"Indians are noisy, they like noise"

The often heard cliche of India is "it's an assault on the senses". I had always taken this to describe all the colours and smells of India - forgetting about one major sense. Sound. My ears have been under attack since arriving in India.

For the most part this comes down to the constant tooting. I have briefly mentioned this before, but it continues to be a defining force in Bangalore. I was talking to one woman about it and she commented that sometimes she will be driving around and there won't be any tooting, so she just decides to honk her horn for the sake of. I laughed. She shrugged, "Indians are noisy, they like noise".

Like most things in India, I'm yet to figure out exactly why everyone toots. My best guess is it's used as a way to let the other traffic know they are there - but when every second vehicle is doing it every five seconds it begins to lose its value. Despite this, there seems to be some sort of ordered chaos behind the flow of the traffic.

My favourite horn is one I often hear coming from the autos. The best comparison I can come up with is it sounds like a bleating goat. As a bus zooms past the small auto, the bleating goat certainly sounds very comical.

Like all extremes, it has made me aware of silence. There have been two occasions when I have noticed silence. The first happens every night when the city goes to sleep - and this city does at least seem to sleep some of the time. Bars even close here at 11.30pm. The second was an isolated, more surreal occasion. I was walking towards work one day last week, when as I approached MG Road (one of the more major roads in Bangalore) a rope barrier was put across the intersection. All traffic was brought to a halt, including foot traffic. I wasn't sure what to do at first, so just took cues from those around me, no one seemed to be walking past the barrier so I too stood just outside the barrier, shuffling my feet. After a while I noticed something, every vehicle had turned off their engine. Silence. Within a couple of minutes a procession of official looking cars drove past - I'm yet to figure out exactly who it was, but to be honest I don't really care who they were - I'm just amazed they managed to silence a city that "likes noise" so much.