Silent Society

“Silent Society” — by Rupesh Ranjan

To ignore someone — that I can still understand,

But what kind of state is this,

Where no one respects you,

Nor insults you?

No one criticizes your creation,

Nor praises it —

Only silence,

As if words have died forever.

When what you write

Bounces back from the walls,

And disappears into emptiness,

You wonder —

Is this the same society

That once listened to Tulsidas, Kabir, Meera,

And Nirala?

Now everyone is busy —

In their screens,

In their advertisements,

In their borrowed narratives.

Art is no longer a feeling,

It’s an algorithm.

No one has time

To pause and understand,

No one has patience

To listen.

Everyone wants to speak,

But no one wants to hear.

What irony is this —

Where ears exist, but not hearing,

Eyes exist, but not vision,

A mind exists, but not thought.

This society

Forms its opinions

From someone else’s words,

But lacks the courage

To think for itself.

It accepts the trend as truth,

And silent thought as falsehood.

Those who question through art

Are called mad,

Those who speak against the system

Are labeled traitors,

And those who say nothing

Are called “balanced.”

But this is not balance —

It is death.

Death of ideas,

Death of emotions,

Death of creative spirit.

When art goes unheard,

Society slowly becomes deaf.

When literature is neglected,

Civilization turns mute.

When artists lose hope,

Generations lose sight.

Art, culture, and thought —

They are not ornaments,

They are the soul’s expansion.

But when a society begins to fear its own soul,

How long can it survive?

I have seen —

Poets afraid of their own poems,

Painters turning away from their colors,

Thinkers censoring their own words.

This fear

Does not come from tyrants,

It comes from silence —

The silence of society.

For sometimes,

Silence can be more violent than a sword.

I often wonder —

Is this the same land

Where Buddha found truth in silence,

Where Gandhi raised a voice through nonviolence,

Where Tagore sang of freedom,

And Ambedkar wrote the Constitution?

Now it seems

Even thought is on rent.

People don’t have their own opinions,

Only borrowed thoughts.

Every word is a shadow of another,

Every sentence — an influence.

Society now follows,

It doesn’t feel.

It reacts,

But doesn’t reflect.

It has clicks,

But no compassion.

It has posts,

But no perception.

The call of art

Gets drowned in the noise.

Truth

Is no longer trending.

And thought

Has fallen into the trap of clickbait.

Yet,

Some mad souls still write,

Some stubborn spirits still create,

Some silent seekers still speak —

Without words.

Because they know —

Art never dies,

Even if society sleeps.

Truth never stops,

Even if the stage is empty.

One day,

This silence too will break.

One day,

This society will awaken again,

When a child will ask —

“Why did we stop thinking?”

And perhaps that day,

Art will be reborn,

Thought will speak again,

And the soul —

Will awaken once more.