Kamal Ghorui
That’s what happened to me when my watch stopped working, and was sent off to be fixed
A few weeks ago, I ran out of time, literally. My watch suddenly stopped working, and had to be sent off for repairs.
I’ve had my watch for more than 25 years, helping me to figure out when I had to do what, like when to go to sleep, and when to wake up, and when to eat, and so on.
I hadn’t realised how much I relied on it, like an explorer in the wild depends on a compass, to figure out which direction is which, and act as a navigational aid, without which one would be clueless about one’s whereabouts. And that’s exactly how I felt without my watch, not about my whereabouts, but about my whenabouts.
Outside time went on like business as usual. America and Israel carried on hammer and tongs, munitions and missiles, against Iran. Here, govt and opposition did much the same, except using bombast instead of bombs.
Time went on for everyone else, but it eluded me. It left me wondering not only when to eat or to sleep, but even about when was when.
Bunny told me not to be silly. I could always tell the time from my mobile phone, which was more accurate than any watch, but it wasn’t the same thing. Mostly I don’t know where I’ve left my mobile, and besides, it’s not become almost an anatomical extension of me.
I thought of Henri Bergson, who got a Nobel Prize for saying that the linear, measured, tick-tock time of clocks and watches was all rot and rubbish – only Nobel Prize winners don’t say things like rot and rubbish, but instead say things like mechanistic reductionism – and invented something called duration, which is like a seamless melody being played inside one’s consciousness.
I tried substituting duration for my missing watch. It didn’t work. No seamless melody. Not even muzak.
Then – happy day! – my watch came back, repaired and on the job again. I put it on, and all was right with my world again. But I might as well face it. No one’s ever going to give me a Nobel Prize.
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