In 2002, I was on a Mumbai street to report on a lively procession. There was band, baaja, and people everywhere. In the middle of this crowd was a woman with a strange-looking device in her hand: a meter of sorts. Curious passers-by asked her what it was. I overheard as she politely explained that it was a meter to measure noise levels. I then moved on without giving her, the meter, or the concept of noise pollution any further thought.

Years later, I meet Sumaira Abdulali again. This time she’s not someone you can lose in a crowd. She is the unofficial ‘minister of noise’ — the loudest voice against noise pollution in Mumbai, and perhaps in the country. Few were aware of this environmental and health hazard back in the ’90s, when she first began her fight, but she battled on. “Most people thought I was mad. Others just thought it was completely unnecessary,” she recalls.

Today, noise pollution is a pivotal part of the urban narrative.

The story of Abdulali’s struggle can be traced to a wedding hall. Her late uncle Saad Ali happened to live next to a noisy wedding venue in Mumbai, and he began opposing the rising noise levels in the city sometime in the ’80s. Alongside like-minded citizens such as Dr Yeshwant Oke and Dr PN Rao, Ali filed a public interest litigation (PIL). This at a time when India had no concrete laws to fight noise, save for a mention under the Air (prevention and control of pollution) Act of 1981. The result: Ali found himself on the Bombay High Court-appointed committee, which went on to frame the Noise Pollution (Regulation and Control) Rules, 2000. Abdulali’s involvement was unplanned. She says, “I had young children at the time and wanted to do something beyond changing nappies. So, I offered to help him with typing.”

Little did she know then that even as her ageing uncle decided to take a backseat, she would be forging ahead. In 2003, Abdulali, along with Dr Oke and the Bombay Environmental Action Group, moved court over the misuse of speakers in silence zones. (In 2000, a ‘silence zone’ had already been defined as an area comprising not less than 100 metres around hospitals, educational institutions, and courts.) Yet another groundbreaking order was passed: In September 2003, the court directed the police to verify and certify that permission for loudspeakers would not be given in silence zones.

Abdulali says, “Just as we won, a journalist interviewed me and asked how I planned to ensure this rule would actually be enforced. Without really thinking it through, I told her to publish my mobile number, so that people could call me to complain.” Needless to say, her phone began ringing off the hook. “I did the best I could; I coached the callers about the law and had them call up their respective local police stations.” She then adds, “That year, Navratri was quieter than previous years — a small victory that is a testament to the power of the people.”

Sounds of sickness

Alongside the taste of success, several painful memories linger. Abdulali received numerous disturbing calls, including from “a man who sounded terribly distressed, who told me that his wife’s psychotic attacks were triggered by noise”. Abdulali visited their ground-floor apartment, just off a busy main road, which began to vibrate as a procession went past. She witnessed the woman banging her head against the wall and wailing inconsolably, even as her husband looked on helplessly.

The list of the aggrieved is by no means small. Back in 2004, Ashutosh Pandey was just a few months old, but an incident on New Year’s eve changed everything. As his father, Ranjan, explains, “He was asleep in his cot. Suddenly a firecracker went off, and Ashutosh woke up crying. He was using his little palms to cover his ears.”

It would be another seven months before the Pandeys got a prognosis. “We couldn’t understand why he wasn’t responding to sounds any more. He no longer turned in our direction when we called out his name, clapped to get his attention, or even as his mother sang to him.” After a battery of tests and endless rounds of visits to specialists, the verdict landed just as the baby turned one: His hearing was impaired. “We were shattered and didn’t know what to do,” says the father.

Eventually, with help from Aziza Tyabji Hydari, co-founder of Aured, an organisation that was among the first in India to provide auditory-verbal therapy to the hearing impaired, the child was prescribed a cochlear implant to restore hearing. As the family could not afford the cost — ₹6.5 lakh in 2004 — Aured helped them secure funds. Ashutosh finally began hearing again with the help of an implant by the age of three. “The operation was a risky one, and I don’t want anyone else to go through what we’ve suffered,” says Ranjan. So, as a rule, the Pandeys do not buy firecrackers for any celebrations. Ranjan also tries his best to educate and discourage neighbours and friends from using crackers.

Hydari explains that while it is next to impossible to pinpoint the reason for hearing loss, Aured has compiled several extensive case histories. It conducts awareness drives to lower the incidence of preventable hearing loss. “We have created an animation video that can be understood despite language barriers. Here we display the major causes that lead to hearing loss in children: apart from an animation showing firecrackers, there’s a video of a theatre, a busy road where drivers are shown blaring the horn, and so on,” says Hydari.

Dr MV Jagade, a well-known ENT and facial plastic surgeon in Mumbai cites vehicular traffic, repeated exposure to aircraft noise, and industrial noise as major causes of hearing loss in Mumbai. Headache, irritability, blood pressure, and diabetes are among the most common symptoms associated with noise pollution. A recent study led by Dr Jagade has shown that due to overuse of portable music players, many youngsters have lost their ability to hear high-frequency sounds — an affliction normally associated with ageing.

Big noise

I download the Sound Meter, an Android app available on Google Play, and begin my little experiments. A popular restaurant in Bandra, with an al fresco area, registers 88dB, which is comparable to sitting next to a blender; on the balcony of a first-floor apartment, the decibel level touches 95 as rain pounds the (unauthorised) metal roof of a garage on the ground floor — the noise level is that of a hand drill; the honking on Cadell Road during peak-hour traffic reaches 90 dB, which is equivalent to a train whistle.

“It is important to educate people on the harm they are causing themselves and others,” says Mitul Pradeep, whose pet family of 28 cats and four dogs is ‘terrified of noise’. Their bungalow in Vile Parle is on the route taken by countless processions on the way to the immersion of idols in the sea during the Ganesh Chaturthi festival. “About two years ago, I visited almost every Ganpati pandal in my area to inform the organisers about the ill-effects of noise,” she says. Though nothing changed for the better, Pradeep is not ready to give up: “I will keep repeating myself until I am heard.”

Meanwhile, by 2007, Abdulali’s movement against noise pollution had gathered quite a following. Wecom Trust, co-founded by activist Ashok Ravat, started keeping record of the noise levels in and around the city’s Shivaji Park in 2007. “We noticed that nearly 265 days of the year, the park was used for non-sporting activity — functions mostly involving the use of loudspeakers,” says Ravat, who is today known as ‘the messiah of Shivaji Park’. The park is surrounded by hospitals, colleges, and 11 different schools use it for sports, yet the permissible noise levels were being flouted. Wecom filed a PIL. The result: In 2010, the largest park in the island-city was declared a silence zone.

Hear us out

While a PIL was required to enforce rules at Shivaji Park, several other parts of the city were deemed silence zones if they fit the definition. However, in July this year, an amendment in the Central law de-recognised such deemed silence zones across the country by mandating that any area can be termed a ‘silence zone’ only if the respective State government explicitly declared it to be so. This essentially meant that until an area is notified, a loudspeaker can blare right next to a hospital, without a law to protect the well-being of distressed citizens.

The past few months have seen several twists in the tale: a Bombay High Court bench led by Justice AS Oka termed the amendment ‘unconstitutional’. The State government then accused Justice Oka of harbouring ‘serious bias’ against the State machinery, and sought to transfer all noise-related cases to another bench. Chief Justice Manjula Chellur transferred the cases to another bench, but the legal community rallied behind Justice Oka and he was brought back. This time the two-judge bench was expanded to three, again led by Justice Oka. On September 1, the amendment was stayed and deemed silence zones once again became no-loudspeaker spaces. But Abdulali’s victory proved short-lived. The government moved the Supreme Court, which stayed the HC order on September 5.

Abdulali worries that in one stroke the anti-noise pollution movement may have been set back by 17 years. But she is far from defeated. She urges citizens to continue recording noise levels and alerting the authorities whenever they exceed permissible levels. She diligently continues to visit various sites and record their sound levels. “All I want is the right for citizens to live in peace and quiet,” she says.

Kiran Mehta is a journalist based in Mumbai

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