Banding together against Shaadi Bands

As is wont, post-dinner and a recap of the day’s news bulletin, last night hubby and I began our nightly schedule – walking, that is (What did you think?). We were barely into our second round of the neighborhood park when we spotted a glittering string of fairy lights making its way slowly, strains of a decidedly loud sound system accompanying the light show.

A wedding procession - groom in tow on a white mare, an assortment of animated pink-turbaned men, heavily-embroidered saree / suit clad women dripping with jewellery (never mind that Christmas was a good months away), and some gleeful children - threaded its way to the venue.

It was a usual enough scene.

Except that a few seconds later, the band and the procession stopped right before the main entry gate of the Trauma Care Speciality Center, belting out tunes from the latest Bollywood chart busters. This was the cue for the relatives to plunge into a riotous dance routine, all shaking a leg merrily and making a nuisance of themselves right outside the medical center where hundreds, if not thousands, lay on the road to recovery (or maybe not).

So while inside the medical center, grim surgeons wielded shiny surgical equipment; outside a number of shiny instruments - trumpets, French horns, euphoniums, clarinets, cymbals, saxophones, trombones, drums, boomed and kept the audience on its feet. A few other members of the red-white-blue-and-generously-sprinkled-with-gold uniformed band members shuffled their feet carrying kerosene-spewing light fixtures. An oily-looking thirty-something cleared his throat and looked ready to launch the next song from his endless repertoire.

And then there was silence.

For a moment, a feeling of unbespoke relief swept over me. Perhaps some near and dear ones of the victims that lay inside the trauma center, had taken it into their heads to come and give the giddily-happy wedding party a piece of their mind. The disturbing anomaly of glee looked extremely inhuman outside the gloomy walls that spelled accidents, comas, and frightful deaths. Probably a lathi-charge would not have been out of place for these insensitive ecstatically-cheering and dancing souls, who chose to stand right outside those walls inside which so many people battled for life right that minute.

But that was not to be. The band had stopped only because some inebriated people in the procession had a few music requests for the band. And unlike my gym which frowns upon any music requests, the band was only too happy to comply, knowing that there was no dearth of heavily-lined pockets that would disgorge currency notes any minute. Rightly so. As the crescendo built up, notes of different nominations were flung into the air, much to the delight of the band people who clutched them. Dizzy with dancing men cried hoarsely to the visibly red-faced groom, whose 5-year nephew gave him company on the weighed-down poor white mare.

And the music became louder. Probably to drown out the honking of the cars behind the procession.

A yelling match looked promising. But was soon dissolved as it was time for some pyrotechnics. One after the other, several firecrackers from last year’s Diwali (Festival of Lights) hissed and fizzed to life, zooming off into the skies above, before disintegrating into a million sparkles. Of course, the sound of all these was hardly mild, to say the least.

That, coupled with the still-earsplitting music was enough to drown out my protests….