Living in Mumbai untill now I have never experienced what shall I say... a trully Placid environment. It is rare to find a road without cars and bikes at any time of the day and if you do go ahead in the wee hours of the night even then I doubt it would be easy to find a place where the chaiwallas dont exist and the dogs dont bark and crows don't caw and so on... Well in Cyprus its not just difficult but rather impossible to find a combination of the things mentioned above... yet its difficult to find complete silence here for every once in a while there comes a bike/scooter/car with its silencer tweaked. Silence does ensue after that for a long time and yet I wonder whether the silence is imposed or voluntary or is it the silence of grief or complicity or worse conformity. I then wonder that could this be the natural silence... the silence of the Universe which engenders a gentle awe just like the silence of the stars and the planets or that of the trees and the flowers. Taking the same thought process forward I imagined what would it be to be engulfed in this sea of silence the silence of the nature... which was one of the few dreams I always wished to pursue just like the silence engulfing Christopher McCandless as he journeys to the Arctic in Into the Wild or even the silence engulfing Tom Hanks as he gets marroned in CastAway. There began my journey and no it was not one that was very long nor one where I hoped to get any spiritual Inights but it did provide some fodder for my grey matter.
So one evening at 7, I decided to walk to the closest beach from my house viz. Lady's Mile Beach. Its not long not more than 2kms I think from where I stay so I decided to walk till there especially since that is a place that has no streel Lights and with the stars sparkling and no moon I thought that this should be a perfect time to go for the silence should be complete and yes I should say that, atleast the silence was complete however I could not even imagine how complete the silence can get. I could hear my laces flapping on the shoes and the steel strap of the my watch brushing against my denims. But what amazed me the most was the fact that when everything fell silent all my senses were alert. My sense of hearing as I just mentioned had improved so much that I could almost hear my own heartbeat and the sight I think was playing tricks on me, every moving shadow in the dark put a chill through my spine. I could feel the slight autumn chill in the air and dare I say I felt alive the most alive that I have ever been since the many days I remember. However with this highted sense of alertness, it did not feel as cool as in the movies for the mind starts playing tricks. You start fearing the dark for you never know what lies ahead( as I could barely see a few meters ahead of me in the dark...). This is the time when the worst nightmares get aroused again and this time you experience the whole nightmare with your eyes open...
I visited the beach and did come back home safely albeit with a little perspiration. However this small journey just made me unsure of myself since I am not sure I would like to stay in that heighted sense of alertness and awareness all the time. May be all I wish is to remain in a perpetual state of Intoxication-to be drowned in the conendrum we call Civilization for may be as someone said..."Civilization is a conspiracy of noise, designed to cover up the uncomfortable silences."
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