The Sound of Music

The Sound of Music(Sudeshna Majumdar) It was my first night at Ooty and the cold was at its worst. Wrapping a thick blanket around my moderately thin frame, I retired to bed hoping that sleep would soon overtake me. It did. Hardly had I shut my eyes, when a loud guttural voice shattered the stillness of the night. For the next one hour I had to endure the cacophony, trapped as I was within my one room apartment. It was only after the merciless onslaught on my aural nerves ceased that I could scamper back to bed. But the voice continued to ring in my ears making it almost impossible for me to snatch some sleep.

From the direction of the sound, I guessed that it was my landlord’s wife or daughter doing her SADHANA (regular song practice). Therefore, broaching the subject would be rather delicate, more so because I had got this accommodation after searching high and low, traversing the dirty streets. Further, it would have been highly indecent on my part to rush up the stairs, knock on my landlord’s door and to ask him to ensure that whoever owned that blessed larynx should pipe down immediately!!

I went off to work and returned late at night and went straight to bed. The clock struck 11 and the ordeal began again. The sound of music came filtering through my firmly closed windows, beating a tattoo on my eardrums. As it reached an alto, I could feel my temples pounding, my blood pressure soaring and my heart sinking, thinking of the nights ahead. Days passed without respite and my patience was wearing thin. Then came the last straw- the ‘solo’ turned into ‘duet’ with the new voice matching the old in terms of sheer shrillness and pitch. The music buff in me rebelled and I put on my favourite Shaan numbers on my two-in-one. But, alas, poor Shaan didn’t stand a chance, her dulcet voice was drowned in no time. It was a hopeless situation!!

A month passed. I went up to pay the rent and gently informed my landlady that they were ruining my sleep. The lady looked at me from head to toe as a butcher would a goat that he wanted to buy, and let out a loud guffaw that sent a hundred centipedes crawling down my bony back. Her next sentence almost brought about a collapse. “My dear”, she began, “when you took up your lodging here, my husband informed me that you had great interest in Music. So, me and my daughter were just entertaining you night after night.”

My face fell, I mumbled an apology and left…..