I am a quiet person. I also like my surroundings to be quiet. India is not the place for me.
Everything here is at least four times louder than it needs to be for all practical purposes. Our doorbell, for example, is a thoroughly obnoxious, ear-shattering chirping bird sound that makes you jump whenever it goes off (which is often, because have I mentioned that random people show up at our door several times a day?).
They are also fond here of very large, very poor quality sound systems, which they use on holidays and sometimes just on regular days on impromptu stages with emcees screaming into the mic and leading people in stupid games and contests while horrible distorted techno music pulsates in the "background" at decibel levels to rival a 747 taking off in your backyard. Today is Republic Day and such a spectacle is taking place down in the parking lot as I write. We are 22 stories up and have all our windows closed, and I am seriously considering PUTTING IN EARPLUGS because it is SO FUCKING UNBEARABLY UNBELIEVABLY FUCKING LOUD.
3 comments:
The best part about random people showing up at the door is that they often don't speak much English.
I got to the point that I loved answering the door. Despite the fact that our building is full of foreigners of all kinds, so many of these people freeze like a deer in the headlights when a whitey opens the door.
I would relish it for a moment, and then get to engage in a conversation using broken Hindi and pantomime to try and figure out what the hell they wanted. Usually they were selling something, or water was falling from our air conditioner onto someone's balcony again.
I went for a long time with a broken doorbell. I purposefully didn't tell anyone that it was broken becasue, hey, I ddin't really want to answer the door. I think someone from the office gae by and noticed it was broken and finally got it fixed.
...and the fire works for the weddings every other night -- that was actually worse at the Avalon B apartent.
Ah yes, I also remember the halcyon days of the broken doorbell.
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