Time is a precious resource. If you blow your fortune, you can hope to earn it back. Or, in a bout of magnanimity, you can find comfort that your loss is someone else’s gain—your broker, your ex-spouse, or your online business partner who inherited his uncle’s petroleum fortune.No such luck with time. Once wasted, it is gone forever, never to be recovered.
Beautifully, money, power, or other trappings are reduced to utter irrelevance when the time is up. Short of residing near a black hole or speeding away in a rocket at an insane velocity, there is no circumventing the march of time. Time is the great equalizer. Look up the list of supercentenarians and you won't find any rich and famous. Even the great Buddha, the man who thought harder and saw farther than anyone, passed away at 80.
When you start thinking about time, it could mean one of two things: either you are of a brilliant mind, preoccupied with figuring out the true nature of time, or you have just realized that you have less time left than you have spent. I clearly belong to the latter group. Time seems to pass faster as you age. They say this is because as you get older you have fewer memorable experiences. New sights and sounds stretch perception of time’s flow. Routine events hardly register and therefore time is gone just like that.
* * *
Just the other evening, I was all prepared to sit down and resume reading a half-read biography of Enrico Fermi. I had stopped it just short of the point where Fermi and his collaborators were building the world's first atomic pile under a Chicago sports stadium; I was eager to finish the rest of the story. But first I wanted to return to a half-written book chapter I had left in limbo for months, postponing writing at the slightest excuse. The time was now ripe and I was set on getting it done. Determined, I logged into the laptop and typed a few words. Then I looked at the phone lying nearby on the table. The signals flew through my neurons and before my slow thinking brain could out-duel my fast thinking brain, I closed the lid of the laptop and grabbed the phone.
Now, it isn’t that this gadget doesn’t encase the height of human ingenuity. It is a portal to empower all, without distinction. But like many modern inventions, this is a very real double-edged sword. One edge promises to cut down the knots tying up information; that potential appeals to your lofty intentions. The other edge targets your time with enticements that appeal to your immediate instincts. Guess which edge is sharper? As the ancient Chinese stratagem says, deceive the heavens to cross the ocean.
Apologies for the metaphors. I don’t know how else to make what everyone knows intuitively appear like a new insight coming from me. Sadly though, such insight hasn’t helped me much.
Two hours of sitting motionless, straining the neck, and peering at the phone get you an aching shoulder. You don’t have to be older, and certainly no wiser to deduce that. The guilt arose because I was conflicted. On one occasion too many had I held forth on the ills of thoughtlessly peering at this gadget. It mostly wasted time, I had said. So, realizing I had blown two hours engaged in what I had denounced explained the guilt.
The dissatisfaction took some thinking to figure out; it wasn’t immediately obvious. But, in the end, it was simple. All it took was some honest accounting. I had seen Michael Rotikkaran’s photos.
Rotikkaran was cavorting it up in Punta Cana. The pictures, the settings, and some of the characters, were all attractive. I wanted to be in Punta Cana. Seeing him cavorting it up in Punta Cana made me think I had made all the wrong vacation choices, not to mention whom to be on vacations with. The source of dissatisfaction, which had hung around like a persistent smog till the next day, wasn’t vague anymore.
Truth is I hadn’t exactly grabbed the phone to pry on Michael’s social activities. Actually, I just wanted to check in on Karthyayani Kanakambaram; I call her Kathy. I met her through the “People You May Know” list on an addictive social app. Who’s the genius behind this list? Whatever this person’s gifts, I am sure it includes occult powers. For, in all likelihood, Kathy and I would have lived out our lives peacefully without ever knowing each other. But then this “People You May Know” fatefully intervened. It's genius is not in the people you actually know. I dismiss them sooner than I can say next, no offense intended. It is the people purportedly I may know that keeps me hooked. How in the world do they know that I may know when I haven’t the faintest clue who these, uh, ladies are, but then when I know, it is like, I knew? It does get creepy.
The trouble though is, it often doesn’t end with the ache and resentment. With access to instant information has come the knowledge that always somewhere someone is doing something outrageous. I went online to check my bank balance, which is dwindling fast due to the 24/7 click-o-rama, and I ended up engrossed in a really outrageous piece of news coming out of Kyrgyzstan. Irritated and upset, I forwarded it to one of my Kerala online groups with 463 voluble members. I did so secure in the knowledge that if there is one thing that unites Keralites, it is their shared outrage about imperialist injustice in other parts of the world. But, to my shock, I found out that many members of the group were in the opposing camp. To them, what happened in Kyrgyzstan was sweet justice. Several of them quit the group in protest: +918743514302 has left the group, the app said, followed by others, not that it made a dent in the group's active membership. The whole episode made me really agitated.
To calm down and distract my mind, I switched on my smart TV and flipped channels. The giant screen, covering half the family room wall, filled with a smorgasbord of movies, tv series, and offers of UltraHD releases, $14.99 a pop. Flip, swipe, roll, change source, flip, swipe, roll. Despite the wealth of offerings, or perhaps because of it, I couldn’t decide what to watch. By now, inexplicably, I was nervous. I went into the pantry, picked up a bag of chips, got a can of soda from the fridge and sat down. The phone pinged with a notification. I grabbed the phone.
My daughter walked in. She had graduated from college, landed a job, and wanted some financial guidance, now that her money was at stake.
“Acha, what retirement investment should I choose and how much should I contribute?” she asked.
I didn’t look up from my phone. Kathy had updated her profile picture and I wasn’t about to miss it.
“I don’t have time,” I said.
* * *
I woke up from my slumber startled and shaken. My throat was dry and palms were sweaty. I had dozed off reading Fermi’s biography with the book resting on my chest. They say you can get nightmares if you sleep in the afternoon and wake up when it's dark. I fetched a glass of water and took some sips. And then it struck me.
Food used to be scarce. Now it is increasingly plentiful. Just when you could have all the healthy food you want though, along came junk food. Leisure was once reserved for the rich, or at least ways to enjoy it. Now, when it appears to be within the reach of many, it is slipping away. In the new world, every weakness is someone's niche.
The phone chirps. A notification has arrived. I grab the phone.
It’s trash time.
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