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From The Shelter Of Silence...

4/3/2020

41 Comments

 
Picture
When I was studying at JIPMER, Pondicherry, one of my favorite haunts in the city was Honesty Book Shop which was manned by one of the gentlest person I have ever known. He was the one who introduced me to RD Laing. During one such visit, he silently handed over a paperback titled Space Within The Heart by Aubrey Menen. I returned to my room and finished the book at one stretch.  The writer, after the demise of his biracial parents was driven by a quest to discover his personal identity. He isolated himself in a small room in the Thieves Quarter in Rome and proceeded to examine his life peeling off layer after layer of his personality and the events that had shaped it in the past, to finally arrive at the silent “space within the heart”. I was drawn to the evocative narrative about the search for self in isolation. Around that time, I also read a small account in a journal about a French aristocrat Xavier de Maistre who was placed in house arrest for 42 days in 1790.

I tried to imagine and visualize as to how a person would experience and cope with isolation for long periods. One day I requested my close friend Surendran to pose behind a partly closed door and took a photograph with a borrowed camera. When I described this to Mr Krishnan in the photography section at JIPMER, he was intrigued by it and helped me to take a print of it. I titled it ‘From The Shelter Of Silence’. Encouraged by him, I sent it to the All India Intermedical Youth Festival at AIIMS where it received the first prize and a commendation.

During the period of enforced lockdown due to COVID, I was wondering whether I could get hold of the journal kept by Xavier de Maistre and was fortunate to locate a copy of it, ‘Voyage Around My Room’. It was a fascinating read!

In 1790 Xavier de Maistre was punished for having gotten into a duel and was put under house arrest for forty-two days. de Maistre adroitly took advantage of his sequestration, finding within his own four walls a wealth of material to dwell on and kept a journal. Physically, de Maistre could not roam far and so most of the travels were, indeed, leaps of the imagination -- but he did find a surprising amount of material in his fairly comfortable room. He invites us to join him… “we will travel in short marches…yielding merrily to our imagination, we will follow it wherever it pleases to lead us”. He slowly leads the reader around the room, describing the pictures on the walls, the vistas and prospects within and beyond the room, exploring and dwelling on objects that are otherwise taken for granted. And what he sees brings back vibrant memories and leads him to look at things anew. The room is "that enchanted realm containing all the wealth and riches of the world".

At one point, de Maistre, is startled by what he sees outside his window: “A heap of unfortunate folk, lying half naked under the porches of those sumptuous apartments, on the point of expiring from cold and misery. What a sight! I wish this page of my book could be known throughout the world; I would like it to be known that, in this city—where everything breathes opulence—during the coldest winter nights, a host of wretches sleep out in the open, with only a boundary stone on which to lay their heads. Here you see a group of children huddling close together so as not to die of the cold. There it’s a woman, shivering and voiceless to complain. The passers-by come and go, quite untouched by a sight to which they are used”.

de Maistre proceeds at a leisurely pace and the journey is non linear, offering us rich insights as to how a person in confinement can cope with isolation through heightened perception and vivid imagination. Written in the form of short chapters, each one is like a polished gem.
de Maistre’s work springs from a profound insight: that the pleasure we derive from our journeys is perhaps dependent more on the mindset with which we travel than on the destination we travel to. If only we could apply a travelling mindset to our own rooms and confined spaces, we might find these places becoming no less interesting than the world outside.

In this world of hyper-chatter, we are less likely to observe and hear ourselves and unwittingly COVID has provided us with such an opportunity…

It is a break in our everyday busyness in which we immerse ourselves. The first thing we experience is silence the moment we retreat from the outside world.

The roots of the English term “silence” has its antecedents is the Gothic verb anasilan, a word that denotes the wind dying down, and the Latin dēsinere, a word meaning “stop.” Both of these etymologies suggest that silence is bound up with the idea of interrupted action. The pursuit of silence likewise begins with a surrender of the chase, the abandonment of efforts to impose our will and vision on the world. Not only is it about standing still, it is also a step inwards from the tussle of life.

My first experience of immense silence was when we spent a night in the sand dunes of Khuri. The silence of the desert took hold and overwhelmed me. It was the deepest silence I have ever known. There was nothing to hear. It was absolutely still, absolutely silent. The desert night was not very dark and the sky was deep – the stars did actually ‘twinkle’, and I had a sense of their distance – even distant stars seemed near, as well as larger or brighter. The starlit sky was an infinite space and one could gaze at it forever. Underneath my hand when I reached out from the dhurrie, the sand was made of tiny grains, very cool and clean, fine-textured, soft against my fingers. It was probably the most profound silence I had ever engaged with. Perhaps this is the silence that hermits seek in the desert.

Glimpses of the magical sandscapes of Khuri  are at:  photos.app.goo.gl/PyRP2rSB88Pt84w8A

We all live very noisy lives. Our silent spaces in cities have become constricted. It is not surprising to note that the word “noise,” derives from the Latin root nausea! We probably do not need a pervasive silence—desirable as this might seem. What we do need is more spaces in which we can interrupt our general experience of noise. We must also aspire to a greater proportion of hushed stillness in the course of our everyday life. And realize that many of the major physical forces on which we depend are silent – gravity, electricity, light.

We have not been locked away; we have been given an opportunity to silently discover a range of unfamiliar, sometimes daunting experiences, to maximize the connection with our inner worlds. It has given us a space to appreciate a great deal of what we generally see without ever properly noticing them. As Thoreau suggested we will have to become “our own streams and oceans; to explore our own higher latitudes.” 

After these transformative few weeks we will recover our freedoms. The world will be ours to roam in, once more. As we resume our journey in the garden of life, hopefully we will see it from a different perspective than that we were accustomed to… 

As Seneca commented long ago,
“We are waves of the same sea, leaves of the same tree, flowers of the same garden.” 

Looking forwards to your comments...and do post them here!

41 Comments
Malathi SwamibSwami
4/3/2020 10:56:36 pm

What a writing style - so tactile!
Yes Sir, opportune moment to tune within ourself and microcosm of our family.
Very thought provoking Sir!!

The sand dunes, the literary pieces are enriching.

Now I will have to search for these literary gems on the net.

Reply
Dr Raguram
4/3/2020 11:10:04 pm

Thansk Malathi...Aubrey Menen is unfortunately out of print

Reply
Naveen Chandar
4/3/2020 11:04:34 pm

I am not very optimistic about a change, a transformation, as I see how the noisy minds evolve into further onslaught on adversaries to their ideologies!

Reply
Dr Raguram
4/3/2020 11:11:45 pm

True..at this stage there is lot of cacophony of ideologies. I fervently hope that they will subside over time. Moreover in spite of the noise outside we have to find our own zone of silence and a space for contemplation

Reply
ganesh mudraje
4/3/2020 11:53:53 pm

First time reading your writing with curiosity.
It's really enriching experience for me in this difficult times of COVID19 pandemic.
Your writings teach great lessons to follow in our life.Thanks Sir for sharing

Reply
Dr Raguram
4/4/2020 12:06:25 am

Thank you Ganesh...indeed these are difficult times...but times to realize our innate strengths and work together collectively

Reply
Saranya
4/4/2020 12:45:21 am

Thanks for writing out my thoughts in silence. It is not so noisy as i expected

Reply
Dr Raguram
4/4/2020 01:08:08 am

Thanks Saranya...the noise outside is under lock down...but it is for us to continuously search for the silence within

Reply
Lokesh babu
4/4/2020 12:50:21 am

Good afternoon sir, it's a great article connecting from your college day's to lockdown days.
Lovely suggestion about books which can be red and simple and elegant flow .
Current fast paced and gadget dependent life has taken us away from understanding the significance of intimacy.
Hope many more lockdown s are essential for man to turn inwards.

Reply
Dr Raguram
4/4/2020 01:06:47 am

Thanks Lokesh...what it all takes is to find sometime in the midst of our busy lives to find that little oases of silence

Reply
Shripathy Bhat
4/4/2020 04:56:46 am

Wonderful experience watching the pictures after reading the preamble on the space within and the content therein: SILENCE

Reply
Dr Raguram
4/4/2020 05:00:36 am

Thank You!

Reply
Joshy
4/4/2020 05:02:35 am

Wonderful writing, creative expression!
Thank you for sharing.

Reply
Dr Raguram
4/4/2020 05:20:07 am

Thanks Joshy!

Reply
Prasad Rao Gundugurti
4/4/2020 06:25:49 am

Raghu
Ji

Kya baat hai
Really enjoyed the details snd a great way to put your thoughts
Looks like and sm waiting for your further stories snd unfold for us lesser mortals your experiences

Also you combine the pictures and story quite beautifully

Blending the images for ever

Thanks as slways

Reply
Dr Raguram
4/4/2020 06:31:29 am

Thank you Prasad

Reply
bhavani hamann
4/4/2020 07:20:52 am

Reading your words is a journey through lost or forgotten worlds! The path is winding, long, where we cast our gaze on the mundane which is special. We are taken to pages of books unheard of and their journeys of fantasy and reality intermingled in a unique way. Thank you!

Reply
Dr Raguram
4/4/2020 09:42:55 pm

Thanks Bhavani

Reply
Mohan Raj link
4/4/2020 09:41:38 am

Beautiful prose and Poetic photos.
Thank you Sir.
It is said that a person who starts reading a book is not the same person who finishes the book (Anandh in Tamil).
The same applies to your blog posts and also to the Corona lock down. I sincerely hope that everyone looks at the word with a new perspective.

Reply
Dr Raguram
4/4/2020 09:45:05 pm

True...books have had a lasting impact on me and it is so wonderful to search for them again in my library and touch their brittle pages which have weathered time well

Reply
manju
5/3/2020 11:57:42 am

Mohan, I'm curious about this Tamil writer Anand. Thanks for sharing that beautiful quote.

Reply
Mahadevan.
4/4/2020 10:31:04 am

Dear Raguram
Your musing made me feel nostalgic about Shri Krishnan,
Dr Surendiran and the person at Honesty Book shop in Dupleix street.
Savored every bit of your eloquent “silence”.
The Universal Force, finding it more difficult than before to handle the behavioral addictions of “everyday busyness”, has fallen on the physical hoping it will do the trick as the physical being is more vulnerable.
Absorbed in the 4D- Journey of Life-(Drugs, Diseases, Doctors and Death), I am amazed at your “sand” mining when data mining is the order of the day.

Reply
Dr Raguram
4/4/2020 09:46:44 pm

Thanks Mahadevan. JIPMER provided us a space to broaden our perspectives

Reply
Shabbir Amanullah
4/4/2020 04:07:52 pm

the very essence of humanness has been laid bare with politics continuing to take a toll on nations
Nature however, has decided that it’s time to push the pause button and allow humanity to peel away the layers of denial we have all come to drape ourselves with
In the process, some have found themselves, others will and still others will go further away caught in the tides of the oceans of fear and deceit
The animals however, are claiming back what was theirs - albeit for a little while

Reply
Dr Raguram
4/4/2020 09:48:07 pm

Hope the space that CORONA has inadvertently provided for the animals doesn't shrink with time, once the virus abates!

Reply
Sudipta Roy link
4/4/2020 06:39:04 pm

Thank you sir for the this share of quiet musings, reminiscing ,powerful visuals woven through literature and philosophy in. A backdrop
Of silence . Hope the transformations emerging from the lock down will steer us towards healthier wYs of thinking and being !

Reply
Dr Raguram
4/4/2020 09:55:37 pm

Thanks Sudipta...one of the most important aspect of a healthy mind is it openness and its ability to lift the veil from the hidden beauty of the world

Reply
Ashok
4/4/2020 11:28:34 pm

Not searching for silence myself Sir. Keep brooding on the undoubted noise within some nonverbal people. Wonder what is the language of their thoughts...Many are surprisingly at peace amidst their families now.

Reply
Dr Raguram
4/5/2020 05:48:01 am

I guess you are referring to non verbal autistic children. They may not have noise within! Do watch this short film: https://vimeo.com/103697707

Reply
S.S.Kumar
4/5/2020 11:17:04 am

Fascinating read boss.Took me back to the days when I used to trudge from pattani kadai through the entire length of Dupleix street to buy a greeting card or incense sticks at honesty book house at not so honest prices!
As we separated and grew,the lapses of silence helped us to bond and cement and the present status has actually helped to renew the ties.I prefer the cacophony to the eerie silence, and in the night,under the twinkling stars I would love to splash some desert sand on persons who are pompous and have misplaced notions of importance!

Reply
Dr Raguram
4/5/2020 10:28:27 pm

Thanks Kumar...Alll of us know as to whom you are referring to as pompous person with misplaced notion of importance:-)

Reply
Stu Schwartz
4/5/2020 04:35:31 pm

Beautiful piece Ragu. Your sounds of silence were heard halfway around the world.

Reply
Dr Raguram
4/5/2020 10:29:12 pm

Thanks Stu...silence bonds across time and space!

Reply
Manoj Kumar
4/5/2020 09:54:40 pm

Eloquently captured......
Paul Simon reflected on this lyrically in 'Sound of Silence'...
Except that '10,000 people, may be more'.... now has a sinister connotation!

Reply
Dr Raguram
4/5/2020 10:32:25 pm

Thanks Manoj! Someone seems to have listened to these lines...
"Now fire up those lighter and cellphone
And hold them it up in the air people, now it's the time

Reply
Prabhavathy
4/5/2020 10:27:07 pm

Sir,
As usual your words made, ' silence ' around me, BEAUTIFUL ' for a few minutes

Reply
Dr Raguram
4/5/2020 10:34:56 pm

Thanks...silence like a butterfly will land on our shoulders, without us noticing and will continue make our lives beautiful!

Reply
Bharathidasan.S
4/15/2020 06:08:12 am

I liked below para and apt to this situation. 'We have not been locked away; we have been given an opportunity to silently discover a range of unfamiliar, sometimes daunting experiences, to maximize the connection with our inner worlds. It has given us a space to appreciate a great deal of what we generally see without ever properly noticing them. As Thoreau suggested we will have to become “our own streams and oceans; to explore our own higher latitudes.”

Reply
Dr Raguram
5/5/2020 05:02:28 am

Thanks Bharathi

Reply
Manju
5/3/2020 11:56:08 am

Such a evocative essay Sir. Your stories from difference decades also convey a "silence" of different flavor that is also a lesson during this pandemic!!
By the way, those pictures are breathtaking! a silence of Khuri like no other!! Can't wait to read your next musing Sir!

Reply
Dr Raguram
5/5/2020 05:03:06 am

Thanks Manju!

Reply



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    Dr Raguram

    Someone who keeps exploring beyond the boundaries of everyday life to savor and share those unforgettable moments....

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