Articles  
The Cyber Friend Dialog
Silence Please
by Sunitichandra Mishra 

Attention: Ms. & Mr. Noisies!

Laotse was a Chinese philosopher. Everyday he used to go for a morning walk with one of his friends. All the way, they just walked but exchanged no words as Laotse had requested his friend not to talk at all during the stroll. One day, Laotse's friend brought another friend with him but he told his friend not to speak a word, as Laotse would not like it. The friend tried his best but near a rose garden he became so happy to see the beautiful roses and feel their sweet fragrance. He chirped out: "Ah! What charming scenery! How beautiful, how fragrant are these roses!" Laotse and his friend smiled but they said nothing. Next day, Laotse told his friend: "Please don't bring your friend from the next day. He is very talkative. I also felt the beauty and fragrance of the flowers. What was the use of his words?”

Most of us will label Laotse as 'crazy' as we often label the philosophers but there is something important in this story. What we can feel is much deeper than what we say in words. The man in this story spoke only one sentence during the morning walk but most of us talk so much that our "morning walk" should better be termed as a "talking walk". If we talk too much when we are supposed to focus our attention on walking, playing, studying or completing a project, it is clear that we are not giving our full attention to that work. A child who talks too much in the class, must not be learning his or her lesson well.

Swami Vivekananda has written somewhere that once he was in Japan, travelling by a train. A number of school students were also sitting in the same compartment. Vivekananda wrote that he had a very uncommon experience. Generally, children of this age talk boisterously, make a lot of noise, tease each other, push and pull, not for a moment they remain silent. But he found the Japanese children quite silent, talking in a moderate voice only when necessary and sitting in the train as mature 'saints'.

In India, the scene is different. In the school, children shout like factory horns. They call each other's name as loudly as a loudspeaker. Rustling, bustling, pulling, pushing, throwing, jumping, making a hundred sounds from the mouth, talking every second like a 'talking machine' (do we need to invent one!?) is a common scene in our schools. Children are children… even grown-ups are not lagging behind. In trains and buses, we never care to watch the beautiful scenery outside, we never try to read and understand human faces, their nature, their untold stories, nor we even use this time for reading a good book.

Talking… talking… talking… talking… only this is our trait. Tempos blow horn every minute, cars screech abruptly, vehicles have no proper silencers, even in hospitals where silence is most required, we cannot keep ourselves silent. In temples, mosques and churches we pick up more time to talk than to pray.

In a popular Hindi film 'Shor' by Manoj Kumar, the hero becomes deaf in the end due to noise pollution. What will happen to us? Oh! Silence Please!

Check the Quiz : Can You Keep Silent? 

May 7, 2006

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