Sounds of TAK TAK

Sounds of Tak Tak

Well the sounds of the morning today made me write this blog. I thought I had become adapted to the sounds around me but then I have been trying to consciously register whats going on in my auditory periphery.

Today morning as usual I was in a rush to run and catch the train, to run and catch the next connection and to get into the office. Well I take the train from tooting broadway to Elephant and Castle and then change at Elephant and Castle for the Bakerloo line to come till Lambeth north where I get down and walk to my office. While I was waiting to the train change on Elephant and castle I had a 5 minute wait in which I was observing things and people around me.

One of the things that I noticed was the sound made by shoes. tak tak. You know you can make out the difference between the sound of a boot with pencil heels versus the sound of the boot with a flat heel. the sound of the shoes made with those heavy boots right now in vouige versus the sounds of the boots made by Uggs or hush puppies. Also I could differentiate between the sounds coming from men's boots and men's formal shoes. If there are pointed from the front the chances are that they will make those sharp TAK TAK sound!!1 So much for the five minutes of my wait for the train. then I got into the thought of the sounds people ar emaking or in fact NO SOUND that people are making. There is such a huge difference between cultures. Everytime I am amazed at the loudness levels in a culture and the formality involved in them. You dont hear much more than a mere murmur here on train stations.

Its funny as from where I come from and have been used to there are myriad of things happenning around the station. Someone is shouting on the top of his voice, there is a vendor selling magazines and books, there is the coolie who is rushing everyone in the family to hurry up, there is a disagreement between the coolie and the passenger over money, there is a rush to fill water at the water stand, there is a mom shouting at her teenage son to get in the train, all sorts of things happening. There is this poha wala selling his yummy poha, there is this chai wala who has a particular tone in which he calls out to sell his chai, there is this train guard surrounded by group of people trying to get his attention and he calmly taking his sweet time to take out his pen, look around, say a thing or two to the passing by railway police officer. Lots of interesting things happenning around on a train station. People hustling and bustling when the train arrives, trying to get into the train first and not even letting people get down... In a nutshell lots of noises which are an amalgamation of noises of man and machine and sometimes animals. In these voices I had never heard the sound of shoes, of shoes clicking on the platform, of soo many shoes clicking their heels on the platform surface.

I just realized that this morning and I am not sure I am fond of it but then it made me more aware of the silence of the people and the sounds of TAK TAK.