Travelling Through Time

                  THOSE TRAVELS THROUGH TIME

Isn’t it strange that despite of having our highest motto ‘to live in the present’ yet every human has sometime or the other dreamed of a time machine? Imagine the thrill of reaching any era, rather phases of your own timeline and become a spectator, if possible to bring a change or two and attain the perfect life you see for yourself. How wonderful would it be to see it all – the journey of mankind – right from your own eyes rather than manipulated narrations of historians. But, would history be of any value then? And would there be any entity of time then?

And yet, this forth dimension of time has grabbed the attention from our ancestral times. So many scientific fictions, mythological narrations all encompass this human anxiety to triumph over time. Imagine listening to your favourite songs that somehow take you to other psychological lunar dimensions. A 5 min song make you undergo months or years of your life, a little heroic narration that sweeps you to those historical centuries when you were not even born. Is it all but imagination? Isn’t reality a shadow of imagination too in that case? If yes, i guess time travel – is a real phenomenon, and is surely possible if strongly willed and concentrated upon.

Marriage marks that visible line of bifurcation in a person’s life. So does other socialy constructed stages of maturity. And yet, deep inside, a person remains the same, despite of his age. Despite of a long arena of time – spent in between,. Deep inside, we still remain that child – who wants to be loved and pampered and taken care of – just like in anal stage. And yet, since childhood, there is this anxiety to grow up and do whatever one wants. Does all this ever happens? Partially yes. And also no.

Somehow, we live all ages at all times. After travelling to so many places, it becomes so easy for me to merely close my eyes and imagine myself at one of those many beautiful places where I wanted to reside.  At one time I reach Kashmir, at another I smell those salty sea waves of Kerala. a single song takes me through that long bus journey in dwarka where i was listening to the same song throughout my way. A piece of my own poetry suddenly brings smile upon my face remembering those mysterious playful nights with moon beside a river.

Whenever i visit any historical monument, i suddenly feel those unique vibes of every place. those walls have their own stories to tell. I wonder about the time, when a particular wall came to shape, the people who had built it, those times when it was rebuilt or taken care of. Those walls stand through centuries, talking about those grandeurs of past, still standing erect – having faced all decays and frailities of times. And yet, those walls are enough to provide me imaginary visuals of me in drapings of a princess at times – running upon those elegant gallaries of mughal empires. And at times they make me undergo those pains and pleasures of common men that i imagine myself to have experienced in some other births, at some other times. Somehow, all these don’t make me feel like a luniac. Despite of knowing it all to be products of my imagination, i somehow know them to be partially true, if not exactly the same as visualized.

And would book reading had been a pleasant experience if our visual senses not worked. With each

line, we transcend to some other world – a world fabricated by the writer, a world of the writer and the world assumed by us.  Our minds have this special power to be available at so many places at one time. How else dreams would have got their existence? I mean are we not sleeping in the world and yet all awake and in action in the world of dreams. And dreams too are not singular entities. They always come in a chain of worlds taking us to long trips in few moments.

While still a child, i read a story where a man unveiled the truth of humans living in 7 layers of possibilities all at the same time. It worked like a book of goosebumps where all yes and no take you to different worlds however the option not opted still survived – being lived by some other self of ours who might have chosen that option.

Who has not heard the famous lines, ‘ history repeats itself’. My question, ‘ is there anything called history? Yeats always believed in this image of a huge social gyre where repeated overlapping circles fulfilled each of his explanations. Isn’t time one such gyre as well. Consider the time of our tribal days, mythical illusions or present day so called reality. What has changed? Apart from the medium of expressions and their interpretations the emotions are limited and have been felt and expressed in similar terms all through ages. Life –survival – death, a cycle that each of us lives through. What has changed then? Where happens the boundary of past, present and future.

But surely we all feel those brutal expeditions of time. Memories, nostalgia, emotions, people lost, time gone by – all these clearly mark the boundaries. It is said that while living through various stages, there happens sudden revelations where a man one fine day sees his different phases in neat bifurcated clouds. He can look back upon past and feel as if someone else has lived it all. there happens the bifurcation. But isn’t it because of our decaying heads and poor memory. Isn’t it yet another work of time – which keeps rotating in circles and we remain under its opium considering it all to be new and different.

I think , all times exist at all times. A man is both child and his father at the same time. Writer or reader – both merge at some point of horizon. Those tones of song survive all those years only to take you back where you first heard them. I think time travel is not just possible, rather its a part and parcel of our life. We all do it , consciously or unconsciously. Willingly or unwillingly.

 WRITTEN BY- MYSTICAL WANDERER