Sound Of Silence

It was a hot summer afternoon and the merciless rays of the sun were bearing down on a small suburban house in an unremarkable community near the city of Hyderabad. Inside the house, a one sided battle was in progress between a couple who were married for 20 odd years.

The wife was screaming, "What will you do now?"
The husband looked silently at her, then went back to looking at his laptop screen.
"Why don't you say anything?"
"Silence"
"I am asking you what are you planning to do about your job?"
"Silence"
"Does all this mean nothing to you?" She asks gesturing at the house, "We will lose it all!"
"Silence"
"Damn it", she grunted and turning on her heel, and left in a huff slamming the door in her wake.

By the next day, he had earned himself an interview and in a week, a job. While showing her his appointment letter, he asks, "Would you have preferred me arguing with you or getting this done?'

Language is an extremely powerful device and is rightly given credit for all that human society has achieved over the past few millenia. It is what separates us from prehistoric man and beasts, and is said to be the reason for the evolution of the brain along the path that it has taken. However language begets silence just as light begets dark and is an essential part of communication making silence among the most powerful, yet underrated part of communication.







A friend of mine once said, "Human speech is meant to communicate with someone who doesn't understand you completely, not to communicate with someone who does, since that would make it redundant" and yet, the most frequent use of speech is to repeat what is already known to the receiever leaving neither the speaker nor the receiver any more informed of the situation than before.

Communication in such circumstances is used for emotional reasons but is usally counter productive reducing the efficiency of the work being done and causing a build up of stress with no useful output. These emotional outbursts sometimes launch into full scale arguements which serve as a distraction from the work that needs to be done and only cause more problems. Silence on the other hand, allows complete focus on the task at hand and indicates both efficiency and promise.

However, the importance of silence is not limited to just holding back unimportant communication, it is also essential for improving the quality of communication. A speech with no pauses will not leave breathing space for listeners to swallow and assimilate the content. An emotional moment with no time to think and memorize the moment is lost in time. Music cannot be played without playing the pauses effectively. The very working of our hearing needs a certain pauses after a while to prevent the incoming communication from turning into a stream of gibberish.

They form an essential component of public speaking where pauses are used to place emphasis on certain points or for dramatic effect. The effective use of silence is what separates a speaker from an orator. It is the mastery of this form of building suspense that lead to specches like those delivered by Anthony (Julius Caesar), Winston Churchill and Hitler among others

An extended period of silence is far more dangerous to the human brain than an equivalent exposure to loud noise. An experiment involving a person isolated in a soundproof chamber with no sources of sounds on the inside showed the person growing progressively madder and craving some kind of aural stimulation. The phrase "Defeaning Silence" comes from the fact that the development of the human mind occured in the presence of a background noise and was an essential part of his survival instinct, and when that is removed, the brain is unable to process the absolute lack of noise causing blow to the brain that is immense.

The sound of silence is akin to the color of black. Its importance is its lack which emphasises everything around it.

"Silence Saves"

Black Swan

"The problem with experts is that they do not know what they do not know" - Nassim Nicholas Taleb

There are few things that command as much attention as the idea of a black swan. The possibility that the idea of an angelic white swan can be turned on its head is as disturbing as it is unexpected. As a result of this and their natural rarity, the existence of black swans was earlier confined to myths and urban legends. Their subsequent discovery and acknowledgement gave them particular symbolic value of being beyond human expectations.

A Black Swan event ( capitalized ) is one which is unexpected and when realized, impacts the world in a way that shakes the ground beneath everyone's feet. These events are often followed by attempts by people to then rationalize the event and claim that the event was predictable and could have been prepared for.

Our lives are shaped more by past Black Swan events than by the cumulative effect of all other events.Rare and improbable events occur much more often than we dare to think. Our thinking is usually limited in scope and we make assumptions based on what we see, know, and assume. Reality, however, is much more complicated and unpredictable than we think.

When Writers Hate Writing

I Hate Writing.

During my schooling, when i was asked to write an essay on a certain topic or to write a letter to the teacher saying i was sick and excused from school, despite the practical value associated, it was a task which i wholeheartedly despised and didn't complete unless repeatedly rebuked and coaxed.

Several years hence, and i am no better off. If i am ever asked to give a handwritten letter or assignment, i prefer putting it off as long as i can before forcing myself to finish it and hand in a hastily scribbled version. But, if the same is allowed in printed form or as a soft copy, i spend considerable effort editing it and ensuring the assignment submitted is the best i can present.

This begs the question of why is there such a difference.


The answer lies in the fact that the presentation in a hand written version depends on the aforesaid hand writing and that is something i have never found myself good it. Call it an expression of personality or the level of confidence in a person or simply a matter of clarity of thought but i have never been able to pen a single sheet of paper which has been considered to be of above average presentation or even legible for that matter but i myself find my handwriting perfectly clear and therein lies the problem which kept me away from writing for a considerable period of time. I cannot understand how to write legible script without understanding what it is illegible in the first place and to find out that,i would need to step into the mind of another person. The grapes of legibility lie in too high a branch for this fox, but i did find it possible to express my thoughts without worrying about presentation on computers and that was what augmented my love for them while allowing me to express without restraint.


I am far from being the only such writer who can only express themselves only on computers where the presentation is mostly taken care of and editing is far easier. The established (mal)practice of judging a work by its presentation cannot play as much of a role and commoners who earlier could not hope to voice their views in a manner fit for the papers can now use simple applications to make write without any voodoo trickery to make a legible handwritten version.

What this means is that every person who can frame basic sentences can now legitimately call themselves writers and  write and publish works without ever knowing how to write legibly on paper and this is a fundamental change in our understanding of language and script.

Adding to this, the widespread availability that any piece of writing can now achieve using the internet, you now have a disorganized press in the form of every person who wishes to write criticizing and publicizing actions of the powers that be. This decentralization of the powerful force of the press and ever increasing reach of computers makes me hopeful that there might come a time when oppression can longer find a hiding place amongst the far flung corners of the world.

The value of a script is now no longer constrained by how its written. Yes, there will be calligraphists for those rare and unique hand written copies or to create new fonts but the general use of a script and everyone learning its twists and turns is coming to a close with the use of legible, ready scripts in computers and that, is good riddance.

When Light and Sound Are Not Enough

What would be the most terrifying,exhilarating, adrenaline inducing moment for mankind?

As a species that has forever feared the unknown and invented innumerable ingenious ways for self protection (destruction), it could be the moment we launched a nuclear war and annihilated all life on the planet. It could also be the moment when we first come face to face with life from a different planet.

How would we react in such situations?



How would we attempt to talk?