A Long Gone Soothing Sound

Even as the Coronavirus continues to threaten humanity each day, I still don’t see any stop to this trafficky city life, where we all have adjusted ourselves to ignore all the honking sounds of the vehicles. As I found myself stuck at my Grandma’s place, I still remember the decade were the sounds were not so much ignored, and rather awaited by kids like me.

Every summer vacation, we used to visit our grandparents for a month or so, and each vacation was an adventure that isn’t even possible now. We kids used to hate sleeping and preferred staying out, no matter how hot it was, making full use of the enormous energy we all have in our teens. Back then, we could play almost any sports in the street, go for morning walks in acres of greenery (now replaced by all sorts of houses), steal litchis and mangoes like professionals, fly kites together, and run without our chappals on. This was a time when my brain had an alarm of its own and woke me up sharp at 5 AM daily, without fail. I didn’t have to call my friends or ping them every night, we just met each morning through mutual understanding. Even now as I think of all these, it seems to be a story not so long ago, but so long gone because of the changing world and advancing technologies that it’s pretty hard to imagine. I am talking about a time when playing more than an hour at the video gaming center used to be a bit too much use of tech.

And, in one of these splendid vacation days, we also had to do our godforsaken holiday homework; the curse that just never went away, following me like a shadow, one vacation at a time. It was in such days when our parents held us from playing, ordering us to do our duties as a student when “it” always happened. When rather than focusing on the assignment at hand, all I could do was hear the fan spinning at full speed, the low monotonous sounds of the news reporters on TV that my grandpa used to watch, and the weird noises that their fridge used to make. It is in such situations, as I heard the small tyres, slowly screeching and making their way into my street, and the ever-friendly, inviting and calming honking sound coming from somewhere near, that my excitement again reached its peak. It was the savior who announced his arrival with this sound, the ice-cream vendor. The sound had such an impact on me that I can still hear it clearly in my mind. Along with the ice-cream vendor came the mighty escape from the dreadful homework, as I could take some pennies from my grandparents and even on the denial of my parents, force open the doors of freedom and swiftly reach for the delicious treat waiting for me in the street, out in the open where we kids belonged.