What is time?

Time is one of the most enchanting concepts ever. From Einstien's elastic time, to existence of communities such as Amondawa and Piraha who live without a concept of time - I have always been itching to get to fundamentals of this seemingly real but still so abstract concept.

On thinking hard, the most correlated thing to time is change - and many a times a cyclic type of change. For ages, we have measured a day as a time between 2 sunrises, a month between 2 similar phases of moon and so. So we started from a point, started observing some gradual changes and then came back to original point. A cycle was observed and was tied in a word, in a quantity, in a unit of something thought as time. Another most used unit of time is  our age. It starts from birth (nothing), goes through a series of gradual changes and ends in death (nothing). Again a cycle, and the time of this cyclic journey is age. While from numerical perspective, age could be standardized, but from experiential perspective it is very subjective. Imagine 2 people living for same measured time, but not aware of concept of time as such. At the end if you asked them to quantify how long they lived. They might look baffled. They might quantify it to you in important events they did in life or in terms of how many sunsets they saw. Interestingly, if you think what is a duration of a sunset. It is an outcome of planetary settings and rules of gravitation. So time is nothing but in a way a manifestation of some laws of nature.

Imagine waking up in a closed dark room while it is 9 am outside. It will be close to impossible to guess the time. Just think of instances, when you get up in middle of night, and reach out to the watch to get a clue of what the time is. You won't.

Now compare this relatively fuzzy understanding of time, with our empirical understanding. In real life, we are used to see change as a product of time e.g. The plant will grow when 5 months pass away. In our empirical understanding, time passes first and the event is thought to happen as an outcome of it. Which one is really correct?

To answer this, I think 2 questions would be enough

a) Can time be measured without change - if it can be, then time is not dependent on change

b) Can change happen without time changing - if this is true then change is not dependent on time

Let's pick 'a - Can time be measured without change' first. I picked first 3 definitions of a 'second' (smallest unit of time used in daily life), and they seem to suggest that time can not be measured without a change:

i) The unit of time, the second, was defined originally as the fraction 1/86 400 of the mean solar day (A solar day is measured based on 'change' in position of sun)

ii) Definition of second is "the duration of 9 192 631 770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the caesium 133 atom ('Change' in state of an atom)

iii) It is the time required for an electromagnetic field to propagate 299,792,458 meters (2.99792458 x 10 8 m) through a vacuum ('Change' in position of the field)

Now let's pick 'b - Can change happen without time changing'. In physical sense it obviously doesn't, but even in abstract sense, I couldn't think of an instance where change happens without time changing. 

Simple, so far? Now here is a twist to 'a'. Though time can't be measured without a change - It can still pass without anything changing for e.g. Through the night, while I was sleeping (not changing my state) - time still kept ticking. This brings us to concept of relative time. Time is linked to change in events, and there are multiple events happening around us at the same time, and moreover even same event can be perceived in different ways (you can watch a lightning for 1 ms, OR you can hear its sound for 1s OR you can just know its impact for 1 min --- Now a deaf guy who just saw the lightning far away from its impact will think it was 1 ms long, A blind person will hear the thunder and think it was 1 s long, and a deaf person close to impact will think it was 1 min long - all perceiving the same thing differently and of different times). So depending the event you choose, and way you experience it - you will feel a different time. Yes 'feel'.

So many times we say that time has passed so 'fast'. Or when on stuff like weed the time slows down. All this is because, at the core of it - Time is personal to you - it is subjective to you and your experience at that moment. You 'feel' the time. The clock that is running is just a standard of time chosen to communicate easily, like language - for e.g. in moments of elation you bypass the language and generally make sound and gestures to express; similarly empirical time might cease when you are in elevated states of consciousness. 

If you haven't found too much wrong with my reasoning so far, then we have established that time is subjective (depending on the event being experienced and the way it is being experienced). But this doesn't answer the question that what is 'time'? Telling you that Prateek is poised, doesn't tell you 'who is Prateek'. But before getting to my opinions on what time could be, it was very important to break the rigid and objective notion about time - the same concept that drove me towards my opinions. 

I feel that time is a thought / concept / invention to let life happen. Consciousness, started being conscious/thoughtful of sequence of events, and started building a basic version of memory - Leading to birth of time. It's very difficult to say this with certainty. But to me, time feels like a thought that connects multiple other thoughts and present them as coherent reality. It's that thread that weaves the flowers to give existence to a garland. To explain and understand this, we will have to take support of an abstract plane of reasoning and reality. All live things we know, have a life 'span' - and hence have a time. For life to be there - Time is a precursor. Moreover time is super powerful in the sense, that it is immortal or if more correctly put - is outside the framework of life and death. Why does it exist, How did it came into existence - are all bigger questions which I myself am trying to answer, and will probably need another blog post (My current take is that these questions do not exist in the framework where time exists, but to articulate those thoughts it's going to take an insane amount of effort). Will like to close all the confusion with the very famous narration from Mahabharata "Main samay hoon"

Craving for tough days and times

Had a very weird feeling today.

We often desire to make our lives more comfortable, and get access to pleasures. Essentially we always crave for things, which give us that immediate pleasure - let it be a desirable women, artistically furnished living place, company of well known and powerful people, sports cars, and so and so. Things which are cool in some way.

Some folks move beyond these comforts, and somehow develop a control towards these cravings. Predominantly because of a realisation of futility and temporariness of the craving. Their actions are not driven by a hunger to acquire something or exert control, but by sheer meaning of the things. Some of such folks are even difficult to inspire to action.

There is a constant scrutiny of one side from the other. Questioning the motivations of the other - the desiring ones will often sneer at the ascetic ones for complacency, and lack of spirit. While the ascetic ones will often disregard the desiring ones as greedy and shallow. Obviously there is lot lost by not acknowledging the plus point of each. BUT, we are not here to discuss these 2 types. There is a completely different type of emotion that I experienced - apart from the desire for pleasure, and the lack of it.

It was momentary. It was a desire of going in an unpleasant phase. It was an urge to feel failure, a voice roaring at my ego, pushing me to extract the best out of myself - to prove it to that voice. It was need of an insult and a blow to the ego, to spur the whole system into an epitome action. Friction to kindle the fire. Push to get the stone rolling. It was a sense of self hate arising from within, resulting in a wish to improve myself, longing for an external push to impart a momentum, and a catalyst to stir an action

Pleasure of small things

Returning from quite tasty but poorly serviced breakfast of lovely hot idlis and slightly stale vadas from HSR high street, we stopped at the ICICI ATM, 100 m from home to withdraw cash - as it seemed to have some. Jiju went inside, and I with my back towards the ATM door, was turning my neck like a camera taking a panoramic shoot from right to left whiling away that short window of time, when I got the perfect ending to the shot at culmination of 180 degree -

A tiny - really tiny yellow painted old school tailor shop, inhabited by a Nawazuddin Siddiqui lookalike (imbibing his characteristic rawness) middle aged man with a moustache and a monolith rock like stable unshakable शीतल  focus - working on a manual sewing machine.


Captivating and Accidental. I just kept looking at the simplicity it offered, in contrast to the noise and hustle of our daily activities. It teleported me to some other world - an era where tranquility prevailed, where everything you did was with love, there was time to sip music, and to smell breeze - life was itself a work of art - which you can keep watching for hours and savour.

This mild yellow coloured shop of the different tranquil era had a slanting ceiling - accommodating a staircase to a normal hustling world above it, with a jodhpurish blue shutter as her veil against the dark. A radio kept somewhere near the bottom end of slanting ceiling, played melodious music of bygone times, with breeze flagging away 2 identical over layed pieces of yellow silk cloth being given a new identity of a blouse. A foot step would make the wheel on the side of the machine rotate hurriedly, leading the the thread and it's glossy yellow spindle into a whirlwind spin, reminding me of the intoxicating ball dancy and Salsaique move of leading the lady into transcendent orbits of sama (dervish) spins - feeling The harmony and bliss of unison and freedom. The same foot step puts the needle into a rhythmic motion of a pigeon feeding on the grains.

With his monolithic focus, he turned from the yellow silk blouse to set of 3 other cloths. Started by picking a sweat shirt with a torn seam, which has rendered the sleeve as flat cloth on one side by adventures of a kid. With keen diligence, and moves learned over centuries (by his forefathers) he moves his hands and fingers deftly in coordination, very carefully traversing a crease and at the end very craftily joining the 2 ends, by putting one side of the cloth in the crease of the other side. Puts it on the side. Picks a jeans now with a tag that would have been placed when the customer's needs were acknowledged. Sizes the jeans using his meter tape, marks it using a chalk stone, and with a cut separates a piece of denim. Uses the separated denim piece to re do the bottom cuff of the jeans, by stitching it to the internal side of the Jeans. Puts it aside. Picks up another jeans, and re sized and re cuffed it too. All this with unwavering focus, and an un -wavered clarity of actions, and measurements. With a melodious music of by gone times in background. With the breeze in the air. In the tiny charming mild yellow coloured shop of the different era with a slanting ceiling that accommodated a staircase to a normal world !!

(Towards the last quarter, if you hear carefully enough, you can also listen to the music. Couldn't get the warmth of the sun, and feel of the breeze - to make it real for you)

Somewhere in my memory,  I have these memories of those different eras printed with it's characteristic colors, breeze, music, smell, and pace. Which spring alive, whenever a resonating 'set and the setting' presents itself and puts this memory into motion and life - at it's whim. I visited the shop after 2 hours - it wore its blue veil of the Jodhpur's Brahmpuri - and its doors were closed - on it's whim.