The Sound of Silence

Which part of the day do you consider the most delighful? For me , it's the daybreak. Here, you can’t expect a rooster for a wake-up call as there is no space for a pen in this part of thickly populated world , but, I am fortunate enough to have a room that lets plenty of sunlight in and hence I wake up when the first golden rays of the sun seeps in through the window-pane. And an unhurried ease with time for a walk is the next best thing that can happen for a day.

The desolate road remains scattered with tabebuia flowers until the day begins for the menial municipal workers. The tabletop calendar would have lost another leaf for the people living in the nearby shanties. Yellow light of the incandescent lamps escapes the chinks of their rickety doors, smoke effuses the chimney and all possible creeks. This is the time of the day when you will give at least a passing thought to the life that pulsates inside a seemingly uninhabitable place, the people whose lives equate that of a bumblebee’s.

The weak mellow sounds can be heard of the world devoid of human heartbeats. The rustling leaves sing to the tune of passing breeze which indiscriminately embraces everything that comes its way. The old spotted leaves are kissed off to unknown lands. The white tubular flowers , the name of which is unknown to me, covers the walkway of the neighboring park, which is my final destination for these early morning walks. They remind me of the childhood days when my father would collect and bring a bunch of these flowers for us ,which way we were acquainted with it, the name of which even he didn't know. But, he knew how to make a whistling sound out of the otherwise silent collection of cells. Thus we gave it the name ‘The whistler’ . Now when I live away from the security offered by a family, the remainder of those memories is what I live on.

When the yellow rays start stinging my tanned epidermis, I head back with my lungs full of fresh air. By then, the shanties would have stopped showing the signs of life as they join the buzz of the now jostling city.