It takes getting some used to, this silence. I've been in Princeton just about a day and already the lack of sound is driving me insane. For someone who's used to staying next to a construction zone, such peace means an emptiness.
We take the noise in our life for granted, often annoyed at its bewildering array and constant chatter. But noise (or as I like to put it, sound) is life. In the beginning was the sound, although I wasn't really there and so can't be fully certain ! For a culture that seems to equate sound with life and action, this silence is even more deafening.
The lack of sound is great in the beginning. It helps you relax and enjoy the other senses - the light, the breeze, the perfume - without being overwhelmed and distracted by all stimuli aural. But then what ? You've made your peace, have experienced sensory delight and now have left nothing to contemplate but that twisted thing hammering away in your head, a.k.a your mind. Where do you escape to, now that the distraction is gone ?
Sound for me is a thought train. Each beat setting of a string of interesting patterns. I never feel alone at such a time, knowing that someone only has to drop a glass for me to set off on another journey. Much as you'd like to believe, this is not a tendency of the mentally disturbed alone, but happens to us all. But with such depth of noiselessness around, it feels as if my mind has hit a terminus.
It's scary sometimes, being alone with your imagination. I'm not entirely sure if I'll survive this time in Princeton without irreparable damage (some might say it has already been done in years gone by, but me, I'm an optimist, no?). What can I do to relieve such gravitas ? Music, you say. Aha ! But music is interesting as an instrument to bring order to sound, as a comparative tool. Without the underlying texture of random noise, would music sound as appealing ? Perhaps not.
Maybe the idea is to leverage this silence, to learn to escape to it, much as we escape to music. That's going to be tough to pick up and even tougher to let go once I'm back home when the jack hammer starts up at 7 am !! It does help my reading though. Vikram Chandra's Red Earth and Pouring Rain has been a delight so far, although it's ironical that a book that draws on such a kaleidoscopic and chaotic landscape is being read amidst such a bucolic setting as a New England summer in Princeton.
I've been off blogging for a while now and it seems an eternity has passed in between. Neha's off to work (finally !) while an artist (probably the one true artist) in the family passed away. Both events will leave voids in the world, in more ways than one.
Neha's departure finally marks the end of an era that we had tried to keep protected for as long as possible, a world of adolescence and innocence where things were stored to be relived in moments of joy and sorrow. With her gone, it's as if we're all grown up now, with all vestiges of connections to our earlier selves cast aside. There's no escaping here, either, mister. It's off to the real world, now.
My uncles' unexpected passing away seemed to shake all of us. For a man who was a consummate artist, time played the role of an artistic villain. No matter what we do, where we go, time catches up with us all. And when it does, it's not kind. It makes us weak, dependent, hollow shells of a once glorious prime. What shall keep us rooted then ? I'd like to believe that my life at that point meant something to somebody, at least to me. I don't expect it to have any grand purpose or even to achieve something. I just want it to be a life, lived, inshallah. Will it be so ? Only time will tell.
As you can tell, I'm rambling. Time to sign off.
