Tuesday 30 September 2014

Indian Standard Time


My wise three year old sister reckons that there is too much tomorrow in our todays. And she frivolously put her point across by saying that someone says tomorrow is school, someone says tomorrow is a holiday and someone says that we are going to a movie tomorrow. There is too much tomorrow she declared knowingly and waked away.
 But isn't she right? There is too much tomorrow in today and it's terrible. We as a nation too, are
incredibly confused when it comes to time. Time is like knitting for us. It weaves in and out, and old women sew, patiently and tenderly waiting for the end product which they gift to their grandchildren. How could a nation whose word for tomorrow is the same as its word for yesterday ever be clear about time?
Kal. There is also the matter of the Indian God of time who destroys. Her name is Kaalli. So yesterday has been destroyed and tomorrow will destroy so our only safe haven is today. So should we crouch and hide in our place of refuge and never peep out? Is that the moral of the story?
Besides kal is ignorant too. It is black: kaala. Black is everything, yet it is nothing. So tomorrow is nothing and it is everything. The Hindi word for time is kaal. In it today is very conveniently forgotten and now it ceases to exist too.
Then, there is the word for do: kar, which is hauntingly similar to kal. So, should we do before we are destroyed by tomorrow? Or is it only in tomorrow that we can do? I think it is the former.
What we have concluded hence, is that tomorrow and yesterday are the same, they both are destroyed or destroy , they are everything and nothing, today is an illusion and we should do before we are destroyed.
How do we survive then? How do we retrieve today's illusion? Or should we consent to be destroyed by time? 

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