SILENCE !

SILENCE

!K. Rahman

Silentio Silentio Silentio Silentio Silentio

Silentio Silentio              Silentio Silentio

Silentio Silentio Silentio Silentio Silentio

This is a Spanish poem. Keith Mitchell, our Grammar teacher in Edinburgh, wrote it on the blackboard to make a point in relation to language, grammar and communication. The missing SILENTIO in the middle is the deviation from grammar but it communicates the intention of the poet and allows him to say what he wants to.

Silence is golden is a saying that means it is better to say nothing in a particular situation. These words of considered wisdom are taken from the proverb that says speech is silver, silence is golden meaning it is better to speak and even better not to.

The silent majority is another idiom that comes to mind. The silent majority is a large bulk of population that has moderate and reasonable line of thought but prefers not to express.

The vocal minority, then, takes charge and begins to govern. What is worse, the silent majority silently becomes a contributor to the worsening state of malaise even if it doesn’t want to. But it sticks to the lesser evil. That’s why, perhaps, the saying is: silence is golden and not silence is gold.

If silence is gold, it will shine in the light of “kindness and generosity, openness, understanding and feeling.” But silence is golden and the golden, nowadays, shines best in the light of “sharpness, greed, acquisitiveness, meanness, egotism and self interest.”(The quotes, this one and the one above, are taken from Steinbeck.)

The golden also shines, nowadays, in the light of false wisdom, false erudition, false honour and pseudo-religion and pseudo-spiritualism. It is threateningly striking, like lightning, through the dark of the blackest clouds of current corrupt politics and corrupt bureaucracy.

The golden is not always gold, like in golden days or golden hair. Therefore, silence is not always silent.

It can now be said that there are two types of silence: positive silence and negative silence. Positive silence is peace and quiet. Negative silence is disturbing noise.

Luckily, while I am endowed to relish the taste of silence that is positive, I am perhaps equally fortified to stand or turn a deaf ear to silence that is negative, even if its cacophony has deafening decibels. But if I decided to be silent when a rebuttal was needed to at least get a disapproval registered, I would be silently supporting negativity and I should feel guilty. I should be equally guilty if I spoke where I should have kept quiet. What is, therefore, needed is good sense rather than erudition or the so-called present-day wisdom. Good sense brings with it the wisdom to apply intelligence at the right time and place.

It is advisable to sleep over desire for anything that is material but it is always dangerous to sleep over minor ailments, for what looks like a small lump today may turn into an abscess or even a cancer over a period of time.

In the last six or seven decades it seems humanity has taken more wrong decisions than the right ones !