There is silence among the hills. There is a lot of space for the thoughts to spread and enough space for most human sounds to fade away before reaching the ears not wanting to hear them. Clean air and water, a view which feels that it can be seen forever, in the evening the distant glistening villages or small towns that can be seen afar.
I often find myself returning to the memories of standing and watching the hills. I remember the view and I remember the peace. I however make some changes to the memory especially in my immediate background to blend it more into the memory, giving it a certain hue of a shade of blue to give it that distinct feeling of nothing else being around.
However, in one memory there was something distracting on the right and despite my best attempts, I could not completely shake away its presence from that memory. The sight of a path that disappeared into the trees. People around used it regularly, even during the dark late evenings, but it had its share of history of occurrences to make us city people feel uncomfortable. Disappearances, animal attacks, conflicts among people, the stories of the supernatural , there were so many stories. I suspect it could be a trick to attract more tourists because even the children there had no hint of fear travelling there, but sometimes believing even if a little can be a unique experience .
One evening I made my way there, to the beginning of the path. I did not walk further and just stood there. The winds shook the trees; beyond a certain distance nothing could be seen. It was dimly lit by bulbs clearly not capable of effectively dealing with the darkness, I began to unwillingly recall some of the stories, a small child who was lost twelve years back but was sometimes seen standing at the exact place where I was, the tree where someone decided to end his own life.
I realised the silence once more but unlike the view of hills, here it played a different role. The unique thing about what is beyond our vision and immediate reach is the imagination of occurrences good or bad and the dark of night was the perfect example from our daily lives of it. I did not spend much time there and came back, especially after an unnecessary fright from a person normally walking that way, he must have a good tourist joke to tell. I certainly came back with an interesting perspective and as for the stories, I will write them down as soon as I can figure out the right way to describe that feeling of fear.
Written by Anuran Chatterji
Early Morning Memories 
One response to “Shades of Silence”
Your piece is beautifully evocative and quietly mesmerizing. The way you contrast the serene openness of the hills with the unsettling mystery of the forest path shows a remarkable sensitivity to atmosphere and emotional nuance. You don’t simply describe a landscape—you allow the reader to inhabit it, to breathe its stillness, see its fading light, and feel the subtle shift from peace to unease.
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