Sound of Silence

Now I am sleeping and now I am wide awake. Just like that.

I try to figure out what happened.
Was it some bad dream?
A noise?
Then I realize ... there is no noise. In fact no sound. No where.
I stay awake trying to listen to any sound from anywhere. Nah!
The entire hill station of Kodai goes absolutely still at around 3 a.m. in the morning.
This happened to me the first two nights I spent at Kodaikanal.
I now know what is meant by 'deafening sound of silence'
I feel like a zen master :-)

Or rather like Kamal Hassan in the movie Pushpak Vimana. He cannot sleep in the 5 star hotel. So he goes back to his room that is next to the cinema hall and records the loud noise. Back at the hotel he plays the tape recorder and snores away to glory.

Have you seen the movie. It was released in the north as Pushpak. There are no dialogs in the movie. It is not required. Unfortunately, it was not a box office hit. I wonder why wasn't it India's official entry at the Oscars. Anyways, click on the above link to know more about the movie. And if you haven't seen it, go ahead and get a copy from the local video library. I promise you won't be disappointed.

Coming back to my experience of total silence at Kodai ... I was disappointed that I did not wake up in the middle of the night on the 3rd and 4th day. I sort of started enjoying the experience. There is a kind of peace in total silence.