Sharing Silence

I feel music is what arrives between silences; it is indeed the pauses that make our compositions what they are. So too with words and all that is said without it. Silence can sit light on one's shoulders, bear heavy in their hearts and often be missed for everything that distracts. Almost like a black dot on a white canvas, we get absorbed by the noise and forget the blank background.

However, on certain days and nights, silence bestows its infinite grace upon me and I have the luxury to mull about the vagaries of life. Or just observe the buzzing, hustling, hooting, screeching world around me, sitting safe in my own cocoon of noiseless-ness. It is a blessing on some days. On other days, it gives me a privilege to embark on a nostalgic trip. On many other days, it is a slow vehicle that carries me from one moment to the next, efficiently curing an anxiety about the future.

Suddenly, finding oneself in the middle of nowhere, literally or figuratively, in life, could turn out to be a blessing. One can be themselves, with only themselves for company and the silence is golden and nourishing.

Over the past month, when I had plenty of chance to travel to villages and to towns, to mofussils and to cities, I found my moments of silence. Sitting with a drained mobile phone but an absolutely charged mind, I found silence in the twinkling ripples of the night's lights on a pond's surface. Silence, arrived unannounced and compassionately offered company, on a long bus journey where I was the sole passenger. (It might have been a metaphor for my life, but I would like to believe that my life's landscape is less dustier than Indian roads.) On a chilly night, silence shrouded me in disbelief and enormity, as I glanced upwards and reacquainted myself with the stars of a rural sky. On yet another night, while traveling alone, my late night train pushed to an unearthly hour past midnight, I sat in an unknown railway station twiddling thumbs and letting my thoughts take over the barren tracks. Between the jerks of a bumpy bike ride, in the massive courtyard of an ancient temple, on a soft lawn watching a chirpy wagtail, after multiple cups of tea on a rainy morning… silence arrived. Loud enough to shut everything else, silence arrived.

During one of the longer periods of silence, I had the opportunity to think of all the people I may have shared my silence with. Most of them, old friends kind enough to bear with the wordlessness and graceful enough to grow with me during such periods. Others, newer friends, random acquaintances, who in an enormous stroke of luck and mercy did not find the need to disturb the silence that pervaded our conversations.

I sat by a temple pond, with hours to kill before the night bus, and my mind swiftly took over. It jumped from people to places to things to whatnot. But when the mind tired, the silence was bliss, it was wholesome and healing.

First, my old friends. After school, wandering the same streets that witnessed our childhood, treading the same beaten path and sharing stories from a teenage life that revolved around who's who and who's what; it would all wind down to gulping some cool rasna and letting our thoughts trail into silence. A comfortable silence that knew not the threat of competition or the apprehensions of distances burying our relationships-- only school friends withstand that test of silence.

With friends from college, who have completed many circles around Connaught Place with me, and then sunk into an understanding reverie at a nearby tea stall or coffee house. No, there was no need to catch up any more. No need to pick up on what movies, stars, sportspersons or musicians had caught our fancy. When the early morning and late night walks in the University campus would mean just keeping beat to the other's steps, it was silence that cemented many of my friendships.

And then with other friends, after a hearty meal and a box of old Kishore Kumar or Rafi songs slowly becoming a part of the white noise, silence would engulf us in an odd self-awareness. It was not awkward, it never was.

Then it occurred to me that silences between persons real time (not going AWOL on FB, Twitter or Whatsapp) required a reasonable amount of trust, respect towards the other's space and time, and a strength that stemmed from the comfort of knowing the other person well enough. It is not so easy with a stranger, new acquaintance, or a relatively new friend. With a stranger, the trust is missing. With the new acquaintance, the comfort is lacking. With a relatively new friend, the novelty of the friendship and the excitement to know everything about one another unfortunately removes the respect for their own time and space.

Sometimes one has to consciously strive for silence. At other times, silence presents itself adorned in self-important grandeur. Host it anyway. Silence is a guest one must strive to keep with themselves forever.
Here, silence came to me decked in the temple's festivities. I had a bright, old, massive temple yard to myself, for hours.

My moments of silence have always led me to some clarity. Sometimes significant enough to alter life, sometimes small enough to keep me happy and occupied at least for that moment. If achieving that level of happiness and quietitude is also meditation, I am richer for it. Creating that little time and space where everything else ceases to exist- with or without company- is a must. We open ourselves to details that had always existed but we had never noticed. We embark on new levels of travelling within. We became stronger, more meaningful and definitely more effective with our words, our music.

There is immense gratitude towards all those who have shared their silences with me for you found me worthy of it. There is immense gratitude for all those who bore my silences without any complaints, I always thought you were worthy of it. All around us, the Universe and Nature, keep nudging us towards that sweet spot time and again. These are too sacred hints to be ignored. In them, find your oldest friends and eternal company. Non-judgmental, ever-tolerant and sure-to-forgive, Time and Space do us all a favour. So why not revel in it? And it's okay, the truths revealed to you in your silence are always your own. Find your silence, your strength. Share it.

Some odd truths of my life, written at some point of actualisation and fortunately, within reach.