The sound of silence: Is it that pause between thoughts?

The hustle and bustle of the city rattles my soul, deep inside. Vapid conversations, incessant honkers on the roads, banter, tv, movies, rock shows… I have so much going on in my ears and mind, that sometimes I can’t find a door to slam it all shut. Enough to have me reaching out to the closest holiday booking site on my browser.

Most of us seem to want to escape into silence by getting away from the familiar into the unfamiliar. Silence has that enigmatic charm that draws me into its depths from time to time. So, is silence a mind thing? Sometimes when you’re fully immersed in your thoughts you don’t hear a thing, like when asleep or day dreaming. You may have been accused of being deaf by a dear one. Does that make silence a hidden experience in the web of noise we’re surrounded by, easy for us to tap into if we will ourselves to? Or is silence that void we saw in the movie Gravity; that unending, interstellar, intergalactic space of silence, which is only possible if you own a spaceship?

I find silence in photography. I like to depict that silence through post processing my images. I do it very silently. The sounds of the schoolchildren reciting their prayers or screaming at lunch break recede into the background. There is something meditative in that silence. For me silence is comparable to space and emptiness, it’s what helps me stay connected to the rest of the world.

This is a set of pictures I shot sometime ago in a place called 7th mile, Ooty. A certain sense of silence I thought.

Silence has a shade of darkness for me. It’s the space where you search for light.

Rolling hills, meadows and the country life in general have plenty of space to invoke the sound of silence, in most of us.

Out in the open, I don’t hear the rain, I see it. Silence has a romantic appeal in vast stretches of pastoral land.