The Sound of Silence is quiet, noiseless, mute, motionless, muffled, gentle, low, soft, dead.
I’ve always been told to row, row my boat of life- quietly and gently down the stream of life, but lately- instead of slowly drifting into the notion of life as a dream, my waking moments have been nothing short of nightmarish.
As I wake up, I can see the sunlight trying to creep in from the heavy drapes that cover every outlet of the room. It fails. The wide, white tubelights flicker and illuminate the dull, yellow walls instead.
Hardly have my eyes opened that the speakers crackle and break into cacophony, my heart skips a beat, and the paper cup I’m softly sipping water from becomes a crumpled mess. It is time to leave the room.
As I step out, I maintain a steely gaze and a confident pace. I can sense the scrutinization in the eyes around me, ready to fine me for any anomaly they find. We do not know who they are or what their real job is. All they do is make more rules within the general rules in the code, and penalize us for breaking them.
The silence is not quiet anymore, it’s screaming inside my head.
The soft zooming noises of an intricate web of cameras dominate the ambiance of the room I sit in. The lesson starts. We pretend to listen to them, just as they do. It’s the same thing all over again.
It’s the same feeling all over again.
The space between my breasts feels empty. The flow of life suddenly feels like a woman on her menopause.
A voice. Something on the speaker. This is not the announcement time. This is not the voice we hear every time. But I can’t listen. I can’t listen because there are too many voices already. People speaking, speaking their minds. Breaking the silence.
Questions everywhere.
Has the routine been disturbed?
Has the system been perturbed?
Are the arbitrary rules and regulations
no longer going to be legitimized by our procrastination?
Are they going to hear us,
or is this just going to be dismissed as a silly fuss?
I sigh and calm my demeanor.
To seek these answers, we’ll have to give it a try.
The flightless bird inside us yearns to scale the sky.
The Sound of Silence is loud, unsettling, tense, intense, enraging, infuriating.
Silence is passive acquiescence; noise is open rebellion. Silence is status quo;
noise is the hope for a better tomorrow.
When we make noise, they’ll have to listen. But before fighting them, let’s fight the urge to stay silent.
Because Silence is for the dead.
And we are not the dead yet.
This piece of poetry has been inspired by one of my all-time favorite books- 1984 by George Orwell. It is about a dystopian authoritarian government and how it leaves no stone unturned in suppressing the individualism of the citizens. It is a stark reminder that if we stay silent for long and stop questioning the government, the world could come down to this.
