A visit to India

is not likely for me. I'd like to go and visit friends there but the reality is that I won't go. I took one look at the little video clip of the uncontrolled traffic my nephew could see from his hotel window and I know that, realistically, I would never be able to leave the hotel. You have to be able to do more than a four minute mile to cross the road safely.  He didn't like the traffic.
Brother Cat is also in India at the moment...a different part. He's up in the north but says the traffic isn't much better.  Oh yes, the history and the culture are interesting...but the traffic, the noise. Brother Cat lives in a sprawling Downunder capital city where there is plenty of traffic and noise but it is even getting to him.
If I listen I can hear the traffic on one of the main roads here. Most of the time it is a noise which fades into the background but, in the early morning quiet, it comes to the fore again. I try not to hear it. I don't like traffic. School holidays are lovely things. The amount of traffic on the roads decreases dramatically - and yes, I do mean dramatically. I doubt it makes that sort of difference in India.
Many years ago the Senior Cat went to China. When he came home one of his impressions was that "the place never stopped moving" and "it was never absolutely quiet". 
Neither of us listen to radio. The Senior Cat has ceased to watch television and I watch almost none at all. 
We talk at the meal table - some of the topics of conversation would probably surprise other people...theology and cardiac surgery were mentioned yesterday. We can also be silent.
But, this morning, I can hear the resident possum talking to itself in the avocado tree and I can hear the blackbird walking across our neighbours' roof. I can hear the sparrows playing in the bird bath and the sprinkler swishing across the lawn across the road. 
You can hear a lot when it is quiet.