Chapter 1, The song of the mountain

Space resonates with different kinds of songs, different kinds of music. There are songs with words, there is music with beautiful sounds and then, there is a song without words and there’s music without a sound. To be able to listen to deeper songs of silence, one needs to be a listener...a listener of strange sounds of silence. And even this listening comes in layers; for there is a listening that is enforced and where one has to 'train' the mind to be silent and then, there’s listening that is more natural and comes effortlessly…listening towards the sound of silence that is more profound and deeper among various sounds of silence.


A trip to village Badanga, the second day of the stay at the residency, as we (the invited group of artists in the 12 days art residency- Refer my previous blog posts- ‘Save Earth’ and ‘A deeper pull’) touched the remote point in the village it was almost evening. As randomly and impulsively everyone was walking…pretending to be part of the herd, but at the same time in their own state of indulgence, reflection…absorption...
Our guide pointed us to a mountain top and called all of us to reach there. There seemed to be a temple of Shri Hanumana as I figured out from some distance as we were climbing the slope. I stopped before I could reach the temple to look back from this height to get a view of these ancient Aravali ranges…a pause to absorb the sight, for it looked like too much to take in- in a single glance. I decided to sit there at the mountain as the sight continued to build up a strange kind of silence… and then down in the valley, I saw a cremation ground adjacent to a dried riverbed just a few hundred meters away from the hill and behind it is again the mountain range. This sight reminds me of a spiritual principle about Shri Shiva where they explain that it is where the realm of this material world ends (the journey associated with the body of a being), from there starts the journey of the spirit- the Atma that is the reflection of Shiva himself in every being and there lies the abode of Shree Shiva (unless one achieves nirvana, then one is eligible to experience the realm of Shiva- the joy of the spirit or the state of nirananda in their lifetime only). I noticed a mountain just behind this cremation ground. Bound by this deeper pull towards this song of silence resonating in the whole valley and the ranges, I believe I could just sit there for hours and if Zaynab (the musician artist among us) wouldn’t have come- her coming was more of a co-listener and added warmth to the moment. I felt she might have caught some fragments of this song that I was listening to…and this is one of the reasons that I was sometimes calling her ‘Sufi girl’.

Would it be too much to tell what I felt- the pull towards this ancient mountain- the one standing behind this crematorial ground, as if it was always resonating with this song of deeper silence and was waiting for someone to respond to the song. A song of a mountain…that allowed me to be rooted there and narrated my journey of the next ten days of my stay in this place. That is when I decided to choose this particular mountain for my art project in the village or probably, it was this mountain who chose me...

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