And just like that, fall season is over. It was like an Indian wedding. Nature bursting with bright colors, and visual feast lasted almost a week, like an Indian wedding. Nature and humans absorb from each other and pretty soon start reflecting each other. That is why perhaps, residents of Republica de California, where weather never changes, do everything to stem the passage of time with a little help from Botox infusions and surgical enhancements. City of Los Angeles may not have natural beauty, but it sure has lot of man made beauty, if you know what I mean !
Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter and Spring again. A time be born and learn, a time to grow and be fruitful, a time to slow down and colorfully wither away, a time to stop and depart & a time to be reborn. Or if you prefer an analogy from animal kingdom , time to enjoy like naughty monkey, time to work like an overloaded donkey, time to bark like a bite-less dog & time to stare like a toothless hog. And someone please cancel that re-birth program....too expensive !
There is an inexplicable joy and comfort in experiencing all the seasons. Every change opens a small window and lets one witness the phenomenon of Passage of Time. The person in the mirror reminds us of the passage of time too, arguably more so for the fairer gender than "los hombres". But the act doesn't bring much joy. In this electronic age, where every instant is recorded with enough gratification to fill any gap in between, passage of time has become dimensionally diminutive . We read the teabag wisdom, which exhorts us to stop, smell the flowers, enjoy the season. And then we wring the extra tea out, discard the teabag and go back to our desks....witness passage of time....got no time to spare. Perhaps time passes, perhaps it doesn't but we all sure will pass. Time is the greatest teacher, but we sure make one sorry group of student body. Some worse than others, but none living up to the expectations of this great teacher. No wonder, that The greatest teacher has killed each and every one of its pupils.
Physicists are the arguably the only group of people who believe that they can see the passage of time. But trust a physicist to bring the unaesthetic language to describe the phenomenon........Big Bang is best they came up with, which is better than space-time continuum. They came up with a catchy "Light years", but dietitians started using it as euphemism for the yester-years of their clients. Theoretically Einstein-ian time is bendable. My famous experiment of "Treadmill running" proved that time does indeed slows down considerably when speed increases, but alas! In real life, it is the newton-ian principle of gravity which comes alive with passage of time. Stand in the front of the mirror and person opposite you will remind you of gravitational pull, and once again the fairer gender is more prone to scientific shock. As my friend's father, senior senor Ortiz says," be warned! First the hair turn grey, and then they turn loose". And just when the follicle shedding is about to make the Newtonian principle come alive, they get stuck to your back and Darwin's theories don't seem like theories anymore.
Since time immemorable, passage of time has been on our minds and in our words. Some times, time hangs heavy on hands and sometimes Passage of time becomes a race against time. We teach young ones to put their pants on, one leg at a time. Benjamin franklin told us that Time is money but I know of no one, who has been able to make withdrawl from this ATM. Unfortunate delinquents of the society do time, many return for another time. Delinquents of wall street who avoid time, can take note because attorney general assures us that it is just a matter of time. Does the Time rejoices every friday evening and look forward to beer pressure? Concept of months was invented by a research grant from Julius Caesar, who was probably trying to impress a lady with funny hat ,"Hey, Can I see you in July? btw, July is named after me...Julius, July.....just letting you know". We ring bells on arrival of a new year to remind us that we are living on borrowed time.
What is your favorite time?
"Breakfast time, Lunchtime and dinnertime"
"Do you have the time?"
No sir, I wasted mine before you did.
"If you waste time, then doth time wastes you - W. Shakespeare"
You are right Sheikh Pir. That is why I stopped reading classics and concentrated on math and science.
"Qué pocos días son necesarios para que pase un siglo - Bram Stoker"
(How few days it takes to pass a century)
These are profound words from Dracula. Can't mess around with him.
"And then there is a concept called Daylight Savings Time".
Can the daylight be saved? "No, unless you can run faster than speed of light", a physicist will argue. At one time DST provided temporary employment to clock re-setters and now a temporary nuisance to general populace. Legal minds at ACLU take note that with this dubious premise, government is clearly infringing on our personal liberties by forcing many of us to reschedule our hour of bowel movement....liberty can't be any more personal. It is said that concept of Daylight Saving Time when once explained to an old native Indian, he replied "Only a white man would believe that you could cut a foot off the top off a blanket and sew it to the bottom of a blanket and have a longer blanket".
My first rumination about passage of time started with a conversation with my grandmother many years back, when I found that she didn't know how to read the time on the wall clock. For her, tick-tock of clock held no more meaning then a dull lullaby, inducing siesta at pre-determined time. Passage of time was simple, and perhaps key to her longevity. Sun is rising, sun is up, sun is down is all she needed to know to get through the day. Lunar calendar is what was needed for monthly scale, just to remember the religious events. And after the seasonal divisions, things got a little complicated on the annual scale. Folks from my grandmother's generation divided the passage of time by events. They could recall the birth of certain child relative to the year, when brown buffalo had a calf and milk was plenty, or the year of the great floods (which by the way, happened often), or in rare moments of sadness, the year the country was divided, the year of Partition.
With concept of mortality eventually beginning to dawn upon me, Passage of time is no more that seemingly infinite series of fleeting moments. There are times now when I wish that fleeting moments would slow down, slow down just a little bit. And then, just like that, fall season is over.
