I live next to a park and gazetted 40 acre bush land. I chose the location carefully because I like a quiet neighbourhood and wanted the assurance that there wouldn’t be any future development in the area.
All has been well until my next door nieghbour bought a new dog few days ago. The dog has been barking constantly all through the night and day. ( She is keeping the dog unleashed in the back yard and the past few days had been very cold and probably why the dog is barking so much)

I am so angry..

Yet I remember spending my childhood in Chengannur house. The first sound you hear at crack of dawn is the thim sound of the bucket hitting the water in the well. Then you wait a little while and can hear a slightly heavier thim sound when Ammachi keeps the water filled kalam (pot) on the kitchen counter.
The sign for me to get up is when I hear her opening the door to the pathayam (granary). The door is kee koo  ( no real translation, ?crooked) and you can hear Ammachi struggling to move the wooden latch at the same time cursing my father for he was supposed to have fixed that door long ago.By then I know Ammachi would have made coffee and it is  now is getting the food ready for the hens and cows. Ammachi would only drink her coffee after she fed the animals. I get up when I hear her closing the bottom half of the kitchen door. It goes tup followed by a bigger tup when both half of the bottom door meets! My timing is perfect. Coffee is ready and I didn’t have to help Ammachi with feeding the stinking chickens and drooling cows.
I liked to sqaut and sit on the bench while I sip the hot coffee and would sit like a lady when I hear the thim sound of the bucket hitting the water in the well. Ammachi is washing her feet and would come inside to cook breakfast.

Once she enters the kitchen, there were too much of various noises..pots and pans being moved, coconut being husked, cracked, scrapped,giving directions to the farm workers etc etc.. In between someone ( often me) would forget to close the bottom half of the kitchen door and the chickens would come a visiting and you can hear Ammachi cursing and chickens clucking simultaneously along with pots and pans being dropped when the panicked chickens try to find their way out of the kitchen!

This goes on till evening tea. Once the workers leave around 4.30. it gets quieter as the day light goes. By 6.30, the chicken coop is closed, Ammachi and I had our shower and there is absolutely no sound except our own breathing. It was very eerie.
By 8, we would have had our dinner, washed the dishes, closed all the doors and windows and head to the bedroom. Ammachi and I would wait patiently for upadeshi appachan ( preacher) to start his sermon, so we could curse him and say.”da thudangi avantey vattu, evaney ennano vellorum ooolan parayil kondu povunney”
i think the dogs knew when to bark. As soon as Upadeshi Appachan start to preach using the megaphone, the dogs in the neighbourhood begin to howl. Appachan speaks even more louder and the dogs increase the tempo to match and Ammachi would mutter “patti kkenkilum vivaram undu” ( at least the dogs are smarter) and I would ask Ammachi which patti (dog) is she talking about. We both would laugh.
Upadeshi Appachan preached and the dogs barked till midnight. Not once it bothered me. Both noises were part of my childhood.
Yet I am annoyed when a single dog barks now that I am older and supposedly wiser.
What changed?