The Sound of Silence

Sublime upon sublime scarcely presents a contrast, and we need a little rest from everything, even the beautiful
-Victor Hugo

Modern Life reminds me of a patient hooked up to a multitude of monitors,wired up to read every signal,every pulse.A mobile(or a couple),a laptop,ipad,ipod have become common accessories for the normal business executive today.

Already we are never truly alone.A decade ago a trek in the Himalayan wilderness meant being out of reach of modern communication for a few days.Today a satphone follows you into deserts and mountains without a blip.Vacations have never been the same again after blackberry took the onus to cross our professional lives with the personal!!

The Haves want to try to live like the havenots and the Have Nots want everything that the Haves have!What a circus.In the years to come a truly rich or satisfied person will be one who can afford to simply switch off from all these gadgets.The normal 9 to 5 person including yours truly can ill afford that luxury.

The ssuration of the breeze on alpine peaks and in the Valley of Flowers,lying on dry grass on a full moon night looking up at the stars,snorkelling off the coral reef with moray eels for company...these are the sounds of silence.

How many have known even a few moments of complete silence?without any ambient noise to disturb the reverie?How many have gone for 2 days without seeing another human being?How many have stood on a mountain knowing its just them at that point in time?

Disconnect,disavow modernity if only for a few minutes every week,cause this modern life casts an opaque film over us...something that gnaws at the edges of our soul.On my disparate travels across the length and breadth of India,I met so many westerners from USA,Germany,Israel,France,USSR in the 1980-1990s who had given up the creature comforts of their life including social security and joined ISCKON or Krishna Consciousness,simply living in the high hills etc just trying to connect to their soul.

I would think to myself ,how could they give up on stuff that to me in my teens sounded like heaven.I do not know if there really is a Soul,but I damn well know how important it is.