Silence is all around us. At different points in our days and lives, we embrace it or run away from it. But all said and done, silence evokes thought, and thought often evokes writing. And in this issue of Spark, we feature poetry, non-fiction and fiction on the theme ‘Silence’.
Silence, to Ayaan, for a long time, meant an undefinable fear, as every silent second reminded her of the fact that her child was speechless. But with time, silence became a beautiful language instead, for her and her family to communicate with each other. Ayaan writes about this journey here.
We are about to sell our house. We will move away and our house will stand there in silence. Just a building it might be, but what if it will yearn to see us? Ranjini Sivaswamy pens a poem.
A visit to the bird sanctuary in the quest for peace and calm leads Preeth Ganapathy to realise that silence is a very precious commodity.
From the silence that preceded the birth of the universe to the silence that pervades a music hall, M.Mohankumar presents his perspective on this month’s theme through a poem.
Praveena’s prose poem is the internal monologue of an individual exploring identity and sexuality in a society that sees and yet doesn’t see the struggle for this space, and how choice, often always silent, even in the smallest acts, plays out in everyday life.
Hema Nair’s poem talks about the silence born of loneliness—a silence that can be deafening. This solitude comes from an inability to love because of self-imposed boundaries. Enveloped in an introspective silence, though, we can seek to understand ourselves, attempt to change, or be stoic in our acceptance.
A man goes silent for a long time and the world around him interprets his silence in their own little ways. Parth Pandya writes a story about how a man’s silence influences the universe around him in unexpected ways.
Srinivas’s poem paints silence, first in the seven colours of a rainbow; and then, in black, white and shades of grey. Each colour represents phenomena, which are often experienced in silence, due either to choice, or to compulsion, or to the very nature of certain experiences. Admittedly, the links between the various colours and what they represent are, in many cases, subjective.