The personification of sounds

I unfortunately do learn, and have to live in the place that I am in; and, by and by glean a little of the life that inhabits it with me. Cupboard doors for instance claim their significance in an echo of the importance of garments they once housed. Madness? no - not quite, but a personification: an understanding aided by sound, and yes an interpretation; which like all of them have always rested however gently or heavily on the imagination.

Crows learn my ways just like I learn theirs: a complete indifference to our wellbeing is what binds us, and hence in this asexual relationship we encounter only emissions, most of them untactile; cries, calls in the morning, appetites and other such routines of awakening from the night that has passed.

A sensitivity to sound, perhaps more so in wooded habitations may manifest in an attunement to the wind; to voice, breath and whispers of neighbours - unconcerned like crows yet sharing a commoner anatomy and hence an understanding which hinges upon an instrument that the other gauzes one through.

Pecks on the wood, a broken twig lifted, the laying of eggs and dog snores in the wee hours of the morning. The insignificance of these vital life functions are drowned in the drone of a motor which the human ear grows more accustomed to, and is perhaps our way of expressing our common ingratitude - and yet, occasionally the sedimentation of a remainder, in memory, ours, others - perhaps only the winds's - does break through, commingling with these scattered sensibilities. Like the exhale from last week's yoga class, creating a faint yet distinct significance whose singularity flashes briefly in a moment before a pigeon rustles her wings, or pans in the kitchen clank in the sink. Doing little else yet reminding us of a world outside, of mores and habits beyond the ambit of an inhabited domesticity.

Port Trust, Chennai, 2021