The Vulture in the Silence

Birds flitting.

 Wings slicing the morning air.

 Shutters clicking in bursts of hunger.

I had come seeking the obvious: motion, color, charisma.

 The kind of beauty that demands to be noticed.

I was chasing charisma, color, spectacle.

 Maybe I wasn't just chasing birds. Maybe I was chasing proof - that I could witness something rare, and be rare by association.

But beauty, I realized, is often loud.

 And the loud is often fleeting.

I scanned the sky for spectacle, followed the frenzy - chasing everything that refused to be still.

 Yet something deeper tugged at the edge of my vision: a stillness heavier than flight.

That's when I saw them.

Perched atop the twisted crown of a bare-limbed acacia, a gathering of vultures held court.

 They didn't move. They didn't need to.

No fanfare.

 No flight.

 No chase.

Only presence.

They weren't spectacular in the usual sense.

 No wings flared in defiance, no hunt, no blood.

 Just feathers weathered like old leather, eyes sunk like ancient wells, necks curved in solemn grace.

Others birds stirred - restless, darting, dramatic.

 But the vultures remained still.

 Unbothered.

 Above the fray, without trying to be.

And the light - 

 God, the light - 

 Poured across their backs like an anointing, illuminating what I had almost ignored.

My shutter slowed.

 My breath matched their stillness.

They weren't the predators I was trained to fear.

 They were something older.

 Wiser.

In a world wired for noise, the vulture is a paradox:

 Power cloaked in patience. Dominance without volume.

They do not strike first.

 They wait.

 They endure.

 And when the chaos ends, they arrive - 

 Not to conquer, but to cleanse.

 Not to dominate, but to restore.

They are not the alphas by aggression,

 But the elders by endurance.

 Monarchs, not by noise - but by knowing.

They remind me of those rare leaders who never raise their voices, yet command entire rooms.

 Of sages who speak only when silence cannot.

 Of time itself - unrushed, undefeated, inevitable.

To watch a vulture is to see death redefined:

 Not an ending, but an alchemy.

 Not destruction, but return.

I came to photograph movement.

 But I left humbled by stillness.

That day under the sun-split sky, I saw myself.

 Not who I was, but who I could become - 

 If I stopped needing to be seen.

There is a kind of strength that seeks no audience.

 A presence that doesn't posture.

 A leadership that leads by lasting.

I packed up, thinking I had been chasing birds.

 But I had been chasing presence.

The vultures taught me that the most powerful truths in life are often the most overlooked - 

 The elders.

 The watchers.

 The ones who wait.

The quiet trees that grow while others bloom.

 The voices that whisper what shouting never could.

They were the quiet prophets of the canopy, unblinking in the face of everything we fear.

And maybe - 

 In a world obsessed with the fast and the loud,

 The greatest act of rebellion

 Is stillness.

We are not always called to soar.

 Sometimes, we are called to perch - 

 And wait - 

 Until the world returns to truth.

Photo & Story: Om Deshamudre

 More visual stories at: www.linkedin.com/in/om-deshamudre-43ba47244