The Inevitable Silence

"Listening to the silence" or "Silence speaks" may be quite philosophical to many but there lies a bit of prosaic rationale in the phrases. When in a useless banter with a friend, I gave a cheeky reply of "your silence has told me everything", I got back giggles across a jocular inquiry "Have you started listening to the silence?" There in my jest to have the last laugh of the banter, or to come up with a cheekier reply, I was transported back to a night before, when I was standing in my balcony, witnessing an ornamentation of the surrounding by dense white fog everywhere.

It was past midnight and I came there for no other reason than to prolong my being with myself, a soothing possession I earn after a day long artificiality and haphazardness in office; before I battle on bed with the undulating thoughts of insomnia. It was a silence unforeseen in this city, it was a silence of vacuum, it was a silence even village night would envy. My face loved upon being kissed by a millions of tiny chilly fog particles while my eyes stranded trying to descry the structures once existed across the view. All I could see were a few globules of oranges diffusing in shells after shells marking the presence of defeated streetlights. When I realized that my one sensory organ had failed me in front of mighty game of nature, I deployed my ears to decipher the ongoings beyond the veils of winter. I focused and focused hard.The silence had facilitated a beautiful presence of something I never heard. I heard fog particles falling on the tree leaves producing a rhythmic noise enough to be heard by a sincerely focused ear and a meditated mind.

Silence might not speak itself but has the power of making inconspicuous perceivable

I jumped back to our banter with this sharp and cheekier reply: "Ever heard of the sound of fog falling on tree leaves in the midnight? Silence might not speak itself but has the power of making inconspicuous perceivable." Though I had what I wanted of it - having the last laugh - but I realized very soon that what I just said would soon come back to haunt me though in a different context.

One night after returning from that God damn office, I heard the news of my maternal grandfather's death (when as a kid I had asked him how to say Nana ji in English, he had answered me "maternal grandfather"). A great personality, farsighted and down to earth, embraced silence for forever. The silence now makes me palpate the time turned inconspicuous memories of him from my childhood to the day I last met him. Irked by my inability to meet him for years owing to some ridiculously busy phases I can again perceive the rather ignored fog of reality falling down on our lives.

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