On the first Sunday of the Coronavirus-induced lockdown—just a few hours before we created a racket by banging pots and pans in a show of solidarity for our frontline workers—the silence in the air had been discomforting. Mumbai, for the first time, didn’t “sound” like itself anymore. The din created by the revving of bike and car engines, the blaring horn of speeding BEST buses, and even the on-loop railway announcement, had been replaced by something more “real”. Suddenly, one could hear the “jugalbandi” of chirping sparrows and noisy crows. And on most afternoons, it was deafening silence. These were the new sounds we were growing accustomed to over the next few months, until the city slowly started opening up. If there’s any regret now, it is that we didn’t record what we had 
been hearing.

The sound map is currently accessible on Google Earth, and offers a range of clippings, from PSAs to birdsongs, traffic, and the music created by rustling of trees and wind