Last Wednesday, the unthinkable happened to me. No, I do not mean the COVID or Ukraine news. This is much more trivial and in the larger scheme of things, irrelevant and of no import whatsoever.
However, to me, it felt horrible. My tv refused to work.
I know. Some people call the tv the idiot box. Some people call it mindless corrupting of a sharp mind. Some people call it an addiction. To me, however, it is a portal to a world I remember, dream of, and in the most essential of ways, inhabit.
When I am home, I need everything underlined with the noise of people talking, if not in Gujarati, at least in Hindi. I rarely watch television in English. When I leave home, I leave live tv on on one of the Star, Utsav, or Zee channels for the cats. The cats and I have become accustomed to this noise. When the tv is on, the cats perch on two sides of the sofa and nap or relax. But in the silent house, the cats did not know what to do with themselves and roamed around meaninglessly, sometimes through the house, sometimes outside. They felt abandoned in the silence.
I felt abandoned in the most inexcusable manner as well! I need constant stories being told to me, even if I am not always attentive to them. I love the familiar tropes, the recognizable places, the ease of the idiom, and the comforting cadence of the language. I need the remembered tastes on my tongue and the fragrance of camphor and sandalwood of the festivals. And I am not ashamed to say that I also missed the laughably improbable plots and the outlandish caricatures.
When my tv died, I felt as though one of my anchors, indeed, the very axis of who I am were silenced. Without the familiar syntax and idiom, all that they evoked disappeared as well. Because of my work schedule, I was not able to go out and get one with haste, like I knew I needed to. On a regular week day, I barely get an hour to watch tv. But I need those minutes to re-align all my worlds so everything makes sense before I go to bed.
My entire universe remained plunged in this dark silence for two days and two nights.
Finally, Friday dawned and by the time I was done with work, I knew exactly the kind of tv I wanted, the amount I was ready to spend, and all the know-how I needed so I would get my life back in Eastman Technicolor instead of making do with survival in the shadow world of silence.
By Friday evening, I had my worlds back. The cats heard and returned to their sofa. I had found, traveled to, bought, hefted, assembled, and reconnected, all in the space of 3 hours. My family remains amazed at my prowess, especially the hefting around.
There were times when I wondered if my life would have been easier had I a partner. The very next second, I discarded this idea with an involuntary shudder: who guarantees that a partner would help instead of commenting, faulting, taunting, sighing at my ineptitude, irritating, and generally getting in the way? Perhaps it would have taken much longer to get my tv, had I a partner. I imagine endless arguments about the merits of a certain kind of tv, a continuous sniggering at my dependence on it, a condescending dismissal of my whims, even repeated admonishments to "Get a Real Life!"
At any rate, the absolutely wrong kind of noise.
I have defeated this cosmic silence on my own. Besides, it always gives me a considerable boost of joy, knowing that I can make myself happy. When I talked to my family over the weekend, I casually remarked that I'd bought a new tv. Only some of the closest of my tribe understood the apocalyptic silence, the terror, the displacement, and the immense distress involved in the casual remark. They just said, "Oh. Good." The pause that followed this was pregnant with acknowledgement.
My patient reader must excuse me now; I have a great deal of catching up to do. It will take a week to recover from this turbulence. But soon enough, my feline room mates and I will finally believe in the music, sounds, colors, and cadences of a well-loved, well-remembered universe behind the tv screen.
