Once language was assumed to be a soft means of communicating ideas, feelings, concepts et al, now it has turned into a lethal tool of suppression and violence. In such a depressing and bleak socio-political landscape, it is poetry — and perhaps fiction too — that seems to present us with a ray of hope. Poetry abhors noise, despises roaring hubbub. True, unadulterated poetry originates from the sanctuary of silence and solitude — the remote regions of the human self. So, it says less yet conveys a lot. Martin Heidegger seems to point to the language of poetry in The Way to Language where he puts, “One can speak, speak endlessly, and it may all say nothing. As opposed to that, one can be silent, not speak at all, and in not speaking, say a great deal’’. Mind, silence doesn’t necessarily characterise the absence of words, rather it is such a use of language in which gaps, spaces and ruptures are masterly created.

¶ 7:33 AM