Pin Drop Silence

I was a student of a Convent-run-school till my fourth grade. At that age, nothing can stop us from chattering, about everything under the sky. Our teachers had a very tough time trying to keep us quiet. As a remedy, they would ask us to put our heads down on the desk. We did not stop at that. We would continue talking with our heads down. So, the teachers came up with a better idea: put your head down and EVERYONE face the windows.

Fast forward about fifteen years and things have changed drastically. I am at the gym every morning, at 7. There are about 20 other people working out at the same time. I've been going to the gym since almost a month, yet I do not know the name of a single person. I attempt to smile at a few, and get back a horrified look, like I am from Pluto. It is sixty minutes of silence, only broken by fast paced music playing on the speakers, and my strict trainer asking me to do two more sets of some back breaking exercise.

It seems like we have fallen into a rut. No one talks to anyone anymore. Even if they do, we will all go in kung-fu mode, imagining the person winning over our heart and running away with all our hard-earned money. And if we don't think that way, some incident will make sure we do.

The other day, I was on the bus back home from office. An elderly man was sitting beside me. Somehow, we got talking. He asked me what I do, and I told him I study law. He told me that he was just coming back from a court hearing. His family had some land dispute and it was going on from the past many years. I nod and sympathize with him. As my stop approaches, he suddenly VERY CREEPILY asks me for money in order to eat some food. I am taken aback. He didn't seem like the kind who can't afford food. It starts to feel odd that only after I told him that I am a law student did he say that he is coming back from a legal matter of his own. Fortunately, my stop arrives and I flee as fast as I can.

Maybe he was genuinely in need of money, maybe he was a fraud. I will never know. But we all learn from the people around us and the incidents that we hear about, "Better safe than sorry".

Yet, I wonder if we will ever get out of this rut, into which we seem to fall deeper and deeper.