Ramblings on rumblings and noise cancellations

Have you heard the old limerick about rumblings written by i-dont-remember-who? Well it goes like this:

I sat next to a duchess at tea
Her rumblings abdominal
Were simply phenomenal
And everyone thought it was me.

I was sitting in a train from Mysore to Chennai. Early morning, sipping tepid, extra sweet tea and everyone intently gazing out of the window pretending to take in the scenery - the reality being that no one wanted to talk.

Next to me was a stylish-denim-and-red-T-shirt-clad middle aged French-bearded gentleman with a distinctively Bengali accent when talking on the phone… Even the sound he made while sipping tea screamed Bengali.

Of course, many-a-times you would also have been in similar situations with the Indian countryside, desultory conversation, boring magazines and oily snacks whizzing by... You may well ask 'so what's special'. What's special is that this gent was rumbling abdominally with a vengeance.

(Did I hear you say ‘disgusting’? Well, you asked me ‘What’s special’ didn’t you?)

All this with look of nonchalance on his face and beatific contentment that would flit across his beefy countenance for a split second after each hell-raiser broke loose. The contentment was understandable, but the nonchalance must have come from a supreme belief that the noisy train sounds would cancel out the rumbles. He may have been hard of hearing also...

Anyway, I got a few reproachful looks from fellow passengers. Unshaven me in old track pants and baggy T-shirt may have looked the type who would do this - definitely not a middle-aged dapper Goshto Pal-look-alike. So I hunched my head into my shoulders and busied myself typing this on my mobile... (and remembered a dear friend of mine who often spouts the irresistable hindi-belt ode "thain thuin madhyama... thuskari maha hathyari")

But that’s not the point…

The point is, Hey, isn't this what we all do? Spitting on roads, rioting, eve teasing, scratching graffiti on public toilet walls, advertising our latest loves on walls of historical monuments… believing no one will notice us - the comfort of invisibility in a crowd. The belief that the rumbles will be lost in the deafening din of humanity passing by.

And hence would it be right to posit that as long as there is a crowd, the best in us can't surface. There is too much comfort in collective failure and wrong-doing. If so, then loneliness is the route to individual brilliance.

Individual work dazzles - teamwork is a means of sharing it and hiding collective weaknesses. Brilliance must perforce be compromised since the brilliance of the team is the brilliance of the weakest link...

So then, is teamwork fit only for a group that is equally mediocre? Of course then, the mediocre can survive in a world illuminated by flashes of individual brilliance only if they stick together and work in teams.

Maybe that is why the tiger hunts alone... And the wild dog hunts in packs... I wonder...

By the way, I had a chance to view the tiger, wild dog, elephant in the wild - was in the Mudumalai forest last weekend. I will write about it in a couple of days...