Time: I Just Want to See It, Watch It Move

There are very few things in life you can be sure of happening, but time is always one of them.

Image Credits: Utsav Mamoria (Tumse Na Ho Paayega)

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This flash essay is part of a collaborative, constrained-writing challenge undertaken by some members of the Bangalore Substack Writers Group. Each of us examined the concept of ‘TIME’ through our unique perspective, distilled into roughly 400 words. At the bottom of this snippet, you’ll find links to other essays by fellow writers.

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What can you be really sure of in life?

There are very few things in life you can be sure of happening, but time is always one of them. I suppose the only one. Even if the world halts, if the air forgets to move, time doesn’t flinch. It marches on, unbothered and unbought, something that cannot be controlled. No one has ever bargained with it. Not even the gods.

Time fascinates me more than most things. It carries a strange paradox. Hope and regret, bliss and despair, all threaded on the same invisible string. Some days we walk carefully along it. Other days, we believe we are pulling it ourselves.

I have often thought about what I would do with a time machine. I won’t change anything, not anymore. The dreams that once kept me awake now rest quietly in a drawer I rarely open. I have softened and let go. I don’t want to bend time. I just want to see it, watch it move. Drift quietly through space like wind brushing trees.

If I could go back, I would just observe. Sit at the edge of memory and watch myself grow. I wouldn’t interfere. I wouldn’t change a thing. But I know the temptation would linger. That would be the joke I play on myself. Standing before the power to rewrite it all, something I once believed I was meant to do, and walking away. That’s what memory wrapped in nostalgia really is. Not a need to relive, but the longing to revisit. Like an old friend you never stopped loving.

If I could travel to the future, I wouldn’t chase greatness. I would simply want to see what time has done with me. How life and fate have played their little games. Would I still be there, one knee on the ground, hands holding steady, the faintest smile on my lips? Godly as it sounds, I like to believe I will be. No matter what, you will find me there, even if it’s in the way I just described. Still there. Still standing.

Until then, I have my ritual. I wake at 4 a.m. The shifting sky is my portal, and its changing colours along with everything around it are my evidence. The moon descends as the sun prepares to rise. For a moment, they share the sky. The air is cold and the birds begin to whisper. In that quiet symphony, I watch time move.

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Other essays by fellow writers:

• “So… When will shit actually hit the fan?” by Sailee, sunny climate stormy climate

• Timekeepers - Retracing the Universe’s Deep-Time Signatures by Devayani Khare, Geosophy

• Keeping Time by Reshma Apte, Fanciful Senorita

• Locating Myself In The Map of Time by Priyanka Sacheti, A Home For Homeless Thoughts

• The Thing We Pretend To Understand by Avinash Shenoy, OfftheWalls

• The lost intimacy with time by Siddharth Batra, Siddharth’s substack

• Lessons Time Taught Me by Aryan Kavan Gowda, Wonderings of a Wanderer

• A Time for Worship by Vaibhav Gupta, Thorough and Unkempt

• “Tata Mummy Tata” by Rakhi Anil, Rakhi’s Substack

• The vicious cycle of sixteen - A dancer’s take on keeping time by Eshna Benegal, The Deep Cut

• How long is twenty years? by Richa Vadini Singh, Here’s What I Think

• How mystery writers play with the clock by Gowri N Kishore, About Murder, She Wrote

• TIME INFLATED, JUSTICE DEFLATED. by Lavina G, The Nexus Terrain

• What keeps the fool in me delighted by Rahul Singh, Mehfil

• The endless ebb and flow of Time by Siddarth RG, Siddarth’s Newsletter

• Time, please! by Shaili Desai - Litcurry