Early Days

If I was asked to recount a conversation from the earliest days of my life, I would go with this:

I might have been 4 or 5 years old. In the most innocuous way, I was inquiring about the calendar. My father, being a patient man, explained me the system of days and months. I don’t remember clearly but I remember asking him what happens after 31st of December. Stupid question. I know, but I wasn’t that smart in my early days as I appear to be now. My father, being a patient man, supplied me with the fact that months repeat themselves. He went on further to explain me the system of leap year but perhaps it was too much for my little brain. I interjected.

“Do the years repeat themselves?”

His reply came in a quite stoic demeanor. “No. The time which passes by does not come back.”

It has been almost 16 years but call it a trick of some chemical compounds in my brain’s malfunctioning temporal lobe, this conversation maintains its dormant place in the vast corners of my memory. It’s not as inspiring as compared to the father-son dialogues we see in movies. However, somehow my father’s plain explanation to this painfully irreversible nature of time has been deeply embedded in my mind, since this incident. The unidirectional nature of time and causality are perhaps the two realities of life I acknowledge and also hate. Time is like that 6th grade bully I can’t cry to my parents about. It’s like the soulless, emotionless creature that looks down upon its prey with a strange, almost incomprehensible, impassivity.

Like a lone stranger walking down a road, it passes by, without compassion, indulgence and interest.