The Quiet Hour in the UK

 

Student dorm room, Coventry- The United Kingdom.

The water drips, it ticks, pauses, dribbles and ticks again. The tap is now completely shut, there is no banging against the porcelain sink. Stillness arrives, fact is it never left to begin with- it was just drowned by the little noises that spring without control; the cars rushing out on the streets, the wind blowing and the overhead fan moaning. These are the bits that in time become irritating, relentless if one is calm enough to make it a point to hear them.

 I lean over the wooden countertop that stretches away from my ground floor window. I pull the multicolored curtain off my field of vision. Staring at the outside world that’s going into its usual daily business is the first marker of my own silence. The scene quietly unfolds, undisturbed by the morning rush of children, or the coughs of panting dog walkers. It is a clear morning, tinted with some clouds over the horizon. The neighbor across the street moves her blue car off the doorway, the street bustles with people heading to work and students biking to class. My eyes instantly follow an old lady on her daily routine, she straps on her hood, pushes her shopping cart and walks. I watch closely as she turns the corner and disappears into the adjunct road.  In a few minutes, mailmen will fill the streets – soon enough a tin click would be heard at my door too.

While the world moves into life, I quit the watcher’s seat and sit cross-legged on the soft bed. I bow to silence, seconds later footsteps bang on the stairway just left to the door of  my room. Hassan and Gheetan, my housemates, converse in rapid Hindi right outside my door. Their lively intonation intrigues me to listen without comprehending. They shut the main door behind them as they leave me to my silence. The room around grows in sunshine and stillness. The pink cyclamen on the counter awaits watering. The crumpled shopping bags that carpet the floor, between the bookshelf and the desk, beg to be emptied. The clothes left to dry on the heating system near the nightstand need folding. The pictures of family members and friends on the wall next to the bed scream for me to break the silence. My book lies on the edge of the desk, eyeing me to touch its spine. In contemplation I sit back, distant from all those little triggers of movement and speech.

It is quite staggering the amount of useless voices, noises, images, information and memories the brain can rapidly recall when attempting a day in silence. Encyclopedias of songs burst into life and refuse to stop, repeating over and over the tunes. Incredibly long, inadequate words try to fill up in the brain, to compensate the lack of physical movements of the mouth. Memories are the worst, they play on the emotive nibbling away and poking the words out. Knowing when to break the quiet is crucial. The surroundings help me stay grounded, as I look at the walls around me, then at the brown carpet that stretches vertically across the floor, the view from my window distracts my attention from the trains moving in my head. It seems that this is my daily bread these days, a completion of a dream unfolding. In those quiet hours I realize that silence amplifies the senses. It is the secret sixth sense sages refused to share with the world- the one that overpowers and is driven by all the other five we take for granted.

 

 This is how the world looks to the writer I am trying to become, engulfed in silence- waiting on the flood of words to fill page corners and old paper.

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