Small towns are stacked with silences, amorphous and stolid. They are dumped in indifferent bylanes, lined up in languid porches, bridging the gaps between reluctant noises on a summer afternoon. If only I had scooped up and saved some for my big-city years.

I’m in a big city now, the Capital, to be sure. But Panchkula will always be on my mind. Or at least the Panchkula I once knew. With its savoury calm and random sounds. With its scant traffic and silent skies. With a marginal populace and magnanimous spaces. With a sterile layout (boring, say some) but planned nevertheless.

Not that Delhi is detestable. The noise is the worst. It emanates from every conceivable source: buses, generators, loudspeakers, TVs, planes, people. It pervades every imaginable space: homes, streets, parks, markets, earth, sky. There are, of course, areas that hoard up the quiet, treasuring it much as they do their exalted locations. But chaos is only a drive away.

The drive, yes. That’s another reason I need my reserves of quietude. The volume of traffic (literally and figuratively) is enough to bring out the philosopher, if not the deranged abuse hurler, in the most pedestrian of beings. Being at the mercy of a brake and a horn amid the marauding waves of frisky bikes, fiendish autos and brawny buses is not why one buys a car. Once I used to love my drives. No longer. Once I relished listening to music while driving. Now it’s mostly to cut off the traffic’s growl.

... contd.