The last month was a little packed with some travel. Went to Udupi.. .. that place would set you back in time by a million years. Life moves so slowly, you wonder if it moves at all. Time seems to be standing still there. Our ( mom, aunt, & myself) day there was packed... so many people to meet, so many places to visit, so we never realized how time passed by the whole day. But during all those little bus trips from one place to the next, I couldn't shake off that impression of that place being trapped in a time capsule. Life is so quiet there.
Or maybe it's not them. It's me. Coming from a city, I've grown used to moving from one work to the next. I couldn't take it when I had to spend long hours travelling between several places, doing almost nothing, while my mother and aunt chatted non-stop.
Quiet is the keyword here.
In the city, I sing Sa................ and I hear a car horn at the same time as a harmonic. ( ok.. that happened just once.. it's not so noisy where I stay.. but I've seen worse..) . There's motion everywhere... sounds everywhere...all around me. Signs of life?? Step out on the road, you see so much motion that no one can move anymore. How ironic! But you have to see the traffic jams here to get an idea of the teeming millions this city harbours.
That's when it strikes you that population density is an important factor that affects your life almost daily. I almost never gave it a thought. I know India's touched the Billion mark, and let out a sigh. But didn't think for a second more than that. Now I know better.... if it isn't the music playing all day,then it's the tinkling of a cycle bell, or the horn of a bike, or the rumble of a loaded lorry, or the vegetable vendors yelling out their songs..... at least one of them at regular intervals...cutting out what would otherwise be deathly silence. Why does the word DEATHLY come to mind when I think of complete silence. Because Life, is activity; and Death is Stillness? Aren't these mere impressions?
Why do impressions like noise and motion become associated with signs of life, or with signs of being "busy"? Why does a place like Udupi, with all its bus stands and people and traffic still give me a feeling of emptiness. Is it my daily routine I'm missing?
But as always, hold on to the feeling for a bit, and it'll take you somewhere. You hold on to that emptiness for a second, you'll see that you might rise above your immediate surroundings for a second and go a bit deeper into your impression. It's not like the lush greenery you see,( as the bus winds its way on narrow roads) is not a sign of life. It may not move, or look busy like how city trees do. But it has as much activity going on inside it as a healthy tree can possibly have. We no longer "see" what's in front of us. We take so much for granted. There's life, there's beauty all around us. But I have such stereotypical impressions of "life" ingrained in my head, I fail to associate the words "busy" or " hectic" or "active" or "activity" with ordinary things such as trees and birds.
Maybe my terminology of such an impression is wrong. Maybe a city is not "alive" , maybe it's just plain crowded. Just plain noisy. Maybe noise of the city and noise of the village just indicate different kinds of activity. Maybe the reason why we felt our college was so desolate was because we were caught up in our impressions of what a desolate place "sounds" like. All we had in mind was the noise of the city, and we didn't quite find it there in the green little village, and labelled it as desolate. Some of us could never shake off that impression of the city imprinted in our mind, and never adjusted to or made use of the silence there through all those 4 years.
Isn't man a social animal? If he doesn't find company, what would he do? Would he explore his mind, his creativity? Or would he while away time till he finds company to while it away with? For how long can he do that before he longs for company and noise again? What would things be like if we weren't raised with this "impression" of noise symbolizing life?
Would we then crave for company?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
4 comments:
I completely agree that the impressions we associate with an active life most often revolve around noise , people and general movement all around!!! It must be pretty hard for a city-dweller to get used to the quiet and "slow" life in a village. But, I feel that be it a city or a village, company is one thing every man craves for. Yeah, one might actually need some time for oneself to recharge and rejuvenate. But, no one can do without human company for too long. In fact, in villages you tend to know almost everyone in the locality and its almost like one big community. The bonding is much stronger and I guess it makes them feel secure!! I sometimes suspect that my life revolves around too many inanimate things and that robs me of the security and joy of human relationships. I also suspect many of us in urban areas lead such lives. It would be a real eye-opener and a great experience to spend a month or so in a village, cut off from the PCs, the net, the newspapers, the cellphones. Am sure such an experience would help many city-dwellers unwind and discover much more abt themselves
Gr8 to see u again :)
I always thought silence and solitude would lead to reflections, to some amount of peace in the ever churning mind-even for the dumbest fellas like me.
And then one day, silence and solitude descended on me when I was alone at home with my parents outta town.
Why did my mind churn a hundred times more ??
Why did I feel ecstasic and crushed at the same instant of time ??
Reflection ?? Loneliness ??
Ouch.
My native is Udupi and I always have the same feeling when I go there. I feel it basically us who are so used to the city that our senses are drugged and we cannot enjoy the natural sound-pollution-less environments.
Moreover I always find it funny how people there think of distances. 5km is faaaaaaaaaaaar for them, whereas here in B'lore we travel 30km to and fro per day without a ho-hum :-D
Hi Shreyas and Akshata, welcome Deeps!
It's true that silence doesn't come easy in the city. It's also true that our minds become caliberated according to what we see (and hear!!) in our younger, formative years. We then spend the rest of your lives living upto these images, and to face anything that's different from our pre-concieved notions takes some amount of dynamism in us. We don't adapt to change as quickly as we'd like to. We spend time thinking what isn't, instead of what is. But as Akshata experienced and as a very good friend of mine said, if you take out the thoughts in your mind, all you're left with is the sights and sounds of the present moment. That's when any learning/realization/experience really happens. :D All you gotta do is hold on to that.
Post a Comment