Taming the time - part1

Muser felt annoyed by the attitude shown by some of his friends, especially Bystander's sons and Tom's daughters. Time and again he has been hearing their complaints about time, rather the lack of it! He was hard put to understand how this universal quantity could vary from person to person. Falling outside the realm of Einstein’s relativity, he himself had felt time running out when in joy or walking dead slow during periods of sadness.

This paradox has another parallel, for quite opposite reasons – when days run out on students feeling the tension, during preparation for exams, and days taking unduly long time in the case of young hearts looking forward to their wedding. But what reasons Bystander and Tom had?

Muser decided to dig to the bottom of the matter and see what came up? There was a personal angle too in this quest which made him redouble his efforts to find and bell the cat. The catalysts for this timely reaction had come from two of his friends and he, a writer with jumbo sized imaginative ego, became the reactant. In the recent past, the stagnating throughput from his desk started to diminish the returns on his efforts.

Frustrated, he became his own devil’s advocate but was dissatisfied with the received advises that lacked conviction. It only helped in doubling his annoyance at his close friends.

He set to work to make them to realise what a excuse they were making as a cover up. Armed with a calculator he figured out that there are 86400 seconds or 1440 minutes in a day. The mathematics was not reassuring and he decided to ‘spend the minutes’ as his friends would be doing in a day. This approach looked better, at least to his mind, and stared the process of checking out where every minute of the day was going. Striving to be a perfectionist, if a need arose to argue with someone, Muser meticulously timed their expenditure to find out why they are not free to spare him a little help.

The fact that his friends lived in different parts of the country did not deter him in carrying out this census but the task was time consuming. His inner mind comforted him by pointing out that he need not even step out of the continent for this work. Anyhow he wanted to enjoy their company and rile them a bit!

In all, Muser spent about three weeks for staying with his friends, on invitation of course, to complete his time-study and another three days to prepare a draft copy of his findings:

Muser was aware that certain activities in a person’s life are considered essential and demand a major chunk of time in a day. Work and travel in the city traffic having become an integral part of professional life, it accounted for ten hours or 600 minutes. To provide support for the day to day requirements of the family another four hours or 240 minutes are spent in shopping, socialising and other household works to be carried out. To keep up going through this grinding routine day after day, rest and recuperation in the form of sleep needs eight hours or 480 minutes. Here he paused to count the remaining time in a day which came to just 2 hours or 120 minutes.

Appreciating the value of these minutes, he went over his notes to pinpoint activities that are essential, productive and unproductive yet jostling for a pie from this remainder. He felt compelled, at this point of time, to empathise with finance ministers who split hairs and juggle the numbers to present annual budgets.

Under essential category he put an hour of T V time as this can turn productive for planning next day’s agenda or to relieve stresses brought from workplace. If reading and exercise could be dovetailed with the TV programmes, this one hour could be turned in to most productive phase of the day.  He did not want to get in to an argument on this as anyway the time is spent in front of the T V. Even under the guise of exchange of information unproductive complaints and gossips cannot be ruled out from taking its due share of 30 minutes in a day. Muser wondered ‘What could not be done in the remaining 30 minutes of time, every day and why these habitual multi-taskers could not take up my papers , at least on the sidelines?'

These most valuable minutes of the day can be spent to get in touch with relatives and friends. Pending correspondences can be completed. Personal hobbies and development activities can be pursued. The specialty about this golden 30 minutes is this: it can fit in to any of the time slot in a day! In the case of a studious person, the entire 30 minutes can be earmarked to complete a specific task by careful planning. He estimated that about 30 to 40 minutes are essential to read his article and send comments by e-mail, unless extensive interactions are required. So far they have not complained about lack of clarity in the subject matter or cogent presentation of thoughts.

Muser wanted to ask them, “When the two of you never fail to boast about your planning acumen, why not come together to share, review and send comments?  Do I have friends who cannot spare this little time every week to help reading a draft? Don’t they know that when somebody asking for a favour is actually showing you a favour? Don’t they know that to read someone’s draft is a privilege extended to a worthy person?”

All these homework did not help him to find an answer to his question “Why his friends kept on complaining about lack of time?” He decided to confront them with his compiled data and see how they would react to it. If serious objections were raised, he was prepared to carry out another elaborate time-study on them since he had been a little liberal on the first count!

Sorry for the inconvenience!

 Bystander came to see his bosom friend Mr Muser. He could not find him anywhere in the house. There was no one to ask about the whereabouts of Mr Muser – his family had gone on a vacation. Bystander once came near the writing desk and found open pages of the diaries riffling in a draft of air. Overcome by curiosity, he took one of them in his hand and started reading

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Hold your breath and tongue! He is not snooping, only exercising the rare liberty granted by Muser himself. There is no secret between us and feel free were the exact words Muser had used while allowing unrestricted access to his thoughts and deeds.

Bystander was pleasantly surprised to note the writing was all in capital letters of a small font size, neatly organised. He turned to the previous page, the one earlier to that and found the same. To make sure he went through the other diaries on the table and was greeted by the same style of writing. On one of the pages he found these following paragraphs and read them not once but twice to understand the flow of ideas.

These paragraphs stood aloof, as if having a high degree of disagreement!

“Some dreams come true – the person feels happy. Some do not materialize leaving a little unhappiness in the mind; it gets slowly forgotten replaced by another dream perhaps. There is a type of dream that gives you the feeling as if the fruits are already in your hands – an eve teaser of an apple.

The lure keeps you going for some time and when maximum efforts are focused to realise it, the progress versus goal graph traces peaks and valleys in a cyclic manner. The person is confused whether to be sad or get over the experience .Unable to let it go, start to fume, fret and find fault with all the things in the world.”

“The cause and effect is a universal dharma and nothing, not even day dreams or pipe dreams, escapes from its gravity. Trials and tribulations have a chastening effect and act as a catalyst in firming up resolve.

 This enlightenment that ‘my dictates are not my dictation’ enters in to the thinking process pretty late –could have supported, urged, guided and corrected. The dream, the fuming and fretting remain as trophies after teaching valuable insights regarding persons and events.

Instead of groping in the dark, the best way forward will be the walk towards the source of any light. The dreamer started searching in his soul whether he wanted to pursue the ambition or write it off as a bad venture”

 “Oblivious to his surroundings, with unseeing eyes, he was looking at the scenery”

Bystander was bitten by the mystery bug and unless clarified by Mr Muser himself, it will never go away from his mind. Bystander had the habit of not keeping any mystery in the mind for long.  One mystery that surfaced was that the number of paragraphs written down did not follow a sequence of thought and even the stand alone paragraphs did not give a clue about the nature of the topic in which they will be placed.

He felt the need to catch hold of Mr Muser and seek these clarifications: “Why these disconnect among the written down paragraphs. How can a person like Muser write confusing clarity of thoughts?”

He then phoned up mutual friends to locate the whereabouts of Muser. Negative replies made him to worry about this unusual behaviour of his friend, sat down at the table and wrote an anguished letter, placed it in the open diary after ensuring that it will catch Muser’s immediate attention and left. Fuming with in him for not able to establish contact made him to wonder what the hell has happened!

After awhile, Muser came back as though he had just finished working as a farm hand- soiled dress and appearance. He glanced at his work table, saw the letter carefully placed between the pages of one of his diaries. He began to read the letter left by Bystander and a kaleidoscope of emotions took turns to emerge and disappear on his face.

Then the forks of lightning struck Muser – a look at his dishelved appearance, reflected in the mirror, said  it all. The letter on the table made him to forget the damage he had caused to the clean floor  of his study as he dashed across to see what it contained?  Now he could understand the reason for Bystander’s frantic search to locate his friend.

Muser, hurriedly readied himself and called up his friend to come down for lunch- at home. Bystander felt happy and sad at the same time- happy that his friend was safe and sad to be invited for lunch. Muser was a lousy cook to say the least. He shuddered at the thought of having that meal which would be followed by a sonorous lecture - whether he wanted it or not!

Amidst loud protests from the taste buds, Bystander managed to finish his lunch. As if not to disappoint him, Muser cleared his throat at once and brushed his nose, a few times, with a hooked index finger and started the dreaded lecture.

“You suspected that I have become careless by merely walking in to the house through the open doors. Not able to find me in, you then firmly concluded that I am careless – is it not?

You contacted our friends and getting no information started to worry in anxiety letting your thinking powers to be clouded. Reading of those disorganized thoughts of mine added fuel to your imagination, becoming less logical in your reasoning. Rising anger made you to draft a very ling, passionate letter and placed it thoughtfully to catch my attention.

This is only place you acted with clarity in thought.

All these emotional disturbances made you to miss the obvious – now answer my questions.

Did you notice any unusual activity in the opposite house?

Bystander replied, “The house owner was standing in the garden and a gardener was digging up and planting. I saw that before entering the house and using the doors that were left open”

“What else did you notice?” asked Muser.

“Nothing other than what I just described to you” said Bystander

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 "That is the problem with you - impatience. Had you paid a little more attention, you might have understood that I was doing the gardening as my friend, the house owner was watching. My dear friend, there is difference from noticing and paying attention", chided Muser.

“How you came to expect that whatever I write should have a connection and logic. Why should you be perplexed when I use capital letters to record my thoughts?  Bystander stood mute as Muser folded the letter and kept it in to a diary.

Sensing that no reply will come forth, Muser decided to answer them himself.

Writing is a venture and any venture needs capital, so I started using the capital letters. You know well that my longhand is unreadable even by me after some time. This might have surprised you because you were thinking “I know you very well is it not?”

Remember there will always be some thing unique or unknown, even after many years of friendship. So don’t take anything for granted.

Regarding the unconnected paragraphs- thoughts are like trains and using the same track, they reach different destinations. Likewise, these paragraphs, appearing one below the other, will finally get placed in different topics where they actually belong to. Ideas are like a flash in the pan and may strike in the mind at any time of the day. I try to catch and keep them in this way- it suits to my way of writing!

The one sentence which might have surprised the most must have been this – ‘oblivious to his surroundings, with unseen eyes, he was looking at the scenery” Actually this sentence is the corner piece of my article on the freedom of a visually challenged person. He was bracing against all odds to exercise his independence and freedom to enjoy himself like others.

My friend, kindly remember that reading out of context only confuses. Muser paused allowing his friend to recapitulate the events and the explanations.

A long silence descended between the friends. Each one did not want to be the first one to break this serenity. But each one was silently saying this to one another: "Friend, sorry for the inconvenience I might have caused you".