Sound of Silence
- Avinash Nair
- 5 hours ago
- 12 min read
Unseen, unheeded strands of existence. Unheard is their sound of silence.
A roadside tea stall clung to the edge of a narrow road; its handcart blackened with years of grease and patience. The blue that was once its true color survived only along the frayed edges, thin streaks of memory resisting erasure. They gathered quietly in unnoticed corners, trying to preserve their originality. The fading light caught these subtle evidences of a better past and held them briefly, as though reluctant to let them disappear entirely.
Men gathered around the stall as the day began to loosen its grip. Cups were cradled in tired palms. Conversations overlapped without destination. Oil hissed in the background as pakoras surrendered to heat and resurfaced golden and indifferent. The smell of frying gram flour clung stubbornly to skin and fabric, embedding itself into the ordinary.
A boy, no older than fourteen, moved through the space with practiced invisibility. He slipped between bodies and unfinished sentences, collecting empty glasses abandoned on the pavement. He carried them toward the side of the stall, near a crooked lamp post that leaned slightly, as though exhausted by its own duty. There, a bucket of murky water waited in quiet resignation. The glasses were dunked, rotated, rinsed with sharp splashes that sounded more purposeful than they were.
His hands worked automatically.
His eyes did not.
They wandered toward the road where schoolchildren passed in crisp white uniforms, their laughter ironed and pressed like their clothes. He watched them the way one watches a departing train, aware that it was never meant to stop. A small wooden stool stood beside him, unused, like a promise postponed. He placed the washed glasses upon it, upturned, allowing gravity to complete the ritual.
Across the narrow road stood a low compound wall. Upon it sat a man whom the neighborhood had quietly agreed not to notice. His beard flowed unevenly across a face carved by sun and neglect. His hair hung in dry, matted strands. His clothes were neither torn nor intact, they simply existed. An old pair of sports shoes held together what little dignity remained. In his arms, pressed close against his chest, he held a plastic bag, not casually, but protectively, as though the contents were capable of leaving him.
He did not beg. He did not call out. He only watched.
A stray dog roamed between stall and garbage bin; hope stitched into every cautious step. The garbage bin itself leaned forward, bloated with excess, awaiting an absolution that would never arrive.
Two young men approached the stall and seated themselves on a wooden bench to the left. One wore his beard like a thought he hadn’t resolved. The other wore composure like a well-ironed shirt. Tea was ordered. Pakoras followed.
“What happened?” the composed one asked, offering a piece. “Why are you so withdrawn?”
The bearded one accepted the pakora but did not eat it. His fingers held it loosely, as though unsure of its purpose.
“Did they agree for the show?”
A nod.
Silence settled between them, not hostile, just heavy.
The tea arrived in small glass tumblers. One was lifted immediately, steam meeting impatience. The other remained untouched, warming the palm that held it.
“You seem disturbed.”
“It’s nothing.”
But it was not nothing. It was a face. It was several faces. It was a hall filled with children who had learned to negotiate abandonment before learning multiplication.
Earlier that day, they had stood inside a childcare center, a large hall that tried very hard to resemble warmth. The beds were pressed neatly against one wall, their metal frames painted in a color that had surrendered to time. Thin mattresses lay upon them, covered in sheets that had been washed often but never truly freed from their past. The windows were tall enough to allow generous light to enter, but not generous enough to promise certainty. Sunlight filtered in hesitantly, forming pale rectangles on the floor, illuminating dust particles that floated with an unhurried indifference, as though even light here had learned restraint.
The walls carried faint imprints of former decorations, tape marks where charts once hung, outlines where pictures had been removed, ghosts of alphabets that had tried to teach permanence in a world built on abandonment. Somewhere in a corner, a plastic toy lay on its side, its missing wheel quietly announcing its resignation.
“Fourteen children!” The caretaker had said.
Nine girls. Five boys.
The numbers were presented without drama, almost like attendance being called in a classroom where no one expected full presence. Some were below three years of age, kept separately, she mentioned, in another section that required “special attention.” The phrase lingered strangely in the air. Special attention. As though attention were a scarce resource. As though care could be portioned and distributed in measured spoons. As though affection had to be budgeted.
“Most of them were left in hospitals, on doorsteps, in garbage bins,” the caretaker had explained without theatrics.
Somewhere between being born and being unwanted.
The children moved around the room with a peculiar balance of hesitation and resilience. A few sang loudly, their voices stretching beyond the room’s capacity, as though volume alone could demand existence. Others observed from corners, their eyes older than their limbs. Trust, here, was never immediate. It had to be negotiated.
And in that space, between metal beds and filtered light, between statistics and silence, humanity felt both fragile and embarrassingly negotiable.
There was a little girl standing slightly away from the cluster of children, as though distance had become her instinct. Her hair was tied into two uneven knots, not careless enough to be neglect, not careful enough to be comfort. She watched everything, the two men, the caretaker, the door, with a stillness that felt older than her years.
The caretaker reached for her gently and rolled up the sleeve of her faded frock.
“These are not birthmarks,” she said.
The bearded man had noticed the marks even before she spoke. Faint crescents. Small, imperfect arcs. Not deep enough now to bleed, but deep enough to have once meant pain. The skin had healed unevenly, as though even recovery had been reluctant.
“She was found in a garbage bin behind the vegetable market,” the caretaker continued. “Wrapped in a plastic cover. Someone heard her crying at dawn. By the time they reached… the stray dogs had already found her.”
The room did not react. The other children continued playing. A song faltered somewhere in the background and resumed. Life, even here, refused to pause long.
“They must have been drawn by the movement,” the caretaker added, almost to herself. “It was dark. No one saw who left her.”
The bearded man felt something tighten inside him, not anger at first, but a dull, spreading disbelief. He tried, involuntarily, to imagine the bin. The smell. The cold metal. The thin plastic. The smallness of a body mistaken for refuse. His mind resisted the image, but it returned anyway, unwanted and persistent.
“She survived,” the caretaker said quietly. “Infections. Fever. But she survived.”
The little girl did not flinch while her story was spoken aloud. She stood there as though the narrative belonged to a distant relative. Her eyes met his for a brief second, not pleading, not accusing, simply assessing.
“What is your name?” he had asked, lowering himself to her height.
“Panchee,” she replied, her voice light but cautious.
The name felt almost ironic in his chest. A bird. Something meant to be set free. Something meant to be protected from fall.
“She flutters constantly,” the caretaker smiled. “So, we named her that.”
He nodded, but his hand lingered slightly longer on her head than necessary, as though touch alone could rewrite memory.
And then another small hand gripped his fingers with startling firmness.
“Will you take me home? I will be good. I promise.”
The smile that had briefly appeared disappeared as quietly as it had come.
Now, back at the tea stall, the bearded man exhaled sharply. “How can you act so normal after seeing things like that?”
His friend looked at him, puzzled more than annoyed.
“I cannot forget their faces,” he continued. “How can someone just abandon them? Have we lost our sense as humans?”
The pakora slipped from his hand. It hit the ground. The stray dog lunged forward and swallowed it whole, then sat back down, hopeful for more.
At that precise moment, the silent man from across the road rose, crossed over without announcement, and seated himself beside the dog. Not too close. Not too far. He waited.
The friend laughed lightly. “Look at this fellow.”
“That’s not funny,” the bearded man replied. “He’s hungry.”
The plate of pakoras was extended.
The man accepted it without gratitude or hesitation and returned to his wall. He ate slowly, occasionally tossing a piece down to the dog.
“His name is Nagappa,” the tea stall boy said quietly, collecting empty cups.
“He talks to no one,” he added. “But everyone knows his name.”
The sun did not set abruptly; it receded with reluctance.
The conversations around the tea stall thinned into isolated sentences, then into gestures, and finally into a silence that was neither peaceful nor tense, just practical. The oil in the iron kadai cooled gradually, forming a dull skin over its surface. The tea stall owner, now free from the urgency of customers, counted his earnings under the dim bulb that hung from a frayed wire. His fingers were swift, efficient, experienced. He straightened the notes carefully, almost respectfully, before folding them into his pocket.
When his friend called out from across the road, there was laughter in the invitation, the kind that suggests indulgence rather than necessity. The owner hesitated, but not for long. Responsibility was a garment he wore during the day; by evening, it could be shrugged off.
He turned to his son and gave instructions in a tone that discouraged response.
Close the stall. Don’t wait. Tell your mother I’ll be late.
The boy nodded.
At that precise moment, a school auto-rickshaw passed by, crammed beyond safety, bursting with uniforms and unfinished homework. The children inside leaned dangerously close to the open sides, their voices tumbling over one another in laughter that knew nothing of negotiation. The boy froze mid-step, a damp glass still in his hand. His eyes followed the rickshaw until it dissolved at the end of the road.
There was no envy in his gaze. Only calculation.
A quiet measurement of what had slipped beyond reach.
“Don’t you go to school?” one of the young men asked, noticing the pause.
“I used to,” the boy replied after a moment. His tone carried neither complaint nor drama. “But Baba says studying does not fill stomachs.”
He did not argue with the logic. Hunger, after all, was measurable. Education was not.
The young men exchanged a look, not of disagreement, but of inadequacy. Words felt ornamental in the face of such practicality.
As dusk lowered itself over the street, colors began to retreat. The blue edges of the tea stall cart faded into anonymity. Shops pulled down their shutters in metallic resignation. The boy wiped the counter slowly, almost thoughtfully, as though stretching the day a little longer before surrendering it to the night.
Across the road, Nagappa remained seated on the low compound wall.
He had watched the tea stall owner leave. He had watched the boy watch the rickshaw. He had watched the two young men argue about morality as though it were a philosophical inconvenience rather than a loved one.
Nagappa watched everything.
But it was impossible to tell what he absorbed.
As night thickened, the street emptied in layers. The casual pedestrians vanished first, then the shopkeepers, then the voices. Streetlights flickered awake uncertainly, casting hesitant cones of yellow that failed to meet one another. Plastic wrappers drifted across the asphalt like restless thoughts. Dogs claimed their territories near the garbage bin.
The tea stall shut its eyes. Nagappa did not move.
Midnight did not announce itself; it settled like a verdict.
A man emerged from the darker edge of the street, not hurried, not relaxed. His walk carried the controlled urgency of someone who had rehearsed this moment in his mind. In his hand was a heavy bag. He paused near the garbage bin, scanning the emptiness not for witnesses, but for interruption.
The sleeping bodies on the pavement did not stir.
The dogs watched.
He placed the bag into the bin. For a fraction of a second, his fingers remained hooked around its handle, a hesitation so brief it might have been imagined. Then he withdrew his hand and walked away, disappearing into the indistinguishable dark.
Nagappa had seen.
Or perhaps he had only sensed.
He approached the bin slowly, not with shock, but with familiarity. The dogs stepped aside without resistance. He pulled the bag out and carried it under the streetlamp.
When he opened it, the night altered.
A baby girl lay inside, wrapped in a thin blanket that had absorbed more fear than warmth. Her face was small impossibly small framed by fabric too light for protection. She slept at first, unaware of the decision that had displaced her from belonging to waste.
When she cried, it was not loud. It was precise.
A sound that insisted upon existence.
Nagappa’s expression shifted not dramatically, but perceptibly. Something flickered in his eyes that had not been visible all day. Recognition, perhaps. Or memory.
He placed his finger near her mouth. She latched onto it immediately, driven by instinct older than thought. The crying ceased. He withdrew his finger. The crying resumed. He repeated the motion slowly, experimentally watching the effect with an intensity that bordered on fascination.
It was unclear what he felt.
Power? Connection? Curiosity? Or something more fragile?
He did not laugh. He did not speak. But he did not leave.
He stood there longer than necessary, the baby’s cry puncturing the silence around him. He glanced toward the sleeping forms on the pavement, men wrapped in thin sheets, their faces turned away from the world. He looked at the tea stall, its greasy surface dull under the weak streetlight. He looked at the road itself, empty and unconcerned.
Then, almost abruptly, he walked toward the tea stall.
He placed the baby gently upon the cart’s platform, adjusting the blanket clumsily, as though unsure how much pressure tenderness required. He stepped back and watched her cry.
Why did he leave her there?
Was it protection? Was it fear? Was it strategy?
The answer did not declare itself.
He disappeared into the darkness.
Time did not move immediately. It lingered.
The baby’s cry rose and fell in uneven intervals, fragile yet persistent, a sound too small for the vastness surrounding it. The streetlamp hummed faintly above, insects orbiting its tired glow. Somewhere in the distance, a dog barked once and then thought better of it.
Then another shadow detached itself from the dark.
It did not arrive abruptly. It gathered.
Slower. Heavier.
This one did not carry hesitation in its steps. It carried decision.
The figure stopped a few feet away from the cart. Waited. As though listening, not for the child, but for interruption. The sleeping bodies on the pavement remained unmoved. The wind shifted slightly, dragging a scrap of newspaper across the road with a dry whisper.
The baby cried again.
The shadow stepped closer.
For a brief second, it stood beside the cart, its outline breaking the weak halo of the streetlamp. A hand lifted, not hurried, not trembling. The movement was deliberate. Practiced almost.
The crying faltered. Not abruptly but gradually.
Like a candle reconsidering its flame.
The street did not react. The lamp continued its faint hum. The plastic wrappers continued their restless migration. The night, wide and indifferent, received what it was given.
And then…silence.
Not the kind that follows sleep…the other kind.
The shadow remained still for a moment longer, as though ensuring completion. Then it withdrew, folding back into darkness with the same measured heaviness with which it had arrived.
The cart stood alone once more. The night absorbed the rest.
When Nagappa returned, he was holding a packet of milk close to his chest, not casually, but carefully, as though carrying something sacred. His steps were quicker now, almost anxious. He looked toward the cart before reaching it, as though bracing himself for confirmation.
The platform was empty…He stopped.
The milk packet crumpled slightly in his grip.
He searched first in confusion, perhaps she had rolled? Perhaps someone had moved her? Then the search grew urgent. He looked beneath the cart, behind it, into the garbage bin. He scanned the sleeping bodies, as though one of them might have taken her in mercy.
His breathing became uneven. Sweat gathered along his temples despite the cold.
Then he noticed something near the bin.
What he saw was never described in detail. It did not need to be. The scream that followed did not resemble guilt. It resembled rupture.
Morning arrived, as it always does, with its practical light.
A crowd gathered near the tea stall. The police had already been. The body had been taken. But the story remained, growing more elaborate with each retelling.
“They found him near the bin.”
“He was holding the child.”
“They say he raped her.” Pause…
“I always felt he was weird.”
“He always smiled at kids… an evil smile.”
“I know…”
“They say…”
Speculation required no proof. Only consensus.
Nagappa was nowhere to be seen.
The tea stall reopened. Oil hissed obediently. Tea boiled. Cups clinked. The mechanics of survival resumed without hesitation.
The boy crossed the road quietly, drawn toward the wall where Nagappa used to sit. The plastic bag lay there, flattened and neglected. He picked it up and opened it carefully.
Inside were small things.
A faded frock, neatly folded despite its wear. A pair of tiny sandals. Two broken toys. And a photo frame with shattered glass.
The boy knelt. He lifted the photograph.
A younger Nagappa looked back at him, clean-shaven, upright, smiling with a simplicity that did not appear manufactured. In his arms was a little girl, perhaps three years old. She leaned into him easily. There was no fear in her posture. No hesitation.
The boy studied the face for a long moment.
Was this the same man who had smiled at a crying infant under a streetlamp? Was this the same man whose scream had split the night open? Was this the same man the crowd now condemned without pause?
The boy did not conclude.
He simply began collecting the shards of glass one by one, careful not to cut himself.
Behind him, men laughed. Someone ordered tea. Someone repeated the accusation with greater confidence than before. The tea stall owner shouted at the boy for not minding the crowd at the stall. Business was abundant today… the owner felt an immense sense of gratitude towards Nagappa.
The road continued with its habitual indifference.
Comments