A silent Comfort during Times of Grief

After the Radhashtami celebrations in 2005, I left India again to go on another tour in Europe. I had several stations again and of course came back to Germany as well. During this trip however I decided that I wanted to spend some time in silence. I had done this before and it was always a nice experience for me.

I was actually not going to spend the whole trip in silence. Not even full days. I wanted to have a set time period of some hours, six or eight, I don’t remember exactly, during which I wouldn’t need to talk. I would otherwise just do whatever I was regularly doing and simply not talk. I told this to my organizers and although it was something new for them, they understood why I wanted to do it. Just withdraw my senses and not spend much energy on talking.

So I kept my silence for certain times and everybody accepted it. People actually appreciated this, too, and I think several people tried the same way of retreat for themselves, too, after seeing me do it. In that time I did not communicate in any form except with the eyes. I did not make signs and I did not write – that would not have had the desired effect. I did not communicate in any way.

I don’t know how it came then, on a day like every other, I saw by chance that my phone was blinking. It had received a message. I picked it up and read a sad SMS: my friend of several years, my first German friend, the doctor from Luneburg told me in short words that his father had expired.

Of course it made me sad to hear about the sadness that my friend must be feeling. I was in Stuttgart, a few hundred kilometers away but I knew that I would meet him in a few weeks, when I would come to Luneburg. For now however I wanted to send him a sign of comfort.

I sent him a blank message back.

My friend knew that I was spending my days in silence. He was sitting in grief in front of the dead body of his father, my message came and he looked at it, probably expecting the usual words of comfort. Blank space. Silence. A hug, love, everything expressed through some blank space. In spite of the place and situation he was in, he had to smile. ‘Only Balendu can do that!’ he thought – something that he still tells me today when we talk about that day.