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NEW DELHI -- For a nation renowned for meditation and inner peace, India sure is noisy.Each night, about the time I sit down to dinner with my family, our leafy neighborhood in New Delhi's south suburbs is rocked by a series of massive explosions. Anywhere else I'd be diving under the table. But after two weeks in Delhi, my husband and I just look at each other, take a deep breath and start eating again.
"It going to rain, Mommy?" my little daughter, raised in calmer parts, sometimes asks. But this is manmade thunder, the gunpowder variety.
Indians love to celebrate, and any occasion--an engagement, a marriage, a religious festival--is best marked with firecrackers. In a nation of 1 billion people, that means someone is always celebrating, usually right on your block.
Marching bands stride up and down the street, trumpets blaring and drums pounding, tossing large-scale explosives as they go. Happy neighbors nightly set off charges capable of leveling small outbuildings. It is cordite--not jasmine--that floats on Delhi's night air. So constant is the barrage that Delhi's street mongrels, a handful of whom live on our street, don't even bother to howl.
Louder than a jackhammer
A study of the most recent Diwali, a major Hindu celebration marked by near-continuous fireworks, found that the average continuous noise level at 11 a.m. in Perambur, a suburb of the southern city of Chennai, was 116 decibels, somewhat louder than a jackhammer pounding 6 feet away. The average daytime noise in the town during Diwali came in at 86 decibels, about as loud as standing next to a kitchen blender.
India's courts have tried to rein in the noisy gaiety, with the Calcutta high court at one point ruling that citizens have the "the right to live peacefully, the right to sleep at night." But enforcement is another matter, not least because India cherishes its constitutional right to the free practice of religion. In a nation with huge religious diversity--and a penchant in many of them for blowing things up--calling for a little less celebration seems downright unpatriotic and unholy.
Fireworks aren't the only auditory assault. In our neighborhood the power goes out a few times every day. Within seconds, the neighborhood thrums with the sound of diesel generators in every yard. In summertime, when temperatures hit 120 degrees for weeks at a time, the whine of air conditioners chimes in.
Across the street from our house, a few dozen workmen are dismantling a large brick building with sledgehammers, blow by blow by blow. At night, when large trucks are allowed on Delhi's roads, the workmen pull the metal reinforcing bars out of the collapsing structure and drag them, ends squealing on the pavement, to a truck a block away.
`Horn please'
Motorcycles by the thousands shriek down a major street nearby, planes roar overhead 24 hours a day, and automobile drivers pound their horns every 10 seconds or so at errant sacred cows and weaving rickshaws and overloaded mopeds as they attempt to force their way through Delhi's nearly impenetrable snarl of traffic. "Horn please" reads the ubiquitous sign on the back of commercial vehicles.
Even on our relatively peaceful street, drivers react to the sight of me pushing a baby stroller on the roadside with a blast of the horn, apparently designed to send me diving out of the way.
By comparison, the other neighborhood noises--the amplified call to prayer from a nearby mosque, the distant train horn that blows most of the night, the endless chanting by some religious sect on Sunday morning--are relatively soothing.
All that noise is having the expected effect. A 2005 report by Indian doctors found that Indians suffer aging-related deafness 10 to 15 years earlier than people in developed countries. As one doctor noted, "We make a noise when we are born, when we get engaged, when we get married. Then we keep on making noise."
Other doctors warn that constant exposure to India's auditory barrage can cause everything from migraines to strokes.
"Unexpected noises may produce a rise in blood pressure, greater respiratory rates and sharp muscular contractions," noted Dr. U.S. Bansal of a hospital in Chandigarh. Given that enforcement of noise limits is "not possible," the best thing to do, he advises, is to try to put a bit of distance between yourself and the most egregious noise or invest in a pair of earplugs.
Quiet progress
The good news is that Indian authorities are trying to damp the blare. Electric horns and air horns, once popular on cars and trucks, are now banned. So are outdoor public address systems, at least between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m. Regulations call for penalties for anyone who "beats a drum or tom-tom or blows a horn either musical or pressure or trumpet or beats or sounds any instrument" in a hospital zone.
"Noise pollution is in no way less hazardous than air and water pollution," warns Indian author Vijendra Mahandiyan in a new book out on noise pollution. "To control noise pollution is a great cause before the whole of humanity for its survival."
India may be trying, but I won't throw my earplugs away anytime soon. This morning the next-door neighbor slipped a message under the gate noting that he plans a big party with live music for Friday night.
"We request your kind cooperation as ever and regret any inconvenience," it notes.
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