StyleSpeak: The Art of Noise
By Wendell Rodricks
It is easy to contemplate on noise here in Grenada. We arrived last night after a seventy hour journey, passing Abu Dhabi in transit for four hours and a freezing New York for ten hours. When we left New York, the runway at JFK airport was covered in a film of snow. It was still flurrying down when the plane took off. Though it was past ten at night when we landed in Grenada (Say Gren-Ay-da not the Gren-aa-da in Spain), what immediately struck me was the sound of the waves. In the silence, that is all we heard.
It reminded me of the Goa I knew. The wonder of silence. The sound of silence. That space of almost God like presence; when there is no sound. Just the sounds created BY God. Birdsong, the wind, the seabreeze, the rustling of the leaves, the sounds of animals (human included) and the waves crashing against the coast. When I moved to Goa in 1993, one night, my then tailor Tauqir appeared in the moonlight in my room; a knife in hand. I was terrified. He was even more so. "Boss", he whispered, "there is a lion breathing in my room". In any other room, we might have laughed. But this was THAT room. When I was buying the house, everyone said it was haunted (as any large home in Goa is supposedly). And in 'that' room, Mr. Braganza had passed away (As if people don't pass away in every room? I had countered at the time). We climbed in deathly silence to the room above. Right enough, from outside the Southern window, there was growl and a hum. Like an animal breathing. It rose on a growling rush and ended on a whoosh. We were mortified. I could hear it very distinctly. We went to the garden with torchlights. Nothing!
Back in the room, the sound was still very audible. I offered to sleep on the floor. Tauqir offered instead to sleep on my room floor downstairs.
Each night, we would go upstairs to hear the 'animal' breathing. It did not disappoint. At about eleven, it would begin. By daylight, it stopped.
A monsoon passed. Late next summer, my father and I went to see his friend the art collector, Max Sequeira. After two fenis, I was astounded to hear the 'animal' again.
"Stop!" I hushed their chatter. "Can you hear that?"
"What?"
"The animal", I whispered. It was clearly audible.
My Dad held his feni in mid-air. "This is the sound you were talking about? The sound you made me hear in your house?"
"Yes!". I was hoarse with shock. The animal had followed us here.
Max let out a loud guffaw and was still laughing at our animal ghost story.
Then he sobered up.
"You know what that is Wendell? The rains are coming. It's the end of May. That sound. That sound you can hear so clearly...It's the waves crashing at Chapora!"
All these years later, on some nights, I go to the Camurlim, with a sad nostalgia, a heavy sausades. There, up on the Camurlim hills, in the last week of May, I hear the waves again. Crashing on the Chapora hills; over ten kilometres away.
Colvale has become too noisy. Factories crank up their generators. The highway makes our old home tremble. The poor walls vibrate their centuries old stones and the plaster flakes off at times when a particularly heavy truck passes by.
On Sundays, we have to bear the church with it's loud speakers. And the temples with theirs in the evenings. And my annoying neighbours "reversing" car sounds.
This is not the Goa we knew. The Goa which was so silent that everyone knew everyone's life. After I pulled up a staff for a certain misdeed, my neighbour would tell me the next day "You made a mistake. He took not just the coconuts away to be sold. He also overcharged your bill at the nako. And that part when you told him to keep the light on all night. That is not right. A waste of electricity". Then she would continue "Arrey, and you know 'that' woman opposite me. Now she has started entertaining the truck drivers as well. Shameless ! And what price they are paying for drinks so late in the night? Sheesh!! Are they mad-o-what?. So expensive." The very thought that illegal bootlegging past midnight is no more taboo is a shock. And the fact that the rate has been overheard is too much to be true. As shocking as it sounds, it IS true!! As Goans say..." Ask anyone in the village? All peoples know!"
Late one night recently I was returning from Arambol. There was a rave (?) on at Mandrem. The noise was so loud, it altered my heartbeat. It was not a rave. Russians were at a shack; some dancing on a floor built in the sand. Is this legal? There were young Russian girls being ferried in the late of the night to prospective clients. Nearby Goan boys on bikes waited to take revellers home.
What has become to our Goa ?
Where is the Police?
Where are our politicians?
"Arrey baba, this is going on because of them. They get money. These Russians give them money. And girls also. Our children cannot study. Our old people cannot sleep despite being deaf. The vibration hits their hearts."
This is terrible!
This is what is going to drive away good tourists.
Better to question: "Is this the quality of tourist we want?".
These high-on-substance rave monsters?
While Kerala enjoys the cream, while Humpi gets the adventurer, while Rajasthan gets the local dance and music types, while Mumbai dines at Indigo... This is what we have reduced our Goa tourism to.
Noise pollution ..... Uncontrolled. Unleashed on a land known twenty years ago for the sound of silence.
We must stop it!
A collective WE.
ME included. If they pass a law not to play music on loudspeakers at ANY time, we must comply. Day or night. NO sound beyond a certain decibel. WE want to hear music. Real music. Not this tourist rave crap. Which keeps us awake, keeps our children from studies, keep our elderly hearts beating faster.
IT MUST STOP!
It is so easy to stop. It's not as there is no solution. The people and the Police and the Government should have the will to stop it. Put a law in place and then act on defaulters. And throw out the bad tourists who control us mafia style. Throw them out for good.
And make Ministers accountable. Their own families are the ones who endorse these evils. They need to go behind bars. If David from Tito’s can be coerced into fitting out a soundproof dance room, why can't others follow suite? Or is that because there is no Police from Siolim to Arambol, that the new beaches steal tourist away from the Calangute Baga belt? This after disco owners have taken precautions over sound in the Baga stretch. Is it fair that they loose their clients to the new unpatrolled beaches?
At the village nako, I can hear conversations. In a city bar, I overheard youth contemplating their future careers.
Instead of a good job. An honest job via studies and hard work... this is what they want. "Hey listen man, you have it already. We want it now. If someone gives me drugs to sell, a few Russian girls to control, an old aunty's house to sell...I'm cool. I make two to five thousand a day. Then I take a bit of coke myself on the side, do a few of the girls who I drive around. It's easy."
I see the point. But I don't get it !!
What they are saying is...Why get a degree and end up as a clerk? Why not this easy way?
Even the parents of such kids gloat ..."My baba Shaanu no... he goes Calangute. Works very hard. But gets good money. Last month gave me car. Next month we are making new house."
Obviously her prayers are answered. This clueless-to-what-her-Shaanu-does Goan lady. At Mass she prays even more fervently.
I think we need to all go down on our knees.
And pray for this noise to stop. For Satan to leave our shores. To make us realise the Goa we are loosing. To hear the birds again. To hear the waves at Chapora... in Colvale. To hear our conscience. To slumber in the fact that we can have less money but retain our dignity, sanity, uncorruption and integrity.
So that finally we can hear the true voice of God ! (ENDS)
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First published in Goa Today, Goa - March 2010
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