A little bit of silence can be a good thing. Like when the teacher bursts upon a chaotic classroom, half-screaming half-pleading: “SILENCE”. Or the silence that comes at night-time. Just imagine if the days were silent and the nights achatter, what it would be like? Then, it is customary and respectful to observe a minute’s silence in memory of the departed. Loud claps or cheers would not be able to do the job. Gandhiji was taken with silence after a visit to a Trappist monastery in South Africa. He observed silence every Monday.

Shhhh

Silence might be an absence of words but it is eloquent, its meaning changing with sthaan, kaal, patra. The lovers’ silence and the much-married couple’s silence are different. The silence of the newborn before that first wail and the silence of the just departed are different. The silence of Ukraine is different from the silence of Russia, which in turn is different from the silence around Doklam. There is that saying in Sanskrit, maunam sammati lakshanam. Meaning, silence conveys consent/support. So not true in so many situations. And in the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna says: “Of chastisers I am the rod of punishment, of those desiring success I am strategy, of all secrets I am silence and the certain wisdom of the wise.”

Read between the...

Speaking of wisdom, sages are silent and so are victims. Silence is what surrounds the history of slavery, the biranganas, the Dalits. Yes, there is such a thing as archival silence. Little girls, all over the globe, have been told for centuries that they should be seen and not heard. Ramu kaka is to my mind the most well-known silent character from Hindi films. Caliban tells Prospero in Shakespeare’s The Tempest: “You taught me language, and my profit on’t / Is I know how to curse.” There is all that silence around rape. There is a book by Pratiksha Baxi titled Public Secrets of Law: Rape trials in India. Too much of silence can become a congealed public secret or, as Martin Luther King said, a great “betrayal".