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The time of our lives
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Time was when people could tell the hour by the position of the sun. The urban creature, with each second ticking in the head, doesn't need to look at the clock either. But what a world of difference between the two, marvels DEEPA GANESH
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Apart from Lord Shiva, who else has a third eye? Well, Senorita Second-to-Second does. Let's call her SSS. This third eye that she claims to have doesn't sit pretty on the middle of her forehead. Unlike the deity, she hardly uses it to distinguish truth from illusion, for, she's convinced her roller-coaster world is the final truth. The eye exists at the back of her head, which can read the ticking of that tormentor — the timepiece — even without having to see it. You could blame it on the times. Before she achieved this kind of mastery, she would look at the clock a minimum 240 times a day.
There used to be times when she kept looking at the timepiece in trepidation as she chopped those two onions and the oil in the pan was smoking. But now, even before the mustard splutters, her onions are chopped fine and she knows it takes her precisely 70 seconds. Mind you, she says that without looking at that ticking monster.
Exactly 22 seconds for her to reach the corner to catch the office cab. Five seconds to comb her hair, three for downing the orange juice, four to reheat last night's leftover rotis to pack her lunch box, two to slip her feet into her loosely buckled sandals, and the remaining seven and a half to slam the door after her.
Sundays? What's that?
And Sundays. SSS has a multitude of things piled up for the one solitary Sunday — clothes to be washed, cobwebs to be cleared, shopping to be done, articles marked as Sunday reads, that unread book which had to be returned the first week of July, and a gazillion other little things, and the timepiece racing like it was Schumacher's big brother. She decides to quickly check mail and clear spam. Even her computer boots, she dashes to the ironing table and does a shirt, and as the modem tries to establish the connection, scampers to the kitchen to turn off the cooker.
Back at the comp, there is mail from a cousin living amidst the globe's best jugglers and multi-taskers. Just as she frets over her only Sunday flashing out, she reads: "I hope you have the time to stop and smell the roses."
Her mind raced backwards to the early days of the labour movement when the weary women of Lawrence, Massachusetts, marching from their dark, satanic mills in 1912 had screamed: "We want bread and roses too." (John De Graaf, A Letter to Our European Friends) Right to time was their rallying cry. They fought endlessly for an eight-hour work schedule.
Cut to the present where a work culture spawned by the IT and BPO industry, the entire days, and nights as well, have been taken over by these time brokers of the new economy. Paul Mills, in his article A Brief Theology of Time says how in Europe, throughout the Middle Ages, the very notion of secular time, of owning and dividing it into measured units was considered sacrilegious.
The emerging merchant class was criticised for "mortgaging time" which was supposed to be eternal and belonging to God alone. But with modern culture, Time, as observed in the article Tyranny of Time (www.processedworld.com) has become a powerful form of social control.
SSS recalls the time when her life comprised larger units such as days, weeks and months, keeping time with the natural, seasonal changes of the year. The school bell, the month of March, exams, the nearby factory siren, all underpinning the concept of structured activity. It recalls a past that had a sense of space, unlike the present of deadlines, rush hour, electronic timers, and swipe cards. It was an age of one thing at a time and it could hold in it long conversations, extended fights, aimless wanderings, and spur-of-the-moment picnics. There have been extensive studies on what multi-tasking has done to our lives. Habitual multitasking conditions the brain to an overexcited state, making it difficult to focus even when one wants to. Ironically the spiffy gadgets that claim to help better time management have further complicated our lives. And so in our desperate need to find meaning in our non-work time, as pointed out in Tyranny of Time, we embrace a mass consumer culture. All the little time that is our own is spent on happy hours, eating outs, fitness, shopping at malls. So where is the time for the self?
"I find myself constantly worrying about time even on a Sunday. I am so conditioned that when I actually have nothing to do, I am fidgety and wondering if I have forgotten to do something!" says Nayana, a hassled media person.
In his autobiography, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, Jung describes the predicament in which the human being is unable to establish a connection with his innermost self. In every individual, there is the existence of what he calls two personalities — one which relates to the outer world and the other which is the inner self. The conflict, however, he says has nothing to do with the split or dissociation in medical terms.
Packing in so much
Vanamala Vishwanatha, English professor, acclaimed translator and a great cook, has always been an object of adoration for the manner in which she packs so much into each day. She says about her frenetically paced life: "I have always felt in conflict with time. My affliction of perfectionism is very exacting on the self." For instance, preparation for a class never simply meant reading up the text, but going through all the supplementary material and catching up with the latest debates on the issue. It was being, doing, learning all the time."
But there have been times when she felt it couldn't go on; moments when the spirit wanted to disengage itself from the mind. "I came to see this pattern in me every now and then. At those times, with a two-hoots-to-the-world attitude, I would unwind." Those defiant moments were those when one felt above time. Though, it was under time pressure that she was productive. "I think it is important to wrest the self from the `others'."
Coming back to the third eye, Shiva has a choice to keep it shut most time. But a mere mortal like SSS can't, not even while she sleeps. Haven't there been times when she has woken up in the middle of the night over an unfinished chore or figuring out a way out of a tight work situation? Like the protagonist in the Bendre poem, Taayi Koosu, who rocks an imaginary cradle in the mind even as she constantly hums a lullaby as she endlessly goes about her household work.
But our SSS's case is more complicated than this. Her notion of the self includes much more than what she does for the family. So much so her favourite Manna Dey's song, "Poochona kaise... ik pal jaise ik jug beeta... ", doesn't sound real anymore. Particularly when each second is compressed into nanoseconds, and her all-seeing third eye has acquired the power to annihilate.
In this case, her own self.
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