💬 Quiet hotel room in Pune and I missed the cooker whistles at 7 pm

I was in Pune for work for 3 weeks last year. Nice hotel, 9th floor, perfectly silent. First evening around 7 I sat on the bed and something felt off. I checked my phone. Checked the AC, the window, the door. Nothing was wrong. It was just too quiet in there. It took me until day 4 to work out what was missing from the room. At home the whole building starts cooking at the same time, somewhere around 7 in the evening. You hear cookers whistling from 6 or 7 flats, all slightly out of sync with each other. A pan clanging somewhere, a kid being called for dinner, a TV serial turned up too loud. I never listened to any of it before. It was just the evening, like the wallpaper. On day 4 I called my wife and asked her to hold the phone near the kitchen. She thought I'd lost it. But she did it, and I sat on that hotel bed listening. 3 whistles, then a pause, then the neighbour's cooker started up. I felt 40 percent better straight away. She asked if I was okay. I said yes, just homesick for a pressure cooker. Now I keep a 2 minute video of our kitchen on my phone for trips. A colleague heard it through the wall once and asked who was cooking in my room. I told him it was the neighbour. He believed me, which says something about hotel walls. I'm back home now and the whistles are annoying again. Good to have them back.

Not knowing what was missing for 4 days and then realising it was the cooker whistles, that is beautiful. I stayed in a hotel in Bengaluru for a week and could not sleep until I played a video of a busy street at low volume. Silence feels loud when you grow up in a building full of people. Did you ever find a way to fix it in Pune?

Ours is the watchman's radio at 7, old film songs at full volume while he sweeps the lobby. I spent a year in a hostel where the nights were silent and I slept badly the whole time. The clip of your kitchen is a smart fix. I'd keep one of our building too. Your wife holding the phone near the stove for you is the best part of the story.