Is there a connection between noise and celebrations ?

Once again I am going to talk in this post with special reference to our (Indian) culture in the present times and the "mistakes" that we make as a group. I am attempting to look in the minds of my fellow brothers and sisters ands understand the reasons for some of our peculiar behaviors.

The behavior of which I am making note here today is that, we tend to celebrate (it may be any celebration) with a lot of noise. We have a whole lot festivals in a year... the most recent one was “Ganesh Chaturthi" (Since I am in Mumbai therefore bigger celebrations for this festival). Like every year. There were visarjanas taking place on various days during this 10 day festival. There would be long Ques on the road with different mandals taking Ganpati for immersion and almost all of them bring a band along with them on the way to the immersion site. Not one, not two but multiple bands are playing at the same time… ending up in nothing but a cacophony!! These bands anyways do not play any meaningful music. It is really very sad that for different reasons, not one of them which are likely to be practical and factual, we behave in ways which are less civilized!

We are in society, and every society has some more vulnerable people like the old , pregnant women, people with hypertension or any other disease which makes them highly sensitive to noise, poor animals on the streets and in the homes (The hearing capability of most animals like cats and dogs is many many times more than us which makes them HIGHLY vulnerable to deafness or madness because of noise pollution during Diwali and other festivals).

I totally fail to understand HOW can be so insensitive towards the needs of those who reside alongside us and still call our self educated and civilized!! It is noteworthy that, in the modern world that man has created for himself, there are already enough sources of noise which are invariably harming the environment (therefore harming us). But many of these are factors are less controllable. The topic that I am dealing with here is the kind of noise pollution that can be totally avoided !! So are we trying enough to stop or avoid the harm that we can?

I thought about some probable reasons, why we as a community make our celebrations noisy:

1. Our thought process is such that, if we do not make noise (which many people call music) there is a subtle fear that we will be interpreted as "less happy".
2. We have never thought about other, more peaceful ways of celebrating.
3. Today when the world has started getting more aware about climate change and how we humans are causing it, we as a national community seem to be totally ignorant about it.
4. "Sensitivity towards the needs of others" has gone somewhere at the bottom in the list of our value systems, (and selfishness seems to have come up?) such that we really do not care as to how much we are harming others by some of our actions.
5. Probably some people might even be scared that if celebrations are not done in this particular way, the Gods may not be happy about it and subsequently we might get punished !! J
6. This way of marking and announcing our celebrations has now become a norm and to change this norm is becoming difficult for us.

Any opinions in this matter, specially by those who have experienced this factor? Comments are welcome and will be appreciated J

Just as I was writing this article, I realized that there was an NGO in Mumbai city -"Awaaz.org" working towards this cause. This is what they have to say about this issue.

Picture courtesy : Sundaytimes.lk