Eloquent beauty of silence
I am drawn to Milia Ali's introspective column 'Shouting: A national sport' that appeared recently in The Daily Star (April 7, 2013). It resonates my memorable moments at the Cosmos Club in Washington courtesy Prof. Waldo Sommers of Washington University. It was a full-house lunch hour. The guests were distinguished by three Nobel laureates and a deputy foreign minister of a communist country. The polished black waitresses were busy attending clients so efficiently, their carriage, diction was evidently faultless, and their voice pleasantly at low decibel. Beyond the culinary excellence of the club, what amazed me most was the ambience of silence which I savored intently. Obviously the culture of silence noticeable within the four walls and outside in the West is the precious gift of a cultivated society.
Till date I ardently treasure those moments of the Cosmos Club at a distance of nearly three decades. Shall we ever learn to appreciate the eloquent beauty of silence or its pathological high points and continue to be the land of 'shouting'? Pity.
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