The natural world is falling silent

The sun was rising when a bird at the very top of a bush raised its head and started warbling. It was haloed by the pink-orange sun, and so I couldn't immediately see it. I could hear it though—and it picked at my memories neatly—a tuning fork whose crescendo kept rising in meaning. I remembered afternoons with a song that sounded like a "be-careful," "be careful" call.

- NEHA SINHA

The sun was rising when a bird at the very top of a bush raised its head and started warbling. It was haloed by the pink-orange sun, and so I couldn't immediately see it. I could hear it though—and it picked at my memories neatly—a tuning fork whose crescendo kept rising in meaning. I remembered afternoons with a song that sounded like a "be-careful," "be careful" call. What I was hearing sounded like a familiar and cheerful garden bird, with a cocky crest, a black head and a red bottom—the Red-vented bulbul. Only, this call was a little different. Its notes not quite the same, the warble a bit wilder. I looked again, the sky completely orange with the rising sun, and I saw the bird this time. A cocky crest, a blackish head, but a yellow rump, not red. This was the Himalayan bulbul. The difference in their songs was hard to put one's finger on—it was an intuitive feeling rather than anything else.

And throughout our lives, there have been these familiar sounds which have played like a background track, in a natural fashion. Often, these sounds are indistinguishable from the actual act of living. These are transformative sounds, that immediately transport us to specific moments from the past. Such as the softly grating sound that came as my grandmother took out coconut from its shell, using a boti—an upright knife whose handle she held between her toes. The soft cluck-cluck sound of a house gecko from behind a painting, from monsoon days. The horrible screech of marble cutting, signalling Delhi's construction boom in the 2000s, which never got over. The clarion sound of a train horn, signifying I was up at 5am studying for an exam. Evenings meant the swishing, swelling sounds of scores of insects. And some of those sounds are hushed today, even as noise is dialled up. The natural world is falling silent.