Sound of silence !!

It was a noiseless path….in a leisurely afternoon of early lockdown phase. The Red Road of Kolkata was utterly desolate….not a single car visible till the end….not a single human figure or shadow of life anywhere. I drove through the silence of the soul after the day’s work. The Club Houses, The Eden, Fort William were all so silently arrayed on the western sky while the Maidan was sleeping on the east….slipping under a green sheet of gentleness. The Nor’wester clouds had engulfed the wide sky from all over leaving only a tuft of blue over the crown of sacred while Victoria Memorial. Upon the verdant expanse of Maidan, I came across the first sign of life—painted like a surreal image—a little before the turn of the Queen’s Way….one black, some piebald, a few more brown and a lone dazzling white…the horses were unbridled, wantonly grazing upon… elegantly painted upon the dark canvas of sky, so softly spread over the lush green meadow.

I got off….…walked down a little farther to get out of the shades of those giant trees and sat on the floor of grass of the city after so many years. I kept on observing them endlessly while darkness got encouraged and strong wind started blowing. They had no obligation to pull the ornamental carts in dusk….good or bad luck…..to toil in carrying the sightseers around the Memorial and garden….they had freedom for the days frozen in the catastrophe….yet, they continued to confine themselves only to the patch of the field they had been used to…..perhaps, they knew nothing more.

The silence of freedom was evident. The shadows of reality…the existence…was revealing and fulfilling. I let my  dreams walking through the caves of Plato….the prisoners chained to the dark wall for life with the fire lighted behind and counting and naming the shadows—coming and going….the shadows were the reality….the perception of reality….the impression of liberty….in oblivion of anything better known to them than that. The drama of nature had lost all meaning to senses…..no bondage of souls….freezing eyes and ears to the impression were taught to keep the silence….it was all about counting the shadows and attaining the sense of liberty through the eventuality….not to disturb the sound of silence.

The soul seemed sunken to the happiness of surviving the dread of the death so long it was affecting the shadows…the other shadows……without knowing if it was mine or else….counting and naming them as it wished……a perfect tribute to life and the indifference to it….and whispering the sound of silence. The freedom was sleeping in the other world…..up above in the heaven or in the unfathomable depth of the hell….accessible, perhaps, only when the silence would be broken.

The horses were fortunate….they learned it quick….the cave would wait for the prisoners to see the Sun….maybe, at the end of the cosmos…till then it would be an enjoyable, delightful and satisfying soul drowned deeply in the sound of silence.