It is on and around Sankranti that all of rural West Bengal goes on picnics. These are of course no longer small family affairs or a group of friends who decide on a day out. These picnics involve entire villages, which set forth on huge buses and trucks to find a place to cook, eat and dirty. Thermocol plates are probably a style statement, with banana leaves or saal plate leaves being passe. So after Sankranti, every empty space is strewn with discs of white, bearing testimony to the fun and frolic, a long time after it is over.
While some of these picnics are contributory, many are actually sponsored by either a village "richie rich" or increasingly by political leaders with their eyes firmly on the electoral machines. So sums of money distributed for picnics often include generous grants for drinking binges. There are now also cases in the state of people getting killed over tiffs during picnics. Also, probably because I live in Birbhum, where bomb-making has become the most well-known cottage industry, clashes at picnics can turn dangerous. With picnics of different groups happening at close proximity such clashes are on the rise.
All this fun, frolic and living dangerously are of course accompanied by what is now known as "DJ music". From the time the truck or bus leaves the village till the time it gets back the boom boxes belt out music. If there are a couple of picnic parties at one spot, all boom boxes offer music simultaneously. One Monday - the number of picnics is maximum on Sundays - a girl, who works in my kantha embroidery workshop, complained of the ear-shattering DJ music that surrounded her village on Sunday.
I was curious to know what she meant by "DJ music". Indulgent of my ignorance, all the girls in my workshop got involved in explaining to me what it was. "Basically when songs have lyrics," they said, "but you can't understand them, it is called DJ music." Satisfied at having enlightened me, they got back to their embroidery. Coincidentally, the same day the woman, who does our household work, complained of irritating "DJ music". I asked her what exactly it was. Her version was that when the "boom boxes get larger than man-height they are called DJ boxes".
The gardener overheard our conversation and joined in. His version was that when the box incorporates only one speaker, it is an ordinary box; if it has many speakers built in it, is known as a DJ box. He also explained that the sound level with such DJ boxes was so high that any cardiac patient could actually die if in close proximity of this blaring music. The gardener himself, who had had an ear operation as a child, cannot bear the sound level and has to leave the place where these boxes start playing.
What seems to be abundantly clear is that noise pollution is a growing health and brain-threatening menace. Thanks to political nurturing, "lumpenisation" is so widespread that few have any hope of asking their fellow men to desist. After talking to many people, the feeling I got was that they were reconciled to this modern-day curse.
Now the picnic season is over but Saraswati Puja is right here. On my part, I have made my bandobast. To all our friends, who come to spend a few days with us in winter, my answer to their question, "what can we bring you?" is easy. Ear plugs, of course.
Disclaimer: These are personal views of the writer. They do not necessarily reflect the opinion of www.business-standard.com or the Business Standard newspaper
