Echoes...

Have you ever met an Echo?

Now what sort of a question is this, you might well ask… Isn’t an echo an auditory effect… how can anyone meet an echo? Perhaps you meant to ask have you ever heard one…

I know, I know. They are all valid doubts. But my question still stands. Have you ever met an Echo? What did it look like to you?

Before I go further along this road, I suppose I should perhaps provide some context. I first made their acquaintance through the works of Enid Blyton I suppose… Her Echoes were one of the many mischievous little folk she populates many of her tales with. They were some kind of fairies I believe, with deep glens and subterranean labyrinths as their living place, (though I believe I heard of one who lived in an old well :) ) They were delighted with (what else) echoing back everything the other folk called out. They were not the main characters of most tales though… I found scattered mentions of them in some of the stories I’ve read over the years and each of the authors inevitably added a little bit to their reality.

As an aside, isn’t it almost wonderful how we draw upon so many sources when we move to beyond “definitions” to “knowledge”? (I feel language becoming inadequate as I try to make the thoughts wear the garb of words again! :) Nevertheless let me see how far I can succeed…) What I’m trying to say is that I’ve found that if someone asks me the meaning of a particular word, or phrase etc., I almost always start fumbling for it... (Unless it’s a very simple word!) Upon reflection I found that this was because it was difficult to convey all the shades of possible meanings succinctly enough. You come across so many references to the same phrase/word, with each reference adding to our knowledge of the meaning that when asked to define it, you can’t help but fumble for how to put all that into a bare bones definition!

That brings me to another point… “Meaning….” Now there’s another fascinating concept. Words are mere labels. At the very dawn of language, they must definitely have arisen from meaningless arbitrary sounds. It is usage that has imbued them with a perceived meaning. And they might well mean different things to different people, or to different times. A tree, for example, might instinctively give me a mental image of the Gulmohur tree, it might mean the eucalyptus for another, a coconut tree for yet another. As for times, I came across an interesting article while surfing quite a while back about the history of the colour "purple". Among other things it talked about how the word “purple” meant a different shade of “purple” a couple of centuries earlier than what it commonly means today. So evidently, talking about “meaning” in the absolute sense is perhaps not exactly correct…

Ah heck! I digressed like crazy again… Shall I delete the last two paragraphs? No leave them be… It’s not a test after all! :)

Anyway turning back to Echoes, an Echo to me meant that creature of sound, an echo meant the reverberation of sound resulting from an obstacle in the path of the sound waves which could be distinguished only if the obstacle was some xyz distance away… (I forgot the exact distance we used to go by… :))

But over the last few months, I’ve realized that I have actually met Echoes. And they were not the creatures Ms Blyton introduced me to. They met me in the guise of people I knew; close as well as not so close friends; family; and utter strangers as well as mere acquaintances. I glimpsed the Echo in them through a chance comment, a thoughtless gesture, a shared vision, an unexpected meeting of minds, a moment of perfect understanding.

It still gives me slight shivers (sometimes pleasant, sometimes unpleasant) to realize how closely another’s thoughts, way of thinking, reacting or gestures echo my own. They never do that for more than a few seconds, or rather that’s how long the feeling of having glimpsed an Echo lasts.

Maybe that’s what was meant by the term kindred souls, or mirrored souls (some people even translate the term as soul mate)… They are people who find their Echoes in one another so many times that it is no longer a matter of surprise to them. If the Echoes provoke a pleasant reaction, it might be pleasant meeting such a one… if unpleasant… well I suspect one of the two might well go insane or murder the other :) Well that’s just a random whimsy… I don’t think even I myself would believe in this concept in my more rational moments.

As for Echoes, they might have gained human flesh, but they still retain their mystique and charm for me. I might feel deliriously happy on having talked with one, depressingly chilled at having encountered another, been delighted with yet another, and been very suspicious of yet another… However, it’s tough to just ignore them.. at least for the moment they are there. I have not yet made up my mind as to how should I view them… They are undoubtedly not me… but for the moment that I see them, I recognize them on a subconscious level as being in resonance with a part of me… And that realization is what delights, intrigues, saddens, scares, or plain creeps me out.

That’s why the question… Have you ever met an Echo? What did it look like to you?