The Silence, Of Afternoon, In Summer

By Sanjukumar Amrutlal Gajjar

My siesta woke up to the Silence that had thickened into that afternoon scene just outside my square window. Feeling it slowly, I yawned, dampened my lips and heaved myself up against the wall. I even harrumphed, and as if in a jiffy I was cajoled by the Silence that hung outside, I chose myself to savour the window picture.

It was late in February when the sharp white light of sun had blanketed daily life outside my window, I realized that I was about to bath into the warmth that would follow the shine. Rubbing my eyes, I ventured to browse the outer world; Warmth and the yellow brilliance, though lasted ephemerally appeared cooling my nerves and hazing my eyes. Yet, I stared, and an intangible smile on my soporific face tickled my heart and knocked my aching bones.

Yes! It was the Silence with the shine. Yes! It was the Silence with the colour. Oh yes! There was, even the Silence with an inharmonious humming, a rhythmic flapping, few far-flung chirpings, and some urban ruckus incoherently swamped yet faintly palpable to my ears.

Scanning the window, I exhaled, and watched that baby wasp struggling to break the window glass and get rid of the heat of that building summer of outer world. Silly! I guess it didn’t know that I wasn’t air-conditioned and the window glass, at least to its efforts was unbreakable! Nonetheless, it kept humming, scratching the glass, and I kept musing the Silence that lingered along. Besides, the flaps of my ceiling fan were in dire competition to pull my heed, but ineffectively, they were silent, more than the humming at least. So, I pouted to them. Meanwhile, my ears informed they were the cuckoo, the myna, the dove, and the little sparrow waving their twitters in the farthest afternoon, and honestly, they suited peacefully as the Silence meditated with them. Outside the window, a flyover in sight tuned up with linear mechanical accelerations; sometimes they amplified and the next moment they dwindled with variety of mechanical cries. However, those tangible revving seemed muffled up across the window glass, of course under the subjugation of the Silence.

That afternoon, the fondly heat, that yellow brilliance, that natural quietness, that weird listlessness, and those thwarting noises seemed mingling into the core of Silence. They even said, “Rest… Calm… and exhale. Close your eyes and listen to me. There is no hurry! Yes, there is no hurry at all! See that wasp? It is not hustling, but working with me. Nothing is outside that you are losing but me, the Silence of your inside. It’s “Me”. Loosen up your rage and drop off your pandemonium, and then you will see me, listen to me, and feel me. I am eternal, the quintessence of all the noises, but in summer afternoons, I flourish, I prevail, and I reign…”

Well, I obeyed the Silence right away; I did what it asked me to do. I closed my eyes and listened, firstly the world of outside, and then I went inside.

The absolute Silence poured in, and, across the window glass I watch myself reclined on the wall, meditating.

But hey!!! Wait…

“What I was doing outside that window? And why was I scratching at window glass? Why I have the colour yellow? And why I hear nothing but my (His) breathing only? Is this the Silence? Of afternoon? In summer?”

I was just about to ask aloud to me when my mother flung-opened the door and cried across the Silence, “Get up, will you? The Mangoes are waiting for you”.

Jerkily, I opened my eyes, confronted my mother and jumped off the bed, still testing my tongue and scratching my neck. And as I walked off the door, upfront I saw three succulently yellow mangoes waiting for me, and still wondered that “If I truly was a wasp!”

But In wild amusement as I neared the set of mangoes, I shouted, “My mangoes!!!”

And Silence retreated!

By Sanjukumar Amrutlal Gajjar