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Time Traveler

Yesterday at 9 in the morning, following an unprompted pursuit and perhaps a rush of blood to the head, I was tempted to call at a number which I'd treasured in my heart even after it had long been removed from service. It's almost as if you're traveling on a well-lit road, but you look up to see if the street-lights are still turned on. The phone rang twice, no one picked. I felt a bit cautious as I sensed it could be the same person, perhaps wanting to avoid me at the look of my number on her display. So, I didn't make any further attempts and worked away at early office hours and routine tasks following the call.

An hour later, it was a call. The same number appeared on my display, I knew it couldn't be her. I asked however, and confirmed it wasn't her although the voice seemed pretty much like her. It was not her, I reassured myself and got back to work again. Somehow at the back of my mind I was still perturbed and agitated. Lacking in peace I stared at my phone for quite sometime before I jostled my way to other important work. Moments after I was done with my routine time-sheet tracking and effort calculation I tried to map my life to what it was perhaps more than a year ago. It was the same pair of eyes. But dissimilar circumstances and perhaps with a different edge towards life. I held onto the number for sometime reflecting upon the voice and what it was more than a year ago wiping away at soapy tears and I sat benumbed for a while, void of even remote sensations of sorrow or pain. It was the same set of digits and I can't express in words how it felt to associate with the same combination, a different voice.


Time flies by, structures we build remain. Only a ghost living back in time continues to haunt us while we travel the same roads with different companions, exposing us to the dynamism called life. I have thought about it on many occasions and every time I felt clueless and unanswered. There is no way to gauge our life path, and it feels helpless to evaluate sentiments at the cost of time. I say to myself, time is a killer. But, it teaches a lesson so true. It champions the cause of human triumph, storing bundles of failures for us to follow-up and at times, even deluding us. Success can be measured, the time it took to achieve can be measured too. But, the abysmal ghost of time dwells in those places, junctures, moments and structures we leave behind.


Time traveler, I am. The ghost haunts me still. Everytime I take one step ahead, the ghost assumes two steps forward in the most alarming ways that if I speed up once, it halts momentarily prodding me to slow down, bringing me into tune with reality and always unmasking the lost structures, images and people that I used to love so much. My life will be successful if I constrict the exhaustion of time and extrapolate beyond ghostly appearances that reduce my soul to a trash can.


Time traveler, I despise myself. I hate you, time.

Comments

Jean Claude van Damme said…
There ain't no running away, sir.
Vardhaman said…
Well Strawberry Amma, Looking at time and wondering if its a dynamic quantity or a static monolithic plane looming large over our fleeting consciousness . Thats just our standard old school non string (m theory) based view of things . Our thoughts ,memories and all the fun stuff in between little unidimensional points to be tagged on a plane ? Or perhaps we over look the power and amplitude of our emotional (psychic plane ?) . We travel predictably on many a plane on others we have many more degrees of freedom. To contain our pasts and futures in the same bubble and to exist in harmony within it. Sleep deprived rant ends.
Unknown said…
Again great great work. I think we have all felt like this at some point in our lives.

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