DO I NEED TO MANAGE TIME?

 What is "time"?

before our curious minds get onto such a question, we (at an age of 2 or 3)  start our struggle with time. i mean, getting ready for school "in time", completing the homework "in time", back home after playing "in time"...everything to be done "in time". in other words, that is a big measure of  "being disciplined", one of the most important trait expected from a child!! it seems God and Time were similar in character, the rule-makers! i am not saying life was miserable but the fact that everybody seemed running and not enjoying just the space and time around. and those children who did that were the "careless" chaps! by default, we human "run" and time always seems to run out! and the very fact that i have been part of this running game, i had terribly ignored this question!!!!

   for over a month, i am suffering from a throat infection that seems to be spread across Delhi and this is when things started to change for me. the biggest "threat" to me was that i wont be able to practice music lessons the same way. and never had i imagined it to last so long. the first reaction on facing a problem is a feeling of loosing something, loosing even time as one would have to give time to the problem. that is how it started with me. we are told about vocal practice that if you dont do it for a day, you reach say 15 days behind. (my age in music would be negative if i use this rule). the pain was unbearable for few days and i had to be completely silent. i went home. took rest. but it was not improving! your frustration increases manifold in such situations!

  the next thing we do is try to do somethings, which would make us feel that we are "utilizing" time. i also was realizing that i had so many things to do everyday that it was always a challenge to do them well. it has happened so many times that i start with something and i would leave it inbetween. it was generally my vocal practice that would be the primary focus. now to "utilize" time i started picking up the left over jobs. one of them was reading a book by psychologist Oliver Sacks about "music and brain". while i started from page 50, i felt like almost forgetting what i had read earlier. i was amazed to know how i had forgotten such important understandings being shared. i had enough time and i planned to read some of it everyday and started to underline the important parts to re-visit. it was such a different experience. i read much less but was pondering over the details, linking it to my life events and that somehow helped it to sink into the memory box of my brain. earlier i was just rushing through to feel that i am doing well!

 so today when i finished reading the book, it was time to leave for my music class. it had been a month (due to bad throat) that i was not traveling on my bicycle. i felt to do that today. giving myself 1 hour to travel (taking care of my health), rather than 45 mins (which i generally take). and i never knew 15 minutes could transform the whole experience. i had been missing so much while i was rushing for my music class earlier. the trees, the changing slope of road, the birds, people along the road and much much more. my mind used to be running ahead of me wishing for the next red light to go green or maybe bunking red light. i stopped at all red lights and didnt over-stress my muscles. my mind was still and i could see the leaves dancing with the breeze, traffic policemen, people returning home... and as i reached a calm place and as i was not rushing..i began observing the plants along the road, stopped to see one house and its colorful garden. one amazement was that i could link the experience of coming back on the same road. its not the same picture, moving in opposite directions and i was becoming aware of the surroundings. it struck me suddenly that is it not like a raga or musical scale? the scale moves up and down through the same notes (road in this case). the moving up and down the scale are not simple mirror images or a mathematical inversion. i realized that somehow i was also rushing through the raga and my practice in general. i had not much bothered to stop at a note and try to know about it..about the surroundings, about how music "moves" and what new ways it can form. while riding my bicycle i wanted the minimum time and while practicing i wanted to count the maximum time!! does it really matter? what about the quality?

while i began worrying a bit as i approached INDIA GATE. one has to move in a semicircle with fast cars and its risky to manage on the bicycle. i was not able to get a safe way to move about. i slowed my bicycle as i reached and saw one old man on his bicycle. and he was standing there waiting to cross the road but the road was closed with barricades on the other side (this road was the approximate diameter of the circular road with india gate at almost the centre). but i chose to wait and follow him. as the signal for crossing turned green and we started crossing the road, i spotted the gap in the barricades for the bicycles. it was fun to see india gate closely while riding. my mind was calculating the distance saved (semicircle is pi*r and diameter is 2r). i asked him "uncle ye road khuli hoti hai kya" and he filled his chest with a sense of pride and feeling like the king of roads said "haan, beta". how often we create our own small boxes and dont try to see out. and think of ourselves as all knowing! i enjoyed the one hour ride and with a smile reached my class!

 as if it had to happen, the class began with "taal" or rhythm practice. it is the structure of time in which any musical composition fits in. and the same question sprung up in my head "what is time?" and while we were measuring time, varying the patterns and doing juggleries, i felt like "flowing with time" as if dancing with it. i had lost the sense of  "that time" which we see ticking on the wall clock. i was no more fighting with time or competing or trying to win over it. i was with it. :) and then when the compositions were to be sung, i was still playing with time (as i was excused due to bad throat). when we listen to music we tend to forget time but infact it was engraved in a proper time structure. how odd!!

 the realization i had was that life was not about running behind things. we have these infinite expectations , infinite possibilities but a finite life also having constraints (culture, place etc). this triggers our competition against time which is futile. isn't life to be managed than managing time?? when we do something we are passionate about or even say listen to music (co-incidently one of my passion) dont we forget time!! it has to be like that. we dont worry about time and we enjoy, remain healthy and yes definitely do something good and be a good humanbeing who can "find time" to meet and talk to others

 last contradiction is that of constraints! as i got free from my music class, it was 8 and i had to reach back to hostel by 9. not a big deal but it seemed like raining and here i was again constrained! had to again go for the fast ride! but i believe i had options. reaching hostel by 9 was only important to have dinner. i had my umbrella and upper body raincoat and i could have thought of forgetting the constraint as its good to have dinner outside sometimes. i could have parked my bicycle at vidyalya and would have come by metro but look after realizing all that i chose just what i would have, rushing to the hostel fearing rain! living whole life in fear of constraints makes you habitual of all this.

 but the realizations are not going to go in vain.i believe, the change which is deep and internal starts slowly and i have decided to work on the inner freedom, to accept who i am and start from myself and not my expectations!! ironically this post was planned to be written in 15 minutes but took more than an hour. when one enjoys writing or doing anything, the content cannot and should not be compensated. i had asked a friend to not go to bed before reading this! oh gosh! my expectation again played with me! i had this option of asking her to read it tomorrow. anyhow, this will need more "time"

 i remember my amazement in school when i realized that Einstein had kicked the idea of  "supremacy of time" giving the relativity theory. its still not imaginable that if i will move close to speed of light i can live much longer :) time had lost back then!! :p

and finally finally, some co-incidences really surprize and this happened an hour back before i started writing this post. i accidently came across a video link of facebook. nothing could be better for me, having picked the bicycle after so long. enjoy!!