The moon travels silently from one side of the horizon to
the other side, some days accompanied by stars and on other days accompanied by
stares. Oblique stares of all those who wished to see stars, shooting stars and
now have settled for the silent, stoic and scarred moon. Scarred yet beautiful.
Just like the city that drowns the silence.
A city scarred by the blistering lights of an unceasing
traffic that can only blare horns, yet violently turn a deaf ear towards sirens
that douse fires or resuscitate battling lives. The roads are an imagery of
rustling gravel and screeching wheels. Sparks fly, mostly of rage. More sounds
infiltrate the scene. Abuses. Threats. And uncouth calling of names. The
uncivilised tongues unleash a war of words, razing like saw on smooth wood.
Violent and irrevocably damaging sounds abound the shifting air- the cacophony
of electric drills and unstopping razing of wood, concrete and stones. The
peace of the city bleeds out from its ears.
When the moon has more than covered half its journey across
the horizon, an uneasy silence settles upon the city. The roads lie in a calm ,
that is temporary, only to prepare itself for a deluge of noises from the dawn.
But in this tungsten glow, all is well on the tarred track. The trees rustle
now, not the gravel, with the rare shuffling of the sleeping birds. The
crickets and night insects creek carefully. A lone dog howls half-heartedly in
the vicinity. Only the observant ear latches onto these sounds. The ears that
belong to the eyes that wistfully stargaze on a cloudy night. And suddenly a
lonely, speeding car whizzes by.
Some neighbours dull and weary trudge their heavy feet back
after a long day at work. The wrought iron gates disturb the silence of the
night. The hinges haven’t been oiled in a really long time. It is now their time
to be noticed. During the day, the chatter of the moving couples and rushing
children hardly provide the hinges the audience it deserves. Distant thumping
sounds arise from nowhere. Then a light flickers on.
The bachelors in the building across have arrived or have
woken up. It’s well past midnight and the jam session is bound to happen. The
hesitant plucking of chords, testing of the amplifiers and a voice that cracks
through the pores of the walls and the restless atmosphere. The thumping grows
in pace and vigour. The party is full blown now. “Oye!”
The elderly man bangs open his door, standing in his
pajamas, invites his coterie of middle aged grumbling residents and shouts a
sharp word of caution to the partying bachelors. It’s his daughter’s exam
tomorrow, he says. “You better watch your performance tonight. I will be
sending you the tickets for the next gig. Right on the pavement.” The
soon-to-be-homeless bachelors shout back with equal gusto. It’s their house.
Their time of the night. Their time of their lives. “Tsk”, a tongue clicks and a head nods in disapproval.
The head was so long immersed in a novel under the warm glow
of a night lamp. The soft flick of the pages being turned were the only part of
a comforting night to this lady living two houses away. And now, she found
voices of unknown strangers drifting into her bedroom. The night blue was
already giving way to a wispy grey with traces of orange at its tail. 4 AM is
no time for a shoutdown. The book is banged shut. The pillow is pulled over the
ears, all the sounds are muffled. The head drifts to an untimely sleep. Yet
another pair of eyes opens up.
The housewife shuffles in her sleep, hitting the corner
table and letting out a howl of pain. Nobody wakes up, though. She has to run
the motor at this unearthly hour every day. For half an hour, she is lulled to half-sleep
by the sound of trickling water in the pipelines. The same shaft on the other
end supplies her with the reassuring, distant whirr of the motor. A soft click
in an hour, the motor stops abruptly, the tank gurgles with the sound of
contentment at its brim. She shuffles back to bed. Trring!
It is already dawn, the milkman comes clankering. Swoosh!
The newspaper boy delivers, never at the same time every morning. In some
flats, the dull thud in the balcony is the first alarm for the sleeping
inmates. Soon the beeps of the clocks, the horrendous Bollywood ringtones and
the irregular, but limited whistles of the cooker flood the neighbourhood. They
city has slowly, but surely woken up. The wistful eyes of the night are shut
tired. Now just the soft and early coos of the birds soothe the listener.
“Namaste ji!”
walkers call out to other known faces struggling along the paths of the park.
Some teenagers giggle looking at the ungraceful sway of pot bellies and catching
the ugly rumble of suppressed burps and passing of wind. The pebbles tinker
under the weight of the exercising milieu of nobodies.
Outside the park, vegetable vendors, sneakers-clad grandmas
and health-conscious professionals haggle over the price of peas, tender
coconut and a dozen bananas. The tea sellers hiss behind their steam of pots
and the oily pan laying out butter toasts and paranthas. A lonely radio spins the morning yarn with an
intermittent crackle of static. The school vans creak their way on the empty
roads and signal the start of the day. Slowly the traffic builds up to a
disturbing moan. Schools blare out prayers and the marching drums wake the
dozing youngsters of the locality.
The gurudwara, temple and mosque are already in the second
round of prayers for the day. Somewhere
the TV is on too; yet to recover from the hoarse mudslinging of primetime
news the previous night. The eyes that remained long awake last night, now
scurry over a document on the laptop, all blurry. Fingers quickly tap to a
word limit. The usual haste of getting ready to work, and running through the
dusty roads with uneven breath sets the pace for the day. The only other
calming sound is the drone of the Metro announcer who lures the passenger to
catchy those forty winks, unlike the stars that never appeared the previous
night. The city squabbles, shrieks, speaks, sings, whistles, whispers, howls,
hoots, chants, chatters and chalo chalo
shaant ho jao! Before the ears adjust to the assault, it is the reprieve of
silence at night again.
