Voices
from Silence
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Personal stories of engaging in silence by practitioners from the Global Majority Heritage (GMH) or Black and Indigenous Peoples of Colour (BIPOC) communities.* |
A quarter of the way into the new millennium the reality for many people from this community is that their lives and stories are sidelined. Their voices are silenced.
Although many people from GMH/ BIPOC communities have a spiritual practice of silence, authors from these communities have tended to write more about their experiences of silencing than of their engagement with silence-based prayer.
This new series is a way to bring some voices from the GMH/ BIPOC communities into the conversations and resources about silence on the Seeds of Silence website.
Although many people from GMH/ BIPOC communities have a spiritual practice of silence, authors from these communities have tended to write more about their experiences of silencing than of their engagement with silence-based prayer.
This new series is a way to bring some voices from the GMH/ BIPOC communities into the conversations and resources about silence on the Seeds of Silence website.
October, 2026, Chindilani Filifilidh Andekalithan: 'Dadirri in Kalithan'
Image: Chindilani Filifilidh Andekalithan
Chindilani Filifilidh Andekalithan,
London, UK |
Listen to Chindilani reading her text, 'Dadirri in Kalithan'
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Dadirri in Kalithan
It feels entirely appropriate that I am sitting in silence while I am writing this.
Of course the silence here is never truly silent. I live in London, in an area stacked with new-builds, piling us on top on top on top of each other where there is no space to spread out across the horizon.
But silence is more of a state of being than a lack of noise.
My love of silence is partly cultural and partly personal. The personal: silence means safety. I had a dangerous childhood, the best parts of it being those times when I was left alone. Sitting in the quiet darkness, I felt safe. By contrast, humans augured danger. To some extent this changed as I got older. I have worked in busy offices, run teams, travelled the world, presented at conferences, partied, studied, befriended, celebrated ...
Still the children we were live inside us. Still some part deep within me reads humans as dangerous until proven otherwise. Still I prefer to be alone.
I was brought up a Christian and elements of this have stayed with me. I am prone to devotion, to vocation, to quiet prayer. But Christianity was what we were forced to be, rather than who we were.
My family is Romani and Aboriginal Australian. By the time I came along our skin was white, but it takes longer than two births to wipe out culture and heritage. My grandmother, a visibly Black woman, taught me most of the spiritual path I followed. We lived in a Romani community and so I assumed it was all from that culture: it was only much later that I learned this was something she had married into.
Again, though: you can colonise a land, you can suppress a people, but you can't easily get rid of the deeply embodied memory of the culture you are trying to erase.
In moments of silence I found my way back to this. In stepping away from the people around me, turning off my devices and sitting in my home or out in nature, I found within me the well from which I drank.
Later I learned that there were cultural words for the practices I was following: dadirri, a sacred Ngangiwumirri practice involving deep stillness, inner listening. Reading descriptions of other people's experiences of it made me realise I had always done it. And in that stillness, as well as finding peace, I had found the capacity to fight. As a child, I gave the space I visited during my dadirri practice a name: Kalithan, which in Romani means 'the place where Kali lives.'
Kali is an Indian goddess who came with the Romani people when we left India. During 500 years of chattel slavery in Europe, Kali remained with us. It is her sacred presence that I connect with when I sit in silence.
Romani spirituality is lived, not practised. In every moment there is a meditation, in every action there is intent. Romani spirituality encourages us to notice where we are and what we are doing, and to make authentic choices that are rooted in our intentions.
This comes down to the smallest of things. When I made coffee this morning, I chose a mug that aligned with my plans for the day. Today's mug has a news print pattern, because today is a writing day.
Without silence, the world intrudes. Far from being a lack, to me silence is a fullness of choice. It is when there is noise and busyness and others that I am untethered. Today silence, like always, brings me home.
Of course the silence here is never truly silent. I live in London, in an area stacked with new-builds, piling us on top on top on top of each other where there is no space to spread out across the horizon.
But silence is more of a state of being than a lack of noise.
My love of silence is partly cultural and partly personal. The personal: silence means safety. I had a dangerous childhood, the best parts of it being those times when I was left alone. Sitting in the quiet darkness, I felt safe. By contrast, humans augured danger. To some extent this changed as I got older. I have worked in busy offices, run teams, travelled the world, presented at conferences, partied, studied, befriended, celebrated ...
Still the children we were live inside us. Still some part deep within me reads humans as dangerous until proven otherwise. Still I prefer to be alone.
I was brought up a Christian and elements of this have stayed with me. I am prone to devotion, to vocation, to quiet prayer. But Christianity was what we were forced to be, rather than who we were.
My family is Romani and Aboriginal Australian. By the time I came along our skin was white, but it takes longer than two births to wipe out culture and heritage. My grandmother, a visibly Black woman, taught me most of the spiritual path I followed. We lived in a Romani community and so I assumed it was all from that culture: it was only much later that I learned this was something she had married into.
Again, though: you can colonise a land, you can suppress a people, but you can't easily get rid of the deeply embodied memory of the culture you are trying to erase.
In moments of silence I found my way back to this. In stepping away from the people around me, turning off my devices and sitting in my home or out in nature, I found within me the well from which I drank.
Later I learned that there were cultural words for the practices I was following: dadirri, a sacred Ngangiwumirri practice involving deep stillness, inner listening. Reading descriptions of other people's experiences of it made me realise I had always done it. And in that stillness, as well as finding peace, I had found the capacity to fight. As a child, I gave the space I visited during my dadirri practice a name: Kalithan, which in Romani means 'the place where Kali lives.'
Kali is an Indian goddess who came with the Romani people when we left India. During 500 years of chattel slavery in Europe, Kali remained with us. It is her sacred presence that I connect with when I sit in silence.
Romani spirituality is lived, not practised. In every moment there is a meditation, in every action there is intent. Romani spirituality encourages us to notice where we are and what we are doing, and to make authentic choices that are rooted in our intentions.
This comes down to the smallest of things. When I made coffee this morning, I chose a mug that aligned with my plans for the day. Today's mug has a news print pattern, because today is a writing day.
Without silence, the world intrudes. Far from being a lack, to me silence is a fullness of choice. It is when there is noise and busyness and others that I am untethered. Today silence, like always, brings me home.
Chindilani Filifilidh Andekalithan, October 2026.
Chindilani Filifilidh Andekalithan is a Philosophy PhD student at the Universities of Southampton and Cardiff, studying hauntology, uncanny ontology, and phenomenology of pregnancy. Her PhD is funded by the Arts & Humanities Research Council.
In her spare time Chindilani hosts the podcast That Final Girl Life, in which she takes a different horror movie each episode and uses her experiences as a psychotherapist, existential philosophy student and trafficking survivor to discuss what each final girl's life might look like after their movie ends. She also runs the AHRC's Death Cluster, a monthly discussion group in which people get together online to talk about topics relating to mortality. Sometimes these are based on a paper or article, other times a film, a book or even just a quote or a meme. If you'd like to join in with future discussions, you can sign up to the Eventbrite page. You can learn more about Chindilani on her website, or find her on social media @chindilani.
In her spare time Chindilani hosts the podcast That Final Girl Life, in which she takes a different horror movie each episode and uses her experiences as a psychotherapist, existential philosophy student and trafficking survivor to discuss what each final girl's life might look like after their movie ends. She also runs the AHRC's Death Cluster, a monthly discussion group in which people get together online to talk about topics relating to mortality. Sometimes these are based on a paper or article, other times a film, a book or even just a quote or a meme. If you'd like to join in with future discussions, you can sign up to the Eventbrite page. You can learn more about Chindilani on her website, or find her on social media @chindilani.
* The terms 'Global Majority Heritage' (GMH) and 'Black and Indigenous Peoples of Colour' (BIPOC) refers to people whose backgrounds are from non-Western, non-White ethnic and cultural groups, reflecting the fact that the majority of the world’s population comes from Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East. These terms acknowledge the rich heritage of ancient Indigenous communities and challenge the traditional framing of racial and ethnic minorities by emphasizing that these populations are, in fact, the global majority.
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