NOISICIANS INC
Khaliqur Rahman
My twelve year old has recently got interested in car-driving. Uncle Tom is giving him lessons in the art. During the course of his lessons Uncle Tom must have told TYO quite a few things and TYO has told me quite a few things.
For instance, according to him, or more precisely, according to them, car-driving was introduced in India by obviously the white-Sahibs about two hundred years ago. Most Indians were then, as they still are, driving the bullock-carts. Even so, quite a few took to car-driving, because it soon came to be recognized as the key to social success. It was, and still is, the sign of development, social prestige and upward mobility.
But there was some kind of trouble in Indian-driving. It was distinctly different from Sahib-driving. TYO says that Expert Noisicians soon found out that when an Indian drove, the engine made a peculiar Indian noise and any expert Noisician could even tell a Punjabi driver from a Madrasi driver and a Gujarati driver from a Bengali driver on the basis of the different engine noises they made when driving.
All the Noisicians, then, gathered and expressed serious concern over these different kinds of regional noises in Indian-driving.
They devised a way out and an institute was set up. The objective was to minimize the terrible regional noises, though a kind of supra-regional general Indian noise was to be allowed to stay.
This led to all kinds of truck-drivers, bus-drivers and -- God save them -- car-drivers, from all parts of India, making a bee-line to this institute which gave them Diploma in Driving.
But over a period of time it came to be felt that the Noisicians were making more noise than the drivers.
Therefore, the cleverer ones branched off and laid their faith more in automobile engineering than in driving.
These cleverer ones were extremely lucky to get a bandwagon from the States.
It was Vansky who sent them this on a Big Chassis which he called the Universal Chassis.
According to him bodies of any size and shape, even creed, colour and country could be fitted on it. Surely, this great automobile engineer was widely acclaimed all over for his Vanskian Revolution.
Since then, those who once wished to become drivers have been busy supplying indigenous parts to the Great Chassis. Their hope is to become automobile engineers, if not drivers.
Uncle Tom predicts and TYO tells me as usual: They may end up becoming neither! God forbid that, because so many of them are required either in the Middle East or in the Far East.
And finally, TYO says that since he is basically interested in driving, he will stick to Uncle Tom.
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