Suprabatham with Beer

This post is about an incident that occurred recently. I stay with folks I work with, and one Saturday evening, we decided to wind down with a few beers. Nothing fancy mind you, just 4 people and beers chatting into the night. As a teetotaler, I am able to recall the event more vividly than the others.

Let's begin with full disclosure. We were chatting away early into the morning, and we were indeed playing the music system rather loud. In my defense, I repeatedly remonstrated that the volume of the music be turned down lest we have the neighbours knocking on our door, bleary-eyed and angry.

However, it wasn't the neighbours who came knocking at 5.30 in the morning. It was the cops.

As soon as we opened the door, they barged right in, and must have been quite disappointed over finding nothing interesting happening inside, except 4 people sitting around, 3 of them drinking beer - which we bought legally before the watershed mark of 11 p.m, and brought home to drink responsibly.

"Do you know you're creating a public nuisance with the music?"

"Well... er.. ok, sir. We'll turn it off."

As is typical with cops, they harassed us a bit, gave us some fatherly advice and left after eliciting a promise that we will not play music loudly - ever. Those of you who can read between lines would know what else must have transpired in between that caused their change of stance from aggressive to fatherly.

Anyway, once we were inside, I was contemplating about other sounds that one could hear in our block at 5.30 in the morning; sounds that were certainly louder than the music from our place:

• Bells being rung at the nearby temples.
• Speakers from one of the temples blaring out M.S.Subbalakshmi's nasal rendition of 'Suprabatham'.
• Muezzins from two mosques, slightly out of phase with each other, calling out the faithful for morning prayers with their unforgivably bad rendition of the 'adhan'; their voices often cracking at various points, making it even more punishing on the listener.

It has always amazed me how some of the most ridiculously bad renditions of religious music is hailed as beautiful by the faithful. I'm sure M.S.Subbalakshmi had a captivating voice in her heyday, (at which point she was quite a babe too, I must add) but the Suprabatham was clearly rendered by an old woman whose voice was well past its prime. Yet, I reckon that the religious are either oblivious to this because of their religiosity or are afraid of divine retribution if they admit as much.

As for the muezzins, I have wondered if their voices cracking hilariously mid-rendition distracts any of the faithful following them in prayer.

In any case, what I really wonder is, would we have been in as much trouble if we were knocking back beers with 'Suprabatham' instead of Pearl Jam blaring from our music systems.