South Indians are better off deaf

All reasons are not on public domain, some are drawn from personal experience too. The school, at the end of the street where I live, has a public address system that was invented by Thor, the God of thunder. But his invention was so loud that Mrs. Sif Thor forced him to leave it behind when they went back to Thrudheim. These school people, picked it up and have been using it ever since. The fact that I have studied with great difficulty in the same school has not made me immune to it. There is an ageless entity who screams “Mic Testing” into the microphone, as if he were testing the nerves of people in far off southern districts. How he doesn’t get affected personally is beyond me. He seems to have normal hearing, as he swears back at me every time I ask him to keep the volume down, in a natural tone of voice. Of late, the school has started rehearsing for their Annual School Day function which, mercifully, will be held somewhere else where they need to level some buildings. The most disturbing thing is that, the blaring music is exactly the same music that blared last year. Probably their music composer had a stroke and died when they played back his creation at full volume.

After the music is played loud enough to cure Hepatitis B, some charming guy starts numbering. Yup.. “1…2…3…” I assume it is the same concentration camp training that they gave me when I was in school. They had manufactured these strange exercises, where you had to jump at the call and spread your hands and then clap them over you head, then turn, then clap and so on. They solved no earthly issues and made several glands in our bodies very angry. We were forced to do these rituals for hours everyday without a break. I had actually conditioned my mind to use that time very efficiently in conjuring up absolutely amazing fantasies with a battalion of hot chicks.

After the Maths whiz goes ballistic with the numbering, he starts droning a marching call. He goes “left… left… leftrightleft” – referring very creatively to the left and the right leg in the human body. I remember those days, we would be asked to march around pointlessly to this call. We had even formed a cartel where each person would take turns stepping on the heel of the person before him, dislodging his shoe, forcing him to get out of formation, sit down and put on his shoe again. After this welcome break, he would, of course, get back in line, and extend his service to the community … but that’s a story for my memoirs. The students who graduate out of this school will herald a new generation, who will unleash a death spell on the loudspeaker and telecommunication industry. They will be able to talk across continents directly, without amplification equipment.


India is riddled with a “caste system”. Among South Indians, there is a very distinct caste called the “mama”. The most interesting feature of this particular caste is that nobody is “born” into this caste, but they become a mama, at some point in their life. How are mamas created? They are mostly children of the sixties who concentrated very hard on growing up, so had very little time for anything else. They were suddenly bestowed with respect that comes of age, (There’s a decades old practice among Indians, where they act as if they respect people who are older to them) they don’t know how to handle this sudden respect – they get invited to all marriages, where they are put in charge of treasury or the store room or walking head grandpa to the loo and so on. So, they start chewing betel leaves and stop washing their clothes. They also become partially deaf, thanks to the head grandpa’s sonic boom rendering of the Indian freedom struggle and his contribution to it by listening to the radio everyday, without fail.
So… In any South Indian family, you will run the real risk of colliding with a mama. A mama will assume interrogation posture within nanoseconds of eye contact, and will ask you how you are, which will have the same effect as being run over by a steamroller while trying out a new bed of nails. And since you can’t see the blood ooze out of your ears, he will give you a visual expression in the form of a generous splatter of well chewed blood red betel juice extract all over your face. The mama will proceed to ask you about your marriage plans, if you are not married, and your plans for raising a family including graphic questioning of your sex life, if you are married. (If you have children, you have become a mama, you just don’t know it yet). I get decibel-assaulted by a mama at least once very fortnight.


Before the motor car, South Indians always traveled on elephants. These elephants roared constantly from hunger and depravation, as the South Indians considered them brothers and fed them with just curd rice. So, when the first motor car was launched in India, the first accessory that was in hot demand was a horn that was as loud as the elephant’s roar. Though they didn’t get the pitch right, they outdid the elephant and his many loud colleagues by miles. And louder horns are being invented as we speak. So loud that they are discovering medical applications. India’s first motorcar is still being manufactured today. Like the South Indian, it was simplicity itself, dies rolled out metal panels and they cut out windows using a can opener. The steering wheel had a built in “horn ring” – you don’t have to lift your hand to depress the horn button. People have been known to drive using this horn ring.

The first people who bought the motorcar were all mamas. They loved the cacophony, They honked constantly. Every South Indians car is fitted with at least two horns of different pitch – in case your eardrums pop at the low frequency they still have a chance with the higher frequency. I have seen Ambassador cars with 4 horns mounted outside on a special bar on the front bumper. These horns were used for elephant hunting. They would drive up behind the elephant in second gear. The Ambassador’s sputtering engine had a clever effect. The elephant would think it was his neighbour Jumbonathan, who was diagnosed with gas the previous day, walking up for some snuff. And then, the driver would give one loud, solid honk using all the eight horns on the front bumper. This would finish off the elephant instantaneously. And the hide would also be bleached at the same time.


SIs (South Indians) are soaked in culture. Music runs in their blood and bile. Come December you can see swarms of mamas and maamees (female of the species) flock music halls like flies in a South Indian canteen. All cars here are fitted with reversing horns. Not one but two or more. Whenever the reverse gear is engaged, a monotonic wail of a popular religious song starts midway together with a shrill screech that will make bats abandon the whole business of sonar. Instantly the driver goes into a trance and the music plays for a good fifteen minutes, if not longer. The SIs contest that without the reversing horn, no car will move backwards as there will always be someone standing in the middle of the road, behind their car.


All Indian movies have songs. It is not that they are musicals, but the actors break into epileptic fits every fifteen minutes or so, irrespective of the plot. These songs are sold in albums separately and are immediately pirated and played back EVERYWHERE. The flag bearers for these “Seizure Initiators” are three wheeled transportation devices called “Auto-rickshaws”. They have a tiny internal combustion engine connected to a Silencer like Amplifier.

SIs like to hear to movie soundtracks almost constantly (culturally soaked, remember?) and all public places like cinema halls, restaurants, railway stations dole out movie songs at full volume. There is absolutely no way anyone can carry on a conversation with a family member, and as a result, there is very little scope for argument, and hence the South Indian Joint Family System is very strong and unshaken. In restaurants, the music is so loud that food gets digested immediately and the customer buys more food. Very astute business strategy. There is a restaurant in Radhakrishnan Salai, where the owners bought 100 leaf blowers at a bargain winter sale in Siberia. They hooked up these leaf blowers and connected aluminum ducts to them, and presto, HVAC system. The noise is deafening, and the movie songs play louder than this wail. As a result no table is occupied for more than fifteen minutes, and water evaporates. SIs from all walks of life mob this place screaming at each other micro millimeters from each other’s faces.


The more culturally soaked you are the more fierce your Gods become. South Indians love warrior Gods, they liken themselves to great warriors who do not know the meaning of a lot of words like fear, silence and so on. More or less, like the Residual Self Image (Matrix movies). The warrior Gods can be appeased only by 2 things –
(A) paste of rice flour cooked in the middle of the road by women with PMS, and
(B) devotional music on cone loudspeakers, composed by fanatic musicians with huge red dots on their foreheads. (They actually like balding, as their dots can become bigger).

These appeasement rituals carry on during the night, with a lot of fanfare, people impaling themselves with dirty steel rods, walking on fire and so on. Christians essentially have a similar setup sans the firewalking and self mutilation, but the loudspeakers are a must. They go on processions too, spreading the good loud word. Cone loudspeakers are not the property of any one religious group, but is the commonly loved device of all religious groups, minority or the majority.


Volume has become irrelevant in Chennai. All the sparrows are dead and crows fly higher. If this cacophony continues, very soon Deepavali will be a festival of lights in all reality, as the sound of firecrackers would get subdued by mamas talking to each other. Whether we make progress or not, we make a lot of noise.
Which is why all South Indians are better off deaf. At least I will be better off deaf.