There are so many silences: deafening ones, miserable ones, and the ones you cry in.Silences that make it hard for us to break them and harder for us to stay mum.
There are times when silence has the loudest voice.
We try to drown out this very loud voice doing all sorts of things. Some of us use people as a distraction, doing all sorts of things that we usually do just to avoid the silence within our own selves.
And all of us use someone or something to fill these silences. Music does it for most of us. A silence in the car, lets blast some music. A silence at home, lets switch on the television and fill it with noise we don't really want in the first place.
Most of us cannot bear silences. We can't be silent either. If we manage to shut up, keep our mouth closed, our mind is a constant noise-filled place.
The constant What-ifs, Buts, Whats, Whys and Hows and our desperate attempts to find these answers (right now) never let us experience any peace.
In fact I know so many people who seem to think that when they are feeling peaceful and still, its nothing but the silence that comes before a major storm.
Why do we expect a storm at every turn?
Where is the faith, the belief that things will be alright; and not every silence is a warning to an oncoming storm.
My recent travel to Pondicherry opened my eyes to the silence within me. It brought into focus my desperate attempts to fill it up with unnecessary noise.
Let me just say for the record here, this trip was particularly enlightening; personally, socially, spiritually that it will take a lot of time for me to process it all through.
I will start with the most basic of all things, The people. Living in the Rape Capital all my life, the most Important lesson about self preservation I learnt very early in life was Not to trust people, especially those who smile at you and try to make random conversation for no reason.
So, whenever someone I don't know from Adam looks at me in a normal, casual, non-leering way and smiles, I don't know how to react.
The thing with genuine smiles is, its hard not to smile back.
And you don't get those in my city much. Most of the people don't even know what their real smiling face looks like. Everyone is so consumed by the need to be someone the world wants them to be; they don't remember what its like to just be in your own skin, your own color, your own self.
The people in Pondicherry are different. If its the effect of the Aurobindo ashram or something else, I don't know. But there's a positive vibe from people here. As a delhite, its a soul deep confession of sorts, saying I re-learnt the basics of trust and something akin to friendship but not quite.
I had forgotten the beauty of bonding with an unknown person for that short time you are both together, and having a memory to last forever. That part of naivete got lost as childhood receded. The people in Pondicherry, Indians and tourists alike are just different. It confirms that the people in a city decide the vibe of the city, all the time, everyday. In Delhi, there's mistrust, anger, dissatisfaction, restlessness and sadness. All in all, a bucket-load of negativity. In contrast, Pondicherry is serene, spiritual, happy. Its calm and collected, secure, trusting.
Everyday it made me more open to goodness. In people and outside them.
Everyday the sun shining at my face through the window made me smile and not groan.
Every morning I excitedly looked forward to the day. Not just because it was a vacation. But because I really knew somewhere deep in my soul, its going to affect me in a big way.
Every evening on the beach, I sat for hours nonstop and confronted the silence. No phone to hide behind, no iPod to plug in. No book to dive in.
Just me and the silence of the sea. All this talking, music, reading (things I love I might add) suddenly are clear to me for what they really are: Distractions. All these are a way to not hear that voice coming from somewhere deep inside me. Only when there's silence and a certain kind of stillness within a person, you cant and probably wont hear it. Maybe that's why we try so hard to fill up the silences. We are afraid of what we might hear. I know I was. But everyone, sooner or later has to face the music (in silence). And if you have the strength to sit through that deafening silence, The music that follows will heal your oldest wounds that have been festering for God-knows-how-long. And you will find that piece of you that you've been missing and didn't know it.
That's when I found that piece of me I have been looking for. The calm, collected, wise piece of me. The serene and silent piece of me. The spiritual piece of me.
{To be continued....}
