A Conversation With The Silence

A Conversation with Silence

Writer: Dr Satish Vimal            
Review By :Tariq Ahmad Tariq   

            This 110 page diary by Dr satish Vimal is really a treat to read. The narrator has, in a way, initially suppressed all the resentments he had for the ideologies carried forward by many of his friends from various literary circles. These friends who I am talking about were actually his contemporary  writers.

( The Diary of Dr Satish Vimal, )

The narrator ,for his humility, would never afford to earn their ill-will despite having strong reservations against their motivated moves in the field of literature. The narrator kept listening to them, but the tradition they were going with would choke his breath .He finally found the way to shed the load off his chest.  The misadventures harbored by these people found the mention in the diary that the narrator took his refuge into. This is possibly inspired by the world famous diary of the young girl. The diary that has been titled as “A Conversation with The Silence” has been started with the quote of the young girl, Anne Frank,which reads,  “I have a great need to get all kinds of things off my chest. Since paper has more patience than people, I decided to write a diary.”

Dr Satish Vimal

After reading the original Kashmiri  version of the book “A Conversation  with the Silence”, I could understand that the narrator had a great need to share the agony inflicted upon him by the opportunists. He could not have decided whom to tell all this. He decided to play safe only after he had a meaningful conversation  with the silence. He allowed both his inside and outside to communicate with the silence. The silence proved a keen listener, a great adviser, and the custodian of all of his sufferings.

I, as a keen reader of this beautiful diary could sum up the musings of the narrator in a couple of pages. My summation could motivate you to read this worth reading scripture afresh, and when you do this, you will discover more and more valuable things from it.

As per my understanding, the narrator felt panicked to see the custodians of his native literature in a compromising mood. He was utterly heart broken. It was, however, only when he came across some great thinkers’ plight having met the same scenario, but sticking himself fast to a positive belief that the narrator saw the light in the dark. According to the thinker, “The wheel of the time keeps on spinning all the time. Sometimes the dirt and immorality becomes so visible that it appears that it will never die out , but we have to be invariably optimistic and wait the same wheel to bring to the fore the light of virtue and goodness .After every dark night, it is always the bright day.”

Tariq Ahmad Tariq

The narrator is surprised to know that the silence is way ahead to understand the chaos the narrator has been beset with.

The silence whispers him saying that the writers of his native land are ready to sell their musings at marginalized rates, and that there is a rat race among them for hollow patronages. The narrator is told that with the changing times, their attitudes keep also changing.

Perhaps the wheel of the time inspires the change from within. When values undergo change, the attitudes have to reflect the inner change.

It is a proven fact that with the dawn of the civilization when man, for the first time, stepped the first wrung of progress, he started dreaming for absolute authority over all creatures. His vanity made him into his own enemy. He thought everything in the world has been created for him who could challenge his authority. He started amassing wealth to buy inner peace, which he was badly lacking, but he could not buy it. He was left devoid of the much needed peace.

The utterances of the silence revealed to the narrator how the writers of his land keep busy making organizations to find a proper stage for voicing their concerns, and when then get the stage they start changing the colours. They start claiming that their literature is as rich as the literature of the leading languages of the world citing the examples of the bards of the previous centuries. But when it comes to reviving it for keeping it relevance intact they fail to deliver.

The narrator whispers the silence that he knows well that time keeps on changing its pace and that its flight knows no stoppages, so do the tides of  The Jehlum.The  Jehlum has been witness to all social, political, economic, and cultural changes of her people so is the literature of this land. It has kept the record of all materialistic as well as spiritual pursuits of its people.  With the changing times it has kept its relevance intact. We regard it as a mirror of different ages. Tomorrow’s literature will be the true representative of tomorrow. Genuine authors have their fingers always on the pulse of time. We hope our authors will realize someday that they have been betrayed by materialistic pursuits, and will return to safeguard real human values and raise the standard of Kashmiri literature.

The narrator feels that reading is his compulsion and that he enjoys it. He thinks that he should be proud of this hobby.  He has faith that reading enlightens the reader and makes him into a much better human.  Meeting people and spending time with them create room for gossips, but reading books and listening to the great thinkers make all the difference.  When the narrator reads, he feels that store house of his knowledge, his canvas of thinking, his philosophy of life etc. all assume some decent shades.  He feels his heart is enlightened and his intellect starts stretching its limbs far and wide.

The narrator recalls of reading an essay from a literary magazine which had made him very sad. Some reviewer while reviewing the works of some author had descended to target the persona of the said writer.  He had termed other critics as foolish as they had previously written in his favour .  The narrator feels that his soil still has to wait some reliable and honest critics who could help in raising the standard of literature to the desired heights.   The narrator is made to understand that literature does not breed at hollow spaces but every literature has a legacy carried forward by its writers.  It is the offshoot of different branches of knowledge, different situations, experiences scattered over a long time Span etc.  So, while writing the review of literature it is necessary to keep in mind that there are always different segments and shades of knowledge.  Literature is always inspired by social ethics of a nation. Literature finds the yarn for itself from all the disciplines of the civilized society. A cretic must be well aware of all these dimensions.

The narrator whispers to the silence that with the passage of time, literature makes some values obsolete, and replaces them with the new ones; the ones which are in the currency.  But the way the writers in kashmir have been bartering their products in quite tragic. The worst of all  tragedies  is that, for a writer, if he is acclaimed as being legend for his certain contribution, his all works are tagged as great without allowing them go through  some set procedure..

The narrator shows no reservations to tell that in this soil, it is all the social standing of the writer, and his being socially or politically effective that his write-ups are recognized and graded as good, better, or the best. The narrator wishes that this phenomenon shall change for the good.

The silence is again broken when she shares another malady of some poets who claim that reading other poets make their creativity into a hollow stuff. They prefer to live in their self-made cocoons. The question remains how their personal perception translated into poetry could find takers when they harp on not reading others to keep their productivity uncompromised.

The silence whispers to the narrator that common man suppresses and hides his pain by keeping silent, but the writer cannot do so. He brings it into public domain. He speaks out on behalf of the common man. According to the UNISCO, the wars have always been fought in the name of some thought propagated by some writer. In the USA the war against slavery was initiated by the book “UNCLE TOM'S CABIN “written by Elizabeth Stove. The American president, Abraham Lincoln said it publicly that the dwarf writer made the entire America stand on toes.

Why do people read literature?  Some people appreciate the thought process involved in it. People keep record of how literature has inspired and shaped the civilizations over thousands of years. Reading literature creates strong bonds between the writer and his reader.  It initiates unending dialogue between the two. The reader becomes the keen observer of what the writer keeps creating.

George Staizen once said that all the words in the city have turned mercilessly wild. In this scenario it is only some unwritten poem that can inspire a change. Such a poem will have same effect as the mesmerizing songs of the early birds.

The silence believes that there lives another man within every man who keeps on peeping through the rugs of time. He is at equal distance from the past and the future. Literature extends the power to look deeper into the fragments of time. It reveals the secret of eternal peace. Literature fails to inspire only when it stays with the past, and tries to distance itself from what we call spirituality.

The narrator recounts how he saw, in a seminar, some scholars speaking as if of his heart. The scholars did, in the seminar, short list the reasons why Kashmiri literature had come to such a stand still. They had agreed upon the points that the compromising nature of the writers, and the lack of honesty on part of the critics have conspired evenly for this sorry state of affairs.

They were heard saying that literature is mirror image of the real life which is necessarily tinted with pain and pleasure. Literature helps us live centuries within a live moment. It takes us to the wonder lands. Literature enriched with human values lasts every test of the time. It is simultaneously local as well as universal..

Whenever new ideas, thoughts or values become visible, people addicted to the beaten paths raise hue and cry. This is but natural. Literature needs to explore new ways. Old values are subjected to amendments in order to keep their relevance intact.

The concerns raised by the narrator and communicated to his companion have relevance to every literature lover. A common reader does also think on the same lines. But he lacks expression. The diary has in a very nice way showed the ugly face of the so called custodians of Kashmiri literature. Truth has to prevail, and it will, but the dishonesty which has been making merry for long shall distance us from the richness of our literature.  This is a heavy loss inflicted upon all the people with this linguistic identity by the custodians of the language.

I am all praises for Dr Satish Vimal for doing double favour to the Kashmiri literature. The first being, that he has brought in the public domain this hyper-sensitive issue and has briefed us about its consequences, and the second, that he has added another feather to the Kashmiri literature by adding a chapter to the genre of Diary Writing.

Tariq Ahmad Tariq

Rafiabad Baramulla

Email: taraiq@gmail.com