Song of the Silence

“To taste the emptiness, listen to the silence, like the hiss of a blank tape playing. It’s a bit awesome.” Said Ted as he rode to Tripoli though the Libyan deserts.

Have you ever listened silence? Has anyone ever? The questions bugged me as I rode on a public bus. I withdrew to think keeping Ted’s ‘Jupiter’s Travel’ aside. Despite of the loud cranking of the bus engine and the bedlam of chitchats of fellow commuters I felt myself passing into a ‘silence’. A Silence that can only be perceived by a loner. And I am a loner; the one who keeps him separates.

Silence! The classroom became silent after the teacher growled. But is it really? I can hear the pages of the book turn, pencils scratching on the paper, finger snapping the tip of a chalk and the squeaking of the fans. I can hear the leaves of the Shimul tree rattle, the squirrels play and the birds tweet. At times I can hear our principal shouting out from his office. So why did the teacher make us silent? Why can’t his growl hush-up everything?

At times we were taken to the Temple in our Campus. Everybody said it was ‘Stark Silent’. Yet can’t you hear the rubber resin dripping into the hemispherical pots in the nearby rubber plantation or the carpenter’s saw or might be the humming of the chants.

In all these silences I heard a song, a tune; refreshing and rejuvenating. The song of the silence can only be perceived with a sensitive heart than a sensitive ear.