A Sob of Time

As time doesnt leave one young, do things on the inside remain the same? What does time change? What does it signify?

From afar, I could make from the silhouette, two old men, quietly watching their time fade away just as the smoke from their cigarettes disappeared up in the sky. Behind the Chandragiri Hill, the sun was planning on calling it a day. The sky – all painted orange, or yellow, or red or whatever you may call it – was ready to hide its bright face and show us its dark hair for the time being. And me? I was contemplating the beauty(?) of it all. Beholding the moment as I walked toward the Pipal Chautari where the two old men sat.

Did their life mean nothing, in the end? I wouldn’t know. I was not related to any of them in the slightest manner. In fact, I was seeing them for the first time. So the question seemingly completely absurd. But from what I saw, they seemed tired. I could tell. Even though I hadn’t seen their faces or counted their wrinkles, I would bet you they looked inane on the inside.

They sat next to each other but weren’t even trying to get words out. It seemed as though their silence was talking. Like it said, “Did we live it right?”

I was striding in my own pace, slowly towards the place where they were sitting. People were walking all around me. There were a thousand things that could have snatched my attention from those two old studs who didn’t even matter in the world anymore. But as the silhouette began transforming to reveal the real faces, I could feel myself taking longer, faster steps towards the place I was heading to.

Who were they? It doesn’t matter. It never did. What had always mattered was the story they told – the one I read through their eyes. At a point when I was walking to them, I could clearly see their eyes. I could make the curves of their wrinkles. The cheeks seemed like they only just lifted twenty kilograms each. One of them had a thin patch of hair left while the another was completely shiny. A seemingly gross structure of face.

And their eyes? They spoke of sorrow, remorse, melancholy. Was it solitude, they wanted? Or did they want to rest? Was the burden too heavy for them to carry?

I stopped. Maybe, the world did too. I didn’t bother to care. Then I dived inside their eyes. Oh, the eyes! It hosted a grand castle. It had gardens all around, as much as you could go. But not a single flower was in sight. Trees seemed green but the leaves were black. There was no one around. The castle seemed empty as well. What could be inside it? That was what I wanted to know. So, on I went.

Inside, there was a gallery, to my surprise. As much as it seemed huge from the outside, it felt congested inside. It was a strange gallery. Of course, it had paintings, models and such but they were peculiar. The walls around were full of bright colors, but I couldn’t make anything of what they said. Maybe it wasn’t clear to the bearer himself, or so it seemed. Once past that, further inside, the walls were colorless. But the paintings there? Meaningful and colorful. And even further? As I stepped forward, I could simultaneously see a new world and the world I was standing on at the moment.

There was not much there that I could have taken away from that brief encounter to the strange world but one thing that I did see was that Art was wailing helplessly while Time was in a corner, as old as the men, waiting to crumble away (or waiting to be taken away?) Were they imprisoned? Or isolated? I couldn’t say for sure but it seemed as though they were asking to be saved; saved from a dreadful fate that everyone suffers from.
I was pulled back. Why? It might have been that I had already seen what most people never do. But what did the castle mean to say; the old men want to say? And what was it – that strange moment right before I was deported?

A clue:

Watching time as it plummets away,
Will you but watch and watch?
Or search for a way out;
Not for you:
How could you deceive the flow itself?
But you could always cleanse in the river,
For anyone, but yourself.
So, remember,
The way out is in the inside.
Only the inside.