Monsoon of Memories: The Nightly Sounds of My Childhood
It was midnight or perhaps beyond. My sister and I were chatting away in bed. Young and silly that we were, it was our game to time the loud knock of the heavy wooden stick of the security guard who did the nightly rounds around our apartment building. It had been a few minutes since the last clank of his stick hitting the concrete—suggesting he was on the other side of the building. Soon enough, with predictable clockwork precision, we once again started hearing the slow, rhythmic clank of his stick banging—meant, ironically, to announce to us, the residents, that he was wide awake and on duty, so that we could sleep in peace!
This strangely comforting noise of the security guard’s stick pierced through other nightly sounds: the almost pleasant “meditative” sound of the sparse night traffic—a far cry from the raging horns and roars of what seemed like a million engines of the daytime rush hour traffic; a distant radio played by the night owl in our neighbourhood. The crickets would add to this lullaby of melodies. On some nights, we’d hear an ambulance or a fire engine whoosh by, and even in our deep sleep, we’d utter a silent prayer for those affected by the emergency at hand.
Now, living as an expat, I am reminded of those distinctive nightly sounds of my childhood in India. As I pen this down at 1:00 am, I have to do with the subdued mechanical sound of the CCTV cameras, slyly moving their necks across their territory, keeping us safe.
I miss the grunts and coos of the pigeons who had formed a nest outside my room. They sat on the watercooler sometimes to cool themselves off, and mum would get annoyed having to clean the bird droppings. Tiny drops of water would fall all night on our cooler, from those of the neighbors above; and on nights I couldn’t fall asleep, I’d count the plink-plonk of the droplets falling, instead of sheep.
On a few nights, a burglar, on hunt for car stereos and other valuables left in cars, would dare to breach the “armor” of our lone security guard. With the odds so much in favor of the burglar, hoodwinking the guard was the easy task. Breaching the security system of the car, however, was a whole different challenge. And more often than not, the clumsy burglar would wake up the entire neighbourhood by triggering the maddeningly
loud and rude noise of the car alarm.
During the pandemic, as many of us struggle with insomnia and seek to find respite in recorded sounds of waves and rainfall, classical piano and rainforest animals, I seem to be going back to the white noise of my childhood, a messy mix of snores and sirens. Even as I knew that the wooden stick of the guard did little to even shoo the stray dogs away, who chose to bark at night simply because they were bored, and would soon be joined by other dogs nearby letting out their energy too, I slept soundly!
Purva Grover is an author, journalist, poet, playwright, and stage director. A postgraduate in mass communication and literature, she is the founder-editor of The Indian Trumpet, a digital magazine for Indian expats in the UAE. She can be reached at grover.purva@gmail.com. To comment on this article, please write to letters@khabar.com.
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