too loud for comfort (music)

Hello

Can any Indian on this forum explain why Indians seem like very loud music?

When I was on sleeper overnight bus Bhavnagar-Una (by private Sharma Travels company) driver and conductor were just torturing passengers by unbearable loud music. I tried to use earplugs - useless. Passengers several times asked to make level lower - to no avail.

After one hour of torture I went to drivers cabin and to my astonishment I found cabin very quiet, without music. I asked conductor to exchange our seats and took his.He went to saloon but was not allowed to take my seat by my neighbour. I don't know - maybe conductor had a talk with passengers but when he returned to cabin he switched off music and asked me to take my seat.

Driver and conductor became very angry with me - I didn't care, but I wonder why not a one Indian passenger could not find guts to confront them? They were all suffering as me and were seem ready to suffer longer.

Today I seen on TV how wedding party guests and hosts in Delhi had beaten a lawyer who summoned police to stop loud music from their flat.

Sometimes there are deep, deep questions for which no satisfactory answer is available. This is one of them.

With the ban imposed by supreme court the menace of loudspeakers beyond 10 PM is on its way out. But still violations do take place. On tours when ever I get into a taxi the first thing I tell the driver is to turn off the confounded music system. With the availability of cheap but powerful systems even auto rickshaw drivers have installed these in Delhi. On some nights I wake up in a fit when some brats cruise around in the street with their windows rolled down the "music" on full volume & the bass booster amps driving the woofers practically out of the cars. Lizards have fallen off my bed room walls bowled over by the "music"

I live in a fourth-floor apartment with the bedroom window opening out to the lane below. when i moved in, i didnt think too much about the noise aspect ( big mistake ), and the lane looked to be no different from those typical lanes you have in residential neighborhoods.

Little did i know that this seemingly peacful lane also doubles up as a thoroughfare for marriage processions and journeys to the cremation ground ( quite far away, but i have seen more dead bodies being taken through this lane in the last couple of years than i have seen in my entire life. ). And both of these are LOUD affairs. real loud. Marriage processions go by even as late as 1 am in the night. God, the racket they make! as you peer down, you see men and women dancing happily, oblivious to the disturbance they are creating.

Loudspeakers being banned is fine, but what about those drums? Gosh, you can hear them from miles away!

Like most indians, i too have so far suffered in silence. no one else seems to bother as well.

We Indians can be really accommodating in these matters i guess. In many cases if you go out and make a noise you are not likely to get support either...

Ah, but it is the same in my neighborhood, and none of my neighbors are Indians. What they are, however, are idiots who want to impose their music on everyone else...annoyance, I believe, for annoyance's sake.

... some of the prime suspects ....

Hey, you have to let the people around you know you have a new toy so you play it loud. My brother in law did this with a new tv

...and we blame partial deafness on this..

I was glad to see the day the old style India TV disappeared, you know the ones, they had two volumes one you couldn't hear, the other where the whole block could share your evenings viewing!!

Disapeared? I wish!

Yes well spotted.. But I couldn't resist posting it as there were so few "speaker" shots on a Google image search..

I figured where there's a satelite dish THAT big, there will be a huge TV set to go with it !

I'm Indian and I have had similar experience on buses. It is horrible. But once or twice my plea to reduce the volume did pay heed. In othercases I just curse and bear it. As you say many Indians are not vocal about things that they need to vocal about

I do not think all Indians like loud music, but to generally silence the people in the vans/bus and make the sound so horrible for you that you forget the pain of the bumpy ride could be the trick

When I take a cab or auto the first thing I do is ask them to switch off the contraptions that make the noise.

I HATE loud music, especially on buses. Why do Indians like it? Dunno, probably most of them do not like it but are more tolerant knowing it would not last long.