Palash Krishna Mehrotra | The unlikely uses of a noisy mixer-grinder

It’s a question that’s kept me awake several nights: Why do mixer-grinders make so much noise? We live in an age when the talk is about establishing human colonies on Mars and the moon. We make vaccines within months of a new deadly virus arriving on the scene. But, for some reason, we can’t silence the humble mixie. It’s not a question that bothers Elon Musk, unless, maybe, he owns a custom-made battery-operated Tesla mixie, which costs a million bucks.

Look at the e-rickshaw and e-scooter, both an improvement on traditional diesel- or petrol-operated auto-rickshaws and scooters. They have swung to the other extreme, so silent that one doesn’t even hear them coming from behind, until they swish past, brushing against one’s shirt sleeve. The dial-up modem, which used to angrily grind its teeth, has transformed into the self-effacing maun-vrat modem of today. The split AC impresses to deceive; it just moves the noise somewhere else.

But then, India is a noisy country. Our living days are spent immersed in the sounds of noisy gadgets: the tile cutter, the cement mixer and the booster pump. All of these perform heavy-duty tasks, so the abrasive booming sound is, to some extent, understandable. The sound and fury of the mixie, on the other hand, is the side effect of grinding ginger and garlic pods, or making a milkshake. Why so much hubble bubble toil and trouble while churning milk?

Our attitudes to noise also reflect cultural differences. For us, the pressure cooker’s whistle is a soothing sound. The medley of whistles going off in an apartment block, signals dusk falling, meals being cooked. The smell of spices wafting in and out from open kitchen windows is comforting. When I was a university student in England, Indians were at the receiving end of complaints filed by non-Indians. The pressure cooker whistle was considered a nuisance, flouting the civilised sound barrier of halls-of-residence. No one seemed to mind the bells that tolled from the belfries of various Oxford colleges, pretty much round the clock.

Apart from gadgets, we Indians are, generally-speaking, a noisy people. Our love for honking is world-famous. I remember the trend for motorbikes in the mid-1990s: the sound of a baby wailing. We honk for pleasure. Many a time have I seen a lad on a bike (the silencer removed), going down an empty small-town street, with not a soul in sight, and yet honking away to glory. Those who live in houses facing the main road are used to unmusical honking. Such folks find it impossible to sleep in tea plantations and national parks.

Our festivals are noisy. Growing up in Allahabad, it was standard practice to string up loudspeakers on electricity poles during Holi. They would blare popular film songs for four days straight. Since Holi coincided with the annual school exams, most of us became adept at learning our algebraic formulae alongside with the words to ‘Ramba Ho Ho’, or ‘Jimmy Jimmy’ or ‘I Am a Disco Dancer’. While inside the classroom, ‘making noise’ was a cardinal sin, the outside world was teaching us something else.

As for Diwali, the less said the better — the festival is only about making noise, the louder the cracker, the higher your status. One starts bursting crackers a couple of weeks before D-Day and continues for days afterwards, ban or no ban. On Diwali itself, we go on till the wee hours.

Aside from official festivals, we have plenty of opportunities to raise aural hell. No kanwariya procession is complete without the DJ truck. The all-night jaagran is a time-tested way of waking up the neighbours. The ISKCON opposite my house is in loud mode most mornings and evenings, with Sunday mornings being the loudest. If you complain, they put a tika on your forehead and request you to join the gang. Then there are the one-offs, like my neighbour, who organises an annual five-day puja. It lasts from afternoon till midnight, complete with an hour-long sound check that begins every day at 2 pm sharp. I’ve met many column deadlines sitting in the eye of such sound-storms.

Given how loud my co-religionists are, I’ve found it churlish that they have such an issue with the morning and evening calls to azaan, which are brief and tuneful. In many towns, its sounds have disappeared altogether under majoritarian pressure, only to timidly resurface, at very low volume, during the month of Ramzan.

To be fair, Indians, on the whole, are okay with religious noise, but not with secular noise, like Taylor Swift playing loudly at midnight at a small house gathering. Rest assured that all your neighbours will call the cops, who will actually act on the complaint, ring your doorbell and poop your party.

To come back to the loud-mouthed mixie, I’ve gradually come to admire its uses. It comes in handy when one wants to block the noise out, whether from ISKCON or from a tile cutter. It’s more than useful when our TV channels go hysterical over the Chandrayaan landing or a victory in an Indo-Pak cricket encounter. The mixie, I’ve figured, is our biggest weapon in drowning out the sounds of nauseating nationalism. There’s one problem though: I don’t know what to do with the jars of ginger-garlic paste and glasses of sweet lassi that I make. Any takers?