A day without music

Today was a hard day for me. I mean you never understand how a small action could make you a philosopher until it happens to you. The deepest thoughts about life come to you when you forget your headphones and are not able to listen to music during your commute to and from office.

Well that is exactly what happened to me. With the travel time ranging from one to two hours I just sat through the agonizing horn sounds and mindless chatters of co-passengers while my thoughts gathered up like buses at CMBT.(That is the third largest bus station in Asia. Do check out more details here)

I am planning to pen down almost all of it in my blog, this post is dedicated to the ENT doctor who said listening to music would make me deaf. He said I should not use headphones and I will go deaf for sure if I keep listening to songs via headphone. Although I wanted to punch him in the face for saying something like that, I have considered the fact that I should not ruin my ear drums.

I am a sensible person. I don’t usually let music blast in the highest volume so that a person next to me can also listen to it. I am more of a R&B, melodies kind of person and I never set the highest volume.

But then compared to the beats in those songs the sounds of the traffic is what gives me a headache and sometimes endanger the survival of my eardrums. For me using the public transportation has always been a tedious thing. Being a person who gets irritated at the invasion of personal space, I have never been quite okay with the share autos and the freakishly crowded buses. It is not just the uneasy feel that makes me prefer my headphones and music more. But the noises I have to endure.Firstly there is the completely pointless honking. When I say pointless just don’t think I am exaggerating or under estimate the power of the drivers I have come across. I have seen guys who honk at a speed breaker for no reason. It’s as if the speed breaker would flatten because this guy is just honking at it instead of driving over. Today the bus driver was honking at a red signal. We were the ones in the front and the light had just turned red. He kept honking like that would magically change the signal into green or something like that. And then there are the sudden breaks! The share auto guys who do that particular route at least 20-40 times a day forget that there is a blind right turn coming up and speed up like hell. When you are driving a vehicle with at least 10 passengers sitting in it and none of them actually have anything to hold on to, sudden breaks are like real scary. Either you fall down and hurt yourself or you fall on the person sitting in front of you and embarrass yourself or worse the entire vehicle could probably crash into another vehicle or something with such a sudden movement. There are days where I thank god just because I made it home unscathed.

There have been a lot of instances where I was in complete faith that this share auto was going to meet with an accident and my photo will be put up in the newspapers the following day. And no! I am not exaggerating. Any person who has traveled in a share auto knows what I am talking about. I shall put up a separate post as to what these peculiar kind of vehicles are!

Among all these music is the only thing that relaxes my mind and gets me away from all the surrounding sound that gives me a migraine. I kind of drift off into the melodies and try not to get all worked up with the traffic, the horn sound and so on.

Its not just the horn sounds that disturb you. If you get into a bus in which a wrong kinda group is sitting, you are sure to break either your head or their head. These are the bunch of adolescent uniform wearing guys who imagine themselves to be a child artist in some major film and do stuff that would make you give yourself a face palm.

Or if the group consists of old ladies from fish/vegetable markets, again you are sure to sit through an uncomfortably loud and noisy bus ride. Oh if you don’t get a seat and end up standing just pray to god that there shouldn’t be that much crowd. Balancing your laptop bag and still fishing out change from your purse while the bus travels at a speed of 80kmph is an art of it’s own kind…

Oh and when you do that Michael Jackson style position when the same bus comes to a halt is a classic. So much for forgetting your headphones in the morning. Among all these music is the best relaxant you could get to keep yourself from going into an adrenaline drive or something.
I should better buy a second pair and keep one in my bag in case of such emergencies…