is a great idea, as an idea, since there is way too much noise in the city that could very easily be cut out. In fact, wherever I drive, I find myself being tailed at least once during the journey by an irritatingly peevish horn – whoever is behind me has no reason to sound off, except for the very existence of a horn that he or she can sound off. And it is extremely annoying to hear that persistent beep beep that goes relentlessly on and on, especially since there is nowhere that the person behind you can go, since there is wall to wall traffic on all four sides of your little car and you yourself are stuck in one place on the road wondering where else you can be that is infinitely better than where you are now. And you do, I admit ruefully, get tempted to horn as peevishly and persistently as the person behind you has been doing. Perhaps the only fitting response that I have ever seen being given to this kind of pestering has been from a taxi driver, who suggested (with the appropriate accompanying gestures, of course) that the person behind become the person in front by clambering over the cab, because that was the only conceivable way to get there.
But, more seriously, the small world that is Mumbai has just woken up to the fact that there is something known as ‘noise pollution’, a something that can be as lethal and as difficult to manage on both personal and societal levels as other more obvious and acknowledged forms of pollution in the environment. And it was a great drive this morning. Everyone was more alert, wary, watchful of the traffic patterns rather than blindly plunging into the stream without looking around, confident of the repellent power of the car horn rather than the skill of manipulating the vehicle. There was a sense of a leisurely morning calmly making its way to a more stressful work day, even as vehicles jostled with each other for precedence on the already crowded streets. And most of it was done silently, only the roar of an occasional exhaust and the growl of a stalled truck engine making enough noise to force passage through.
For this city, it is nothing short of a miracle. Consider Mumbai’s roads and you know that it is a situation of being an olio rather than a disciplined state of affairs. There will be trucks pushing cars out of the way, cow-carts plodding stoically down the middle of the lane that a Mercedes wants to cruise along, motorbikes zooming in and out of every possible crevice in the jam-packed melee and people, always people, wandering into and out of traffic with the élan and insouciance of surety that death will not come as their end, not today. This is why it is not easy to drive in this city without honking madly at every step…or turn of the wheel. The one time my horn failed in the middle of late afternoon traffic in Mumbai was nightmarish. I was almost in tears with every jerk of the brakes and frustrating smash of the horn button, to no avail. It seemed an impossibly task to get from here to there without the noise that blared me through…but today proved me different.
As we wove through the streets and their miscellaneous occupants, my driver remarked on the silence as often as I did. It was indeed remarkably silent this morning, with only the very sporadic beep or honk to punctuate the astonishing quiet. I hope this encourages people to stop using that gadget as much as they do when they drive through the city and beyond. Even that pest who always seems to be behind me….
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