By Abak Hussain

In a city known to be a wall of ambient sound, the idea of experiencing true quiet can be a beautiful fantasy. They say we want the things we don’t have, and so when I lapse into daydreams, at home or at work, it is often about quiet. Don’t get me wrong, a little bit of noise is good for the soul: the sound of your loved ones chatting over breakfast on a slow morning, the laughter of happy children, the kettle brewing signalling that coffee is on its way. Certain urban noises ground us, letting us know where we are, that life is going on as usual. When things go too quiet, it can feel ominous. Where is everyone? Have they fled to a safer place while I am the only one left behind?

The actual level of noise we end up living with, though, is downright disastrous for our health. Just like the pervasive air pollution from which there seems to be no escape, the noise levels of our monstrous megacity attack our senses day and night until we forget what it means to have a calm nervous system. The biggest culprits are construction noises and traffic noises, incidentally, also the perpetrators of air pollution. Construction in Dhaka is chaotic and unregulated, it takes place day and night, and it is utterly devoid of any sort of civic consideration. Middle of the day? Early in the morning? Middle of the night? It doesn’t matter, these entitled folks run on their own schedule, and disregard any headaches or illnesses they cause. It has been documented that sudden loud noises can even cause death in infants or heart patients. None of these matter to construction companies, and the law is either unable to or does not care to do anything about them.

The bane of my existence for quite some time has been a large building coming up behind where I live. This project feels like it has gone on forever. In fact, I honestly struggle to remember a time when this abomination wasn’t under construction. Now it looks like finishing touches are underway, but even that is dragging on with no clear finish line in sight. They say the American empire engages in Forever Wars. In Dhaka we do Forever Constructions. Tear something down, build ugly highrises, tear something else down, build uglier highrises. Repeat cycle till the end of time. Choke the city to death. Residents look at the city and say: it can’t possibly get worse than it already is. Those with power and deep pockets say: hold my beer. The grim lesson of life has been that the noise scenario in Dhaka can always get worse.

So why not let me dream? Maybe a dream of Switzerland, where there are laws about flushing the toilet too loud past a certain hour. In most countries where the comfort and rights of citizens are respected, decibel levels are actually policed. There is such a thing as a noise complaint, which can quickly shut down any egregiously loud activity. Bangladesh actually tried that for a short while. There was a hotline you could call, but the efficacy of that quickly fizzled out. Because if the party people are “party” people, who wants to get embroiled in that mess? So I dream, and sometimes that dream lapses into extremes.

Here’s an extreme question. What are quietest places on God’s earth? If we’re talking about nature, then there is plenty to choose from. From the icy expanse of Greenland, to the harsh deserts of Africa, to the Canadian wilderness far from any human settlement … these places can make a person forget that city life even exists. I remember a trip I took some years ago to Masai Mara in Kenya. Sleeping in a tent in the reserve, in the middle of the night I experienced a level of quiet I had never felt before. The eerie feeling was compounded by a darkness that was darker than dark, due to a total absence of electrical lighting, streetlights, traffic, or devices. It was an unreal and ethereal sensation, and eventually I had to move around and rustle my blanket to make sure that I was grounded, and not some entity floating in nothingness. So a bit of sound tells us that we are still here, stuck to earth, and that things make sense.

Photo Source: Aliaksei Lepik

And what about the world’s quietest room? This one is man-made, and takes the natural quiet of permafrost wilderness or desert landscapes and moves things (decibels) down a notch. Orfield Laboratories in Minneapolis has the anechoic chamber, and this is the place Guinness has given the title of quietest room on the planet. Human ears can start hearing things around zero decibels. The Orfield lab gets as quiet at negative 24.9. When things are that quiet, the human brain starts to fall apart. People can’t walk normally because they lose their balance. Some report hearing their own organs, the flow of their own blood. Apparently, nobody lasts for more than 45 minutes in this space.

So I do not want complete quiet. I am OK with the gentle whirr of my ceiling fan, the pleasant sounds of the birds chirping, a lone bicycle going past me on a lazy day, a gentle drizzle in the middle of summer, or the low hum inside a coffee shop where all the baristas know my name. These little sensory inputs keep me planted firmly on terra firma, and help structure my day. The level of noise that we have normalized though, is far beyond any rhyme or reason. It obliterates our focus, highjacks our peace of mind, and leaves us in a constant state of heightened vigilance. Every doctor you ever visit will tell you that stress is bad for you, but due to the relentless assault of noise in our city, avoiding stress is just about impossible. If only the Orfield labs could install a piece of tech that could suck up all these decibels. If only a bit of quietness could be spread around through a reverse-loudspeaker-type device. If only …

Abak Hussain is Contributing Editor at MW Bangladesh.