Editor,
I’m writing to express my full-throated support for the recent letter complaining about the incessant and frankly irritating Hindi jingle played by garbage trucks in our neighbourhoods. Too much is too much. While you’re resting in the afternoon, or while sick people are meditating in the morning, or while insomniacs are struggling to sleep late at night, they blast suddenly and disrupt our mental state. Let’s stop pretending that the garbage truck jingle is some kind of public service. It’s not. It’s state-sanctioned noise pollution – an obnoxious, jarring, ear-piercing loop of sound that does more to irritate people than inspire cleanliness. Because even now – right now – people are still dumping garbage in drains, on sidewalks, down hillsides, and right next to ‘No dumping’ signs. So there’s no point in sending that truck around ten, twenty, or even a hundred times a day.
The problem is also the habitual filthiness of the people and the municipal’s total failure to do anything meaningful about it. Instead of fixing that, you’ve decided to punish every citizen – and probably the poor truck driver too – by blasting the same cringe-worthy tune all day like some twisted form of psychological warfare. Imagine being that driver, stuck in traffic, forced to hear that screeching jingle over and over again for hours. It’s not just bad policy – it’s borderline torture. That poor driver and those workers can’t even raise their voice; otherwise they will be suspended or probably kicked out of their job.
And here’s the deeper tragedy: in your obsession with blasting Hindi jingles all day, you’re not just polluting the airwaves – you’re also helping erase the cultural identity of this state. Our children are already growing up forgetting their native tongues. It’s a shame that modern Arunachal movies are also made in Hindi. If a survey were conducted from school to school today, I wouldn’t be surprised if 95% of students couldn’t even speak their own local language fluently. Sadly, for example, the Aka tribe, their language is almost about to disappear. Almost every next generation Aka doesn’t know how to speak their own dialect. I’ve observed it myself. The same goes for all the students born after the year 2005 – even kids or teenagers of the same tribe are not communicating in their own mother tongue.
You corrupted municipal authorities don’t have the brains and logical sense to think this way right? At the very least, had you used a local melody or voice, maybe the next generation would still feel some pride – some connection – to their roots and be inspired to unearth their desire to incline into their local dialect. Instead, they’re being conditioned to fantasize in someone else’s language.
But let’s be real – the shameless municipal authority probably will read this letter (if at all), shake their head, and go right back to doing nothing. Because if there’s one thing this system is consistent at, it’s ignoring anything that requires actual work.
Kaling