I haven’t written anything in a long time. At least, nothing worthwhile. I imagine I am going through some sort of writer’s block. Or it might as well just be the hustle and bustle of daily life with leftovers of the stale minutes for actually imagining something that’s close to a perfect thought. It’s not that I have never experienced the silence before. I have. Maybe even several times. But, usually, it is quite easy to snap out of it. I just sit upright on my bed or my chair or at times the car seat. I pull up the phone or the laptop screen and start typing. Even before I know it, I am writing. Stories that have happened and others that have not. Things that exist for others and those that only I know of. It’s just that this particular time, the silence has been a struggle. I attempted to write a couple of times; even started writing some things. And it just did not work. My words resisted my thoughts. So, I thought that the best way out would be to try and capture my inability to write, to vent my silence in the only true way that I have ever known.
I fell in love with writing quite young, long before I understood that in some part it was a talent - something that I own and yet have done nothing to own it. It’s a kind of talent where if you do it the right way, or maybe even the wrong way but for the right people, you can make money out of it. Honest writing has changed governments and histories. It has the power to twist the truths and reveal them. Writing is a great escape from reality and also the only lens to see it. To be able to write is a little more than to be able to say. It is, in its entirety, an opportunity to create a legacy, free of cost. If I invite you to the worlds that write about, it is to make you their owners. The shareholders and the heirs to my thoughts and theories. Hence, to write, when I am alone or when I know with absolute certainty that no one will read it, still provides a solace that is difficult to measure but obvious to feel.
I should confess that silence is not the absolute lack of writing. As I said, I tried, there were attempts and resistance. The silence, paradoxically or rather unintelligibly, is also productive in some regards - for it produces the struggle. When I was a kid, my parents once took me to see a play. It was maybe my first play in an actual theatre. Hasvaphasvi was a comedy, of a largely different effect where the distinguished versatile Marathi actor, Dr. Dilip Prabhavalkar played six different characters in about two-and-a-half hours. The last character that he played was that of an aged veteran actor-singer (Pandit Krishnarao Herambhkar) who is probably adequately respected but seldom remembered by the masses who, as they always do, have found others to entertain their hearts and occupy their minds with. Krishnarao while enjoying his lifetime achievement award ceremony struggles when trying to sing. Momentarily confessing of his defeat, he says (I beg pardon if some Marathi readers find my translation inadequate in conveying the soul of the message)-
“I can see the [musical] notes but I can no longer reach them.”
Like others in the audience and maybe even mimicking them, I felt instantaneous, almost reflexive pity for the old guy. My young mind discarded it as a cruel natural law - inevitable but distant for me. I thought that all you could feel about that moment is captured by the prescription: sympathize if you’re young, empathize if you’re old. But nothing more. It was quite understandable. Here was a singer, who has lost his capacity to sing. His struggle to reach the notes is unforgiving; the same notes that were probably once so easy that they might have glanced upon as unimportant. However, in death’s neighborhood, all men are weak. He couldn’t sing what he wanted to and that’s enough for a singer to feel empty. The struggle is just an added embarrassment. He didn’t want to struggle. He shouldn’t have had to because he didn’t before.
I saw that play again when I was a little older and then several times again after we got it on a DVD. More recently, I saw that specific part on YouTube1. But now when I saw it, I saw something else or maybe something more. It wasn’t just the age that was bothering the singer. It was the loss of ability. He might have been okay with losing teeth, bones, and body with age. But what caused the struggle was losing the song. The struggle wasn’t the supposed apparent embarrassment or the confession, it was having to breathe and live in the forced embrace of indubitable and (in his case) immutable silence.
Silence is difficult. Breaking that silence is random, as random as being able to sing or write. All you are is a temporary curator who is not dispassionate enough.
Yours SiZa
For those of you who can navigate Marathi, here is the video: