WORDS ARE NOT ENOUGH

What did one ant say to another? knock knock whos there tick tock its me. Come rub my legs and Ill tell you what I need Ants neither see nor hear ... have no words that reach the human ear. But they have survived and communicated a billion years with little subtle knocks off their antennas and rubs along their cute cuticles. Fishes color themselves blue and green, and dance to glory as in Halloween; seem to be saying, hello beautiful. Here I am. Come to me. Bees dance to show a map. Llamas spit to show their anger. The rhinoceros urinates to show its territory. They are all communicating under control of their God given, efficient, Basic Instincts.

We have basic instincts too. The right side of our brain controls these, along with rhythm, imagination and daydreaming, while the left side controls the use of words, logic and numbers among others.

Language lives in the brain. Words. Pictures. Emotions. Movements. . They make a rewritable mass of storage material that fills the dungeons of our linguistic memory. And thats how we communicate, instinctively you and I, using the four different built-in

media. How then can words alone be enough? Even beyond these there is something maybe a picture in the mind maybe something in the ether, that captures the full picture of what has been communicated, something which cannot be seen with the naked eye. Please note how I keep using the word PICTURE. Allow me to give you some examples.

Last week my sister gave a solo Indian classical dance performance in the form of the Bharatanatyam at the Temple of Fine Arts. A member of the audience wrote her a note. I quote: My heart was filled with pride and yet in agony to see you going through all those steps with expressions which words cannot convey you were selflessly able to convey the message of the dance with your multitudes of movements and facial expressions. Unquote. I wish I could show you some classical dance movements to make a point, but sorry I am no dancer, and you might misinterpret the meaning!

Dance in any form presents a message without any words. I cannot deny that a few words of description will help some of the audience to understand a little better. It would be interesting to think back in time when there were no words yet, but only pictures, emotions and actions to tell a story. Dance probably started then.

That reminds me of a story in a book entitled, 101 Science Fiction Stories, compiled by Isaac Asimov, the writer who coined the word Robot. It describes a happening in present time of a nuclear catastrophe about to happen. The villagers in the story are curious about a group of strange looking Japanese tourists walking around observing all the activity without a spoken word. It turned out they were Time Travellers who came

back in Time from year 2100 to witness an event they had only read in history books. We have seen movies such as Back to the Future and Voyager with similar themes.

Reading history becomes very dry if we are not able to picture the event, although picture it we can in the mind, in museums, in dramas, in movies but still not the same as being there. I am sure the books will not be able to capture everything in words either. Even the hundred thousand verses of the historic Hindu epic Mahabharata could not have done justice to the actual events of the time. How refreshing it would be if we too could go back in time and re-live history as a preparation for the SPM exams. Cool. How do you capture a feeling, an emotional feeling, in words other than sad, happy, depressing etc. We will need whole paragraphs of words written in the proper way for a reader to feel the same as the writer, and the meaning might get altered along the way. In relating to the unfortunate events unfolding in Japan, I quote the Japanese Ambassadors speech to the Malaysian public. I am deeply touched by the many messages of sympathy, condolences and encouragement that the members of my mission and I have received from Malaysians. I am without words to express how the people, Japanese Government and myself have been touched and encouraged by those messages. Unquote. We wish them well.

We are, and always will be, short of words to describe an object, an event, a feeling. We need outside help in the form of movements, tones, pictures, music etc. A babys smile, a mothers touch, a lovers look, a teachers cane, a dinosaur from Astro beyond, to show us life in full colour.