Re-establishing a Relationship with Time

Once upon a time (not so) long ago on an uneventful night I decided to talk to a friend in something roughly resembling poetry. He, being the poet that he is, obliged in response. I ended up saying something I was toying with for a long time, that we have imprisoned ourselves in clocks only to say, time is running out. I know the argument often is that irrespective of clocks, the sun sets and rises, time passes. Yet, it is a human construct, isn’t it? A construct made for our convenience, mostly?

My relationship with time isn’t a smooth one. I didn’t understand in class 1 why the year 2000 was being called 21^st century. Where was the 1 in 2000? Why did the new class teacher keep saying so? Should it not be 20^th? It didn’t get better. I disliked history because I couldn’t remember the dates and years of so many wars. Even now it boggles me that Mughals reigned right before Britishers, like 200 years ago. Are not they supposed to be ancient history? How does 16^th century not feel like 500 years ago? A week, 7 days. How come, at times, counting days seem longer than weeks, and at other times vice-versa? These units of time, how do they have different impact on us, depending on what we are waiting for/looking at? Just how! Why is time so tricky? Why is no one else boggled?

Time is running out. If hours become 48 in a day, will each hour be 30 minutes long or will two days become one? We have the power to decide that, don’t we? But we won’t. We don’t think we are equipped enough to study the history of time and evolution of its units. It’s not even a thought, for this is how things are, always have been. Always? Another word I have some serious issues with. Nothing is ‘always’, nothing at all. ‘Always’ is against the principle of evolution and growth, it’s an enemy of imagination.

The thing I envy about people in power writing and advocating a certain history is that they have successfully etherised others into believing they are just bodies lying on the table. Waiting for medication to be fixed. While in fact, they are being injected with a disease, a disease of ignorance, for it is eternal bliss. I remember my tryst with anesthesia. Every time my eyes shut, I began dreaming of being on stage, addressing a crowd. It was always a globe-shaped auditorium, if I must be specific. Even though I was always at the centre-stage, I was in a cage. It was always the same dream, for three years. One I never forgot. I woke up to slight pain from the lumber puncture, sometimes even to bouts of vomit. At times to a blood bag attached to my arm. Those were the days when I first broke away from time. Away from the rat race I was winning.

My life took a turn when people talked about their certain future. I had no plans. There were many options available. I didn’t know how to make a choice. Perhaps, I still don’t. Hamlet is my spirit character. I won’t glorify him. He was terrible to Ophelia. Loyalty calls. But... if he is the personification of indecision, procrastination, and dramatic overdose, he is my spirit character. A friend said, ‘You’re young, you have the rest of your life in front of you.’ This was two years ago, and I still have the rest of my life in front of me. This is the youngest I’ll ever be. Time, I evaded time. Do I resemble Dorian Gray yet?

The Big Ben and Mrs Dalloway. How often did I imagine crossing the London street, holding flowers, planning a party, recalling a love affair from my teens!? How often indeed! Is madness a trait I find attractive? Not the suicidal kind, Sylvia Plath is not my type. Kamala Das. Yes. For she lived her unfulfilled life in her poems. They never left the narration after the episode of depression, madness and hallucination in My Story. I am accused of living a fictional life in a non-fictional world but I don’t understand the world and its people anyway. They are depressing, lonely, denying to communicate. Maybe we need to borrow a little bit of tenderness from Ari and Dante. I know I’d love some, for tender love is all I have to offer.

Time is running out. People use Victorian Age and the 18^th century synonymously and they say, Elizabeth Bennett is a Victorian Heroine. What rubbish! What rubbish! Anything but! I listened to people way too much and remained confused even more. I believed authority knew better, spoke truth. Oh, how terribly was I proven wrong! Truth? What does that even mean? Shall I wait for Rushdie's upcoming book of essays to find out or return to reread Midnight’s Children, in a quest to find truth? I understand honesty. I understand we believe something to be true, and more often than not we need it to be true. But truth, an absolute? What’s that?

Is that ‘time is running out’? I am growing older, 27^th revolution around the Sun and I am 26. Not a big mystery, eh? Then why was I stuck with 2000 and 21^st century for so long? Why could I not understand that history is divided in various periods for different purposes and conveniences? We divided it, the people. Time didn’t. I am slow, I am slow at grasping the ‘obvious’.  Yet, I am almost convinced others have not even begun. For they are running the rat race and I got out when I was almost winning.

My relationship with time was broken and theirs eventually turned to slavery. Unfair, I must say. Time is such a beautiful concept, we treat it as a coloniser. It did not come to rule us, we needed it to rule us. It is not a coloniser. Free will, choice, freedom – these are disasters we are not equipped to manage. Reading Camus, Nietzsche, Sartre doesn’t help. Intriguing and validating as they are, they don’t help to re-establish a relationship with time.

As the world is beginning to lose its grasp on time in this prolonged lockdown, I cross out dates on a calendar at midnight. A day passed. It began, it ended, and work was done in-between. I time the work. Take a break, time the break too. Work gets done without fatigue. Time! It’s all about time! Three hours have passed since I lied down to sleep. The Sun will be up in one hour. It’s a Saturday. Ah, what is it about Saturday and my musings? Their intimacy! Will I keep it aside and for once, get back to mending ways with time? Will I give up my power... ‘to fit in, oh belong’? Is this what I really want?

Only time will tell.

But... mostly, I will tell.