The clock shows two hours past midnight. Sleep has been driven away by the incredibly intrusive noise coming in as though an insane, riotous crowd is screaming and yelling, inches away from my ears. Sounds like a bunch of crazed men with some kind of drum, high on alcohol or some other crazy stuff, screaming into a microphone with the amplifier full on. How can this happen in a civilized country? How can good, cultured human beings behave like this? Is there no law, no regulation?

Earlier, the entire day had exploded with loud banging, screeching power tools and rumbling construction machinery. A residential building takes shape inches away from my balcony. There’s no room to spare. No space nor time is sacrosanct. Everything can and is violated, mostly in the name of God, whom men have reduced to a rubber stamp to justify their evil.

I read that a court ruled that silence constitutes cruelty in marriage. What about this? Maybe there are spouses who are similarly insensitive, loud and aggressive. Maybe there is nothing there to say? What can you say to people like this? What about God’s cruel silence in the face of all the filth being done in his name? Some would say we need to realise the divine spark within. What if the inside is full of crap? We have been trying to realise that divine self for thousands of years and still remain pretty much near the bottom of the heap on human behavioral indicators.

Decades ago, I read a piece by a celebrated Indian editor. He had been burning the midnight oil trying to meet a deadline. Some people emerged from the ground floor and started their motorbikes, in those days very noisy. Instead to driving away, they kept standing and talking loudly to be heard above the noise of their engines. This near an apartment complex in Mumbai, where hundreds of tired people were sleeping, or trying to. Our writer finally decided to do something practical about it. He switched off the light and brought a bucket of water, which he emptied out from his window onto the noisy group below. It seems there was a sudden silence followed by unprintable language directed upwards. Our writer had a much more pungent vocabulary, which he followed up with the contents of the kitchen trash being emptied out as well. It’s only then that the noisy bunch had moved off. The writer had asked the question: Why are we so incredibly inconsiderate of others?

I’m asking that question tonight. Any answers?