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The language of silence
The most oppressive is the silence of the mute; people who have been dumbed down with fear and force, voices that have been stilled with threats.
- Special to Gulf News
- Published: 23:37 May 10, 2008
Silence they say is absolute, complete so much so that you cannot add or subtract anything from it. It is plainly silence. However, I think silence is more eloquent than we think and it says so many things without saying anything and is so articulate without a sound.
There are different kinds of silences. Like the silence before the eruption of noise. The kind we had five minutes before class ended. I remember myself as a child in grade four, sitting in the second row, bags neatly packed, staring at the blank blackboard, trying hard not to shuffle, ears straining to hear the last gong of the day. As soon as she had finished the last lesson of the day, our class teacher Mrs Nancy Lewis would yell out her order - "Pin drop silence". I never really understood what it meant then, but her order was enough to still us all to a complete anticipatory silence. As soon as the bell would ring, the entire class would erupt into a huge roar, every one of us trying to rush out of the door at the same time, to get the best place in the bus for the ride back home. That was the silence before the storm.
Alert
Then there is the silence of the morning. When the kids have left for school and you are still in an intermediary state of waking up. The ears are alert, but the eyes, well they are half closed as I contemplate the day yawning before me. I can feel the energy beginning to work from my feet, spiralling to a rise in a slow sort of crescendo through my ankles, knees, tummy, face and into my mind, bit by bit as I sip my morning cup of tea, now glancing at the newspaper, now listening for the sound of some chirping bird outside, the muted whirring of cars below ... that's a talking silence, which slowly turns the volume on for the day.
Then we have the silence of meditation. That is tough. Try it. You compel yourself to be silent, but your mind is screaming out a thousand things about inane people, ideas and memories. You deep breathe and try your best to quell those noises in your mind and concentrate on the steady thread of your breath. Very gradually as though someone was drawing the curtains of a room, your mind begins to still and silence itself as chamber after chamber of your mind feels the darkness in the closed curtained space until you are just left with that one bright light within - a beautiful, calming silence.
When people lapse into a coma, their mind falls silent. Like a lost signal on a radar the screen of the mind goes into a confounding blip. It's as though the undulating train of thoughts has been stilled by force. The blinks and smiles remain, but the silence is that of being in a vacuum - a deafening, maddening silence.
The most oppressive is the silence of the mute; people who have been dumbed down with fear and force, voices that have been stilled with threats. If you are sensitive, you can tune in to that sharp frequency where you can actually hear the indignant chatter of protest.
The unsaid hangs suspended in the air, waiting for an opportune time to be completed. It's the silence of forbearance and fortitude that says far beyond words.
There are a thousand and one other kinds of silences that I can think of such as the silence of being awestruck, the silence of being in communion with nature, the silence of anger, the silence of triumph, of defeat, of mind, body and soul, the silence of beginning, of end ... what kind of language does your silence speak?
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