A deafening noise jolted Bangaluru recently. The dwellers of the Silicon City let their imaginations run riot on the cause of the scary noise. Some thought it came from an alien spacecraft. There were others who thought it came from under the earth or from an asteroid that crashed into our planet.
Even before I read in the paper that a fighter aircraft of the Indian Air Force was the source of the noise that shook the capital city of Karnataka, I knew what actually was behind it since my brother and I had a more or less similar experience 43 years ago.
I was visiting Mettur where my brother was working in a factory. When we were having a blissful siesta on a bench under a tree in the park at the foot of the mighty Mettur dam, after an hour-long tour of the site, a thunderous noise woke us up violently. Though words fail me to describe it right, it was like the sky being torn off into two halves pole to pole. We just jumped to the conclusion that the dam brimming with water to its full capacity had burst and we would be carried away at lightning speed by the rushing, roaring monstrous, angry waters all the way to our home town of Srirangam.
We ran for our life towards the exit gates where two security personnel stopped us and wanted to know what we were fleeing from. "Haven’t you heard the big noise? Something terrible has happened to the dam. I think it buckled under the pressure of the water it is holding back. The wall of water will bounce up on us soon like million tigers," my brother said.
The security men burst into laughter and told us that the noise came not from the dam bursting but from a fighter plane that tore through the tranquil midday sky. These planes were coming from the Air Force Station at Sulur.
"When they flew above Mettur first time, we too thought that something happened to our dam and scurried here and there like scared hares. We calmed down only after confirmation came from our higher-ups," a uniformed man said.
I wish my brother who passed away two years ago was with me now to have a hearty laugh by recalling how we reacted clownishly that forenoon.
