It feels odd to me, to put it in mildly, when I stand
outside of myself sometimes and see the passage of time. Sometimes across more
than three decades or across the years which have now officially become more
than a decade but even across weeks. I remember writing a bit on the oddities of
time from 14 years ago (2003) about a memory from a year before that (2002)…and
a general musing on my perception of time:
It’s (time for) take-off: The seven
hours have gone by in a snap. Just like seven years or seven minutes. Time
seems to be such an amusing concept. I’m ‘gaining’ a day while travelling to
the other side of the planet. That feels like such a cheeky thing to be doing —
almost against the rules. While I’m doing up my seat belt, I can’t help but
gurgle at that thought. I’m constantly calculating the time back on the part of
the globe that I left early in the morning. An adorable baby boy is standing up
in his seat and looking at me. I feel an irresistible urge to cuddle him. But
it’s time for the most magnificent of moments — the glorious take-off. Later on
in the flight the baby boy Ian, pulls off the blanket from my eyes and says,
“Peek-a-boo.” He then proceeds to make some toast for me in his (imaginary) ‘oven’
while carrying on a conversation with me. I stare at him with bright, bright
eyes while I take a slice of his ‘just-perfect-toast’…
----
Time
warps ever so frequently for me. It (almost?) never travels in a linear motion. Sometimes
it collapses and I can’t differentiate between the ‘now’ and the ‘then’; the
past, present and future, the before and the after get sadly jumbled up in my
head; sometimes it balloons up into a rising mist, floating, hanging overhead
—not letting go; sometimes I’m stuck in a time dimension while the world moves
along at its normal pace; sometimes I’m granted a sneak preview of the
what-is-to-be and then I’m sent shooting back into the past (or should that be
the present?) Sometimes time seems to be nothing but a capsule; a reservoir of
memories. Does it seem this way to me because I’m mad or merely absent minded?
Or is it because time is truly relative and everything is happening right now
and there’s only an artificial separation, an illusory slower-ing down of
vibrations so that we can live through experiences ‘in time’? Maybe then the
sense of déjà vu that hits us is not
about the ‘already seen’ but about the ‘being seen’ and the ‘being experienced’
– very much like the sneak previews…but (happening) at the same time in a
parallel universe? Maybe my Fimh comes from some place that’s located near the
mysterious zone of ‘time warps’. It’s confusing at moments and unsettling.
There’s a sensation of inexpressible disorientation, similar to the experience
of living through a gripping film in a darkened movie hall and then walking out
into the bright sunlight. A part of the self is still locked in the movie or
somewhere in between — and there’s a fragmented sense of reality. I’ve been
through reality warps of different orders, different intensities; some just
mildly confusing like the time warp, some distinctly more aggravating (and some
distinctly, if even strangely, wondrous)…
Time takes its own time and works according to its own
whimsy – I am almost completely convinced of this. There is nothing absolute
and fixed about the passage of time. It works according to its own fancies and
feelings. Clock-time says not much about the feelings on the passage of time
and those human feelings – I have been thinking more and more, and quite in
contrast to what I used to think as a teen are not matters that can be or even
should be entirely snuffed out by reason and rationality and logic – although
these latter matters are all good and important and useful aspects. Maybe
recent conversations, the different blogposts, chapters and rather odd books
that I’ve been reading and re-visiting and my general state of being and
whatever it is that I am doing have some hand in this. I remember having
pooh-poohed the arena of ‘Sociology of Emotions’ when it had become a rather
hot and also contentious topic – and yet, now I find myself reconsidering my
earlier presumptuousness. But this post is about time and its oddities – not about
emotions. About emotions, intentions and motivations – maybe, I’ll write on another
day.
The week that went by seemed to take its own sweet time in
going by – if even some random passer-by had told me casually that two and a
half weeks had passed by since the previous Saturday – I would have merely
nodded my head and gone back to editing or re-writing a piece of work or
worrying or wondering or missing or maybe walking. And yet if I consider the
four whole glorious days just before that – during Diwali and my best friend’s
birthday – it seems time just decided to whizz by as though it were a flash of
light.
I remember I was looking at and listening to the rain
one morning, feeling the huge gusts of wind, and shivering every once in a
while while sitting out on the verandah and watching a lazy dog and reading a
rather weird (interestingly weird in parts but not as a whole) book on
meditation, consciousness and psychology (Sam Harris ‘Waking Up’), and knowing someone
was snoozing and there I was feeling an indescribable feeling of childish
delight and quiet bliss. I remember walks and conversations, scoldings and
tremblings, incomprehension and perfect conversations, mushrooming questions
which never quite get answers, stories, and boisterous celebrations with fire
crackers and lights and colours and talks and quietness and laughter and togetherness.
I have no pictures or recordings to show myself that all of it really happened
out-there and not just in my loony head. But I find myself thinking that maybe
time while being a silent and wicked thief exists for many reasons but also so that
we can separate events as they happen, cherish some memories in retrospect and remember
what and whom we remember and choose to remember and why?
