मेरे प्रतिबिंब से मैने पूछा , एक कठिन सवाल,
किस सन्नाटे में खो दिए हैं उसने, मेरे उम्र के सारे साल।

सन्नाटे में कान लगाए सुनने थे मुझे कोई जवाब,
आखिर ये जिंदगी थी, या फिर कोई अर्थहीन सा ख्वाब।

सन्नाटा गूंज रहा था ,जैसे दिल की धड़कन,
सन्नाटे से कैसा है ये मेरे खामोश दिल का बंधन।

कोई नही सुन रहा था पर गूंज रहा था हर पल,
गरज रहा था ,बरस रहा था, जैसे बहता कोई बादल ।

सन्नाटा एक शोर की तरह दीवारों से जा टकराई,
निर्दई सन्नाटे से कोई कह दे, न बने वो मेरी परछाई ।

दस्तक देता है सन्नाटा किसी के चले जाने के बाद,
रह जाते है कुछ बिखरे सामान और उनकी अनगिनत याद।

सूखी पत्तियों ने क्या कभी सुनी है कोई फरियाद
झड़ जाते हैं वो सन्नाटे में, जैसे अनकही, अन्ब्यक्त, कोई बात ।

दिल टूट ने से सन्नाटा गूंजता है लहरों की तरह,
लौट आते है बार बार अश्कों में साहिल की तरह।

मौत के बाद सन्नाटा गूंजता है बनके एक बेबस चीख,
उस सन्नाटे में रह जाती है एक अंतहीन सीख ।

शब्दो से बोझल आंखों से मैंने की है एक फरमाइश,
निस्तब्ध हो जाऊं सन्नाटे में, इतनी सी है ख्वाइश ।

Voices.

I hear voices in my head, sometimes sounding like my own and at other times a little unfamiliar. I love what I hear, like a direct ‘dil se connect’  it keeps pouring into my head. The good talk, the frustrating talk, the wondering talk, the happy talk, the naughty talk, just about everything, keeps me entertained. I weigh what I hear in this ‘silent mode’ , I keep some, I discard some. I feel that I would be lonely without these voices in my head. Voices should not be silenced or else they will lose the strength to speak when needed.

Voices do get lost with time. Time fades the memory of how someone’s  voice used to sound and with that loss seeps in a painful sense of departure.  I will never again hear my Ma waking me up in the mornings in her sweet voice    (mother’s  voices are always sweet ) with a mock anger ” ওঠ, ওঠ ,অনেক বেলা হয়ে গেছে” …( wake up, wake up, it’s  late ). Or my Baba reciting Rabindranath in his deep baritone voice….চিত্ত যেথা  ভয় শুন্য,  উচ্চ যেথা শীর… (Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high). I am also reminded of my grandmother’s croaking voice lamenting life,  my grandfather’s voice reading out stories of Phantom and Mandrake to us. So many voices have got lost from my life, forever. One by one, they just fell silent. And this makes me very consciously aware of the  preciousness of the voices in my everyday life, I want to treasure them. If I could I would store voices in a juke box and keep hearing them on loop.

I wake up every morning with the voices of the common myna bird outside my window. I call them Shalik pakhi and they are rightly called the quarrelsome birds ; for how fiercely they chirp amongst each other reminding me so much of the excited human voices in a market place. I also like the symphony of mixed voices on the streets, in the local buses, trains, playful children at parks or in a classroom,  the cheer on a football field, and I could go on endlessly.  It is like a chaotic orchestra which has its own rhythm. I never feel like hushing these chatters, it adds to my sense of being alive. I have spent months after months in silent apartments of a foreign country. The silence of their neighborhoods, streets, makes me miss home twice as much. In my own country the cacophony of voices fills up my senses !

My memories associated with different voices goes back in years. The street vendors had a sharp shrill  pitch to their voice which would reach right inside our houses. We would rush out on the balcony to see who passes by ;  what magic is he selling on the back of his cycle ? Does that man really sharpen knives? Why does that man beat the cotton balls so hard ? Why can’t we buy all the sweets from the vendor at one go ? My curious  childish mind had many such questions, but the common thread of lingerig memory are those voices.

Nowadays our phones are our vendors. We spent many a silent hour buying, selling, seeing , with our voice less phones. But the phone chymes too, and then out flows the melodious voices of our favourite singers or some vlog maker. We are spoilt for choice now. When I pray, my Alexa plays bhajans for me, I don’t sing them anymore. Gods can listen to better singers than me !

I love to pick up the mobile phone when it rings . Not many people call me on a given day, so I cherish all the voices that come to me  through my phone. They are my people, talking  about life’s small everyday things. These chats gives me a great sense of connect. Each one of them have an unique style of speaking, laced with eagerness, urgency, or even a single monotone. You can understand the mood of the person on the other side of the phone just by listening  to their voices. I get drawn by the energy in the voice of the radio jockeys coming through my Carvan, after all..they have been our “awaz  ke duniya ke doston” from the Binaca Geet Mala days to the present day FM channels.

Last but not the least is the voice of the man in my house. He is the silent type, speaks only when required. But I constantly try to engage him in some conversation, mostly unnecessary ones ! I nudge him to tell me about his golf game, not because I am interested in the game, I only want to hear his voice, I want to hear him talk. I like the sound waves floating freely in a otherwise quiet  house. Since voices, words, music, fills my world in so many ways, I need to be a good listener too. Yes, I listen like a captive audience, I try to hear everything you say, and when I can’t I know you must have spoken well only.