Have you ever caught yourself being transported to another time and place upon just hearing a nondescript sound?

Earlier this week, I heard this two-stroke motor from some nearby lot. It was late afternoon on a Wednesday (at The Ken, that’s usually WFH for most). The air was still, the weather was hot and humid.

Like in a movie, I was instantly transported back in time to the mid-1980s and the small village in Kerala sandwiched between the backwaters and the Arabian sea that was my annual summer vacation. My mom’s ancestral home was where we spent two months every summer, without fail.

The days were still, hot, and humid. Close to every waking hour was spent exploring, chasing, playing, and fishing. Nothing in the landscape changed or even stirred during the afternoons. The silence was leaden too.

Except, a few times every day, you’d hear the two-stroke motor. It was the sound of the afternoon ferry, chugging along through the Kayamkulam backwaters, at such a glacial speed that we could outrun them as kids (and we did, till land gave way to another backwater canal). We’d wave to it, and sometimes, the tourists aboard (but rarely the locals) would wave back.

(Why do kids wave at ferries and trains with such happiness? And when do we become the grumpy adults on the ferries and trains who wonder what’s wrong with these kids?)

The sound of the two-stroke outboard engine motor would reach our ears 10–15 minutes before the boat itself appeared into view. Sound carries over much greater distances over water and unconstructed land than we can imagine.

And it would last just as long after the ferry had disappeared from our view too.

The predictability and regularity of the ferry, along with its sound and the hot stillness of the late backwater afternoons, is almost like a movie I can play back in my head on demand. I sometimes use it to drift to sleep at nights.

All that from the sound of a two-stroke motor.

Photo credit: Quora

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