Tuesday, May 17, 2011

The music in their hearts

I prefer to travel in public transport. Somewhat due to environmental reasons, somewhat due to that I don't own a personal vehicle. The second reason may seem to have more weightage, but that is up to you to decide.
The fact (annoying fact rather) I am trying to point here is a new gimmick. It is often visible in public transport and I (may be you too) get really irritated.

With the advent of super low cost cell phones with hundreds of features, the mass now has access to the technology. I'm not against it by any means though. People should have access to technology and it should not be confined to only a handful of rich men. I support consumerism in India. But there are some cons as well of the mass availability of technology. There is a remarkable line in 'Spider Man', one of my favorite movies - "with great power comes great responsibilities". And the problem starts here. All of us are pretty much ok with having 'power' but most of us are not used to behave like a responsible one.

Coming back the actual issue, there is a very common feature in all cell phones now-a-days called "loud speaker". What does it do? It plays the music loud, as simple as that. As I understand, the intention of providing such feature was, a group of people with common interest can listen to something together. The feature is great until it is used among a group of people not sharing common interest. If you board a public transport, often you'll see some people playing music of their choice in loud speaker mode. They do not care about their co-traveler's preferences. If you are not carrying any music player then you've to listen to something you don't like or understand throughout the journey. In case you carry your own music player (I fall into this category), you can try to beat the noise by increasing the volume which may not be enough sometimes though.

The trouble worsens when there are more than one in the same transport who likes to show off the wattage of their loud speakers. It creates some intolerable fusion music which can arrange for a day long headache with guarantee. I have personally witnessed many such situations, where ghazal was mixed with kannada dance numbers and some tamil oldies with latest hindi songs. One more thing, if you are lucky you may witness a competition for the title of the loudest music. Don't they know about a gadget called headphone?

Someday I tried to convince a such type of music lover by requesting him to turn down the volume a bit, so that I could hear the important phone call I was getting then. The response was typical, he may do whatever he likes in a public place like the bus. That is where I say, people love power (of technology) but never wants to act responsible. It seems to be a cussed behavior, resembling a child, on their part.

I never found much sense in the act of playing loud music inside a public place. I could not convince people either (not tried much though). So, I have made up my own reasoning (or consolation?). May it be right, may it be wrong, I think it is the flow of the music in their hearts. At least this explanation makes me bear the unbearable. Still it doesn't work sometimes. Then I reluctantly push up the earphone volume of my music player. Ear drum damage !!! who the hell cares?