Loud Silence

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Loud Silence

‘Is any sound more melodious than silence?’ So harmonious, with its own unique raaga, plunging deep in to soul and spreading calmness across heart and mind; a melody complete in itself – Vinod closed his eyes to see what’s inside him.  

‘Is there anything more dreadful than silence?’ Akhila was just unable to concentrate on road in this quietness. She is looking for reasons, words, to answer all the thoughts stirred up a while ago and this silence is just - so much scary.

‘On a journey with friends on a much needed vacation, why is everyone so silent? This idiot Vinod thinks he is extremely good with logic and words. Why can’t he just shut his mouth sometimes? Not everyone can understand him and why can’t he realize it?’ Suresh started getting impatient, ‘all his self-acclaimed clever words ended up in this silence – this is so worthlessly empty!!”

Suresh moved impatiently in his seat, unable to bear the silence anymore – reached for the remote and switched audio to FM. Random discussions, songs, noises started coming out, each one of them not lasting even for few seconds and started to disrupt the wavelengths of silence. Occasionally few sounds lasted a bit longer than few seconds and Suresh tried listening to them keenly, but heard nothing interesting and the scrolling continued. He finally gave up his quest for some old Hindi songs. “Ye kahan aa gaye hum ..” Kishore ji and Lata ji replaced Eagles extremely melodiously.

“I like this song” Gowri got up quiet swiftly, adjusted herself in the seat, and told “Suresh increase the volume a bit please.” Suresh felt good, as he felt at least someone is in cheerful mood today and increased the volume. ‘Some sounds are just never too loud’ Gowri felt – she loved old Bollywood songs.

The songs almost came to end, Gowri asked, “How far have we come?” Akhila responded in a lost tone, “we just completed half journey I guess, and it’s already 8 am” Gowri picked up the lostness, “That’s ok, don’t strain too much” tried to reassure Akhila, “at least we are enjoying the journey”

Suresh and Akhila looked at each other blankly. Both did not know whether to laugh or cry – they did not have anything to say back.  Suresh felt to slap Vinod badly. Gowri got curious and looked at Vinod who was looking out of window totally lost in his world. “Vinod is everything fine?”  Gowri put her hand on Vinod and pushed slightly. Vinod turned around as though rattled from his silence, “Yeah, why?” Gowri questioned back, “Why is everyone so silent?”

Vinod got back in to the car with some guilt of being selfish. He did not want to say anything to Gowri on his nirvana thoughts and disturb people more, but diverted the topic “Yeah, even I noticed that too, why is everyone silent? Suresh is everything fine?” This time Suresh wanted to kill Vinod, but before he could do that, he noticed car slowing down and looked forward. Everyone in the car looked forward and there were long queues of variety of vehicles in 4 -5 lines.

“What the heck is this now?” Suresh yelled putting the all frustration and the intense idea to slap Vinod in his tone. He continued, “Akhila!! Quick!! Put the car behind this Toyota, the queue is small here.” Akhila reacted swiftly, took a deep cut to the right denying change to another blue car who also wanted the same place, and went behind the Toyota. She felt good being in shorter queue and even good because she fought her way there successfully, and said smoothly, “I guess we have to pay toll.”

Vinod felt irritated, but Suresh voiced it out, “Toll? Why the hell are we paying road tax then?” Vinod noticed a private company’s name on a sign board and said “Guess this company has made this road and now has the contract to maintain these roads for next few years”

Gowri joined, “they take money to make roads, they take money to maintain roads, they take money to upgrade roads; they take money to drive on roads … where does all this money go?” The remaining three gave out a deep sigh as there was only one answer – black money of rich politicians.

The more you talk about the topic the more you get frustrated – the system we live in, the government we vote for, the reforms that are only spoken about; more frustrating – every talks about it, no one does anything about it. And then the million dollar question comes up – if you want to change why can’t you be the change and do something about it? Get on to the streets, fight for it, and then for how long? Even the corrupt people in government know this part; They knows that people cannot fight on roads forever – give any fight a week for maximum – after that it dilutes, as all the people have to get back to their normal lives. And we, the people, get back to our lives trying to adjust and accommodate with what we get. There can be countless discussions on this in cars, cafes, office canteens, parking lots – but everything has to get back to ‘normal’ life. We know what’s happening is wrong; we know our hard earned money is exploited; we have the courage and intent to fight; what is stopping us then? Or rather what is lacking in us to fight?

All four in the car felt the frustration, as they had countless discussions on topic, and all of them ended in dissatisfaction. A brutal suffocating silence reigned over car. Vinod felt surprised how this silence was very different from his earlier one – the earlier one was complete in itself and in this one he felt there is something lacking. Suresh was silent calculating how much money we are being looted off each year and Gowri was silent thinking how better the citizens fight – perhaps with a coordinated effort across the nation with each city every week keeping the intensity of fight going.

For Akhila, it was even more frustrating as their queue was the slowest moving. The blue car came in to the line left of them and Akhila watched it move ahead of them helplessly. To add salt to her irony, the driver of the blue car looked out of his window and gave a wicked wink to Akhila. Her fists automatically tightened around the wheel, told to herself silently, ‘I will see you on the other side of the toll, you son-of-a-b**ch.’

After over 13 -15 slow and dragging minutes, Akhila paid 75 rupees toll and came out on other side. The blue car was nowhere to be seen. She changed the gears and pressed the gas hard, with a small jerk and leap the car shot forward like a bullet. The jerk shattered everyone out of their thoughts and leap pushed them back in their seats. All three looked at Akhila, who looked totally focused as a soldier set for war.