“Mein samay hoon..." Every Sunday morning during the late eighties, these words in the sonorous voice of Harish Bhimani would reverberate in the living rooms, as we would be glued to the TVs watching the visuals of the Time wheel slowly rotating with “Kaal muni” imagery in the background, at the start of Mahabharat serial. The concept of Time to narrate the whole epic was a brilliant move by the producers of the serial, both in terms of its impact and more importantly its relevance, as there could be no better way to narrate this timeless epic by anyone else other than Time itself! No this is not about Time management, talking of which the very term itself is a misnomer. How can we manage Time as your sixty seconds is the same as my one minute? Time is absolutely the same for everyone; hence we can manage only ourselves to time. So if one has more time than the other, given the same quantity of time and work to be completed, it simply means he or she is better organised and efficient in handling it. Not that he “managed” the time, but he managed himself very well to the available time! Well this is about Time itself and what it does to us. In his book A Brief History of Time, Prof. Stephen Hawking talks about the thermodynamic arrow of time which essentially means that the quantum of disorder or entropy increases with time. If one were to explain this in simple terms, over a period of time the chances of a beautiful vase falling down and breaking into pieces is more likely, than the broken pieces of a vase to join themselves automatically to become a beautiful vase. In metallurgical terms, the material defect called creep is defined as time dependent inelastic deformation which again means over a period of time, any solid object will deform or fail due to stresses within. We all are dying from the moment we are born. As John Maynard Keynes said – “In the long run, we all are dead”, perhaps why Time is also called “Kaal” (another name of God of Death, Yama). In the last article on luck, I had mentioned that we tend not to see the “unlucky” times or moments in the lives of many successful people. This is because the success stories that we hear or read or watch in a movie are always shown as a series of spectacular events of achievements or breakthroughs which in reality are spaced out in time. It is the battle that people fight with time in those large gaps between two landmark events in their lives that makes the big difference in the ultimate analysis. The fight against the overwhelming entropy, the struggle against the energy and enthusiasm sapping time climb, the challenges thrown by setbacks and self-doubts on the way to success and the unexpected turn of events, all these work in silent dynamics behind the stellar glory of success in those dull and dreary gaps, that are often not told in many success stories, because they are less dramatic and colourful. But the positive thing about it is, with time, things ripen and mature and hence like the fruit of success earned over time, tastes sweeter. This seasoning ability of time to age harden substances and help them endure and even glitter under stress, like the transformation of coal to diamond, is something that no amount of short cutting would help achieve. While we are young and impatient, we often tend to overlook this and want to achieve success on fast-track mode. We fail to acknowledge that what needs to be given time cannot be gotten faster with the same effect. No wonder why the news article in ET, the other day said that most of the consumer durables and retail sector companies are now falling back on mature and aged CEOs (50+ in age) compared to younger CEOs to handle the current difficult market conditions, as they would have seen many business cycles in their lives and would have successfully waded through many troughs, hence would be in a better position to steer the companies through tough times. My economics professor said, what people paid for in money, in capitalist countries, was paid in time (read waiting in queues) in socialist countries, so time is indeed money. This can be easily understood by the premium one would pay to get a black ticket to save the time and effort in standing in queues or logging into IRCTC website! In the book Sidhartha, by Herman Hesse, the courtesan Kamala asks Sidhartha what he could give her which is of some value, he replies he could wait and fast longer than anyone else could. She rebukes him saying these are of no value until she learns from one of her clients who is a rich trader, that he was looking out for someone who could travel overseas for a business but the problem is to find someone who has the capacity to withstand the travails of the long travel and the uncertainties linked to that. She then realises Sidhartha could be the right candidate as he could wait and fast, and finally sees the value in it! Like the hatching of an egg is preceded by an incubating period when a lot of subtle developments and changes happen over time that are not visible to eye, those efforts that go in fighting the entropy over time to withstand it successfully are many times invisible to us but are happening silently behind every successful mission. When the break-through happens eventually, as the shell of the egg cracks and the chick appears, it looks miraculous. But for the chick that went through that whole process, it was just one another small step, but a significant one though, in a long journey that began some time back. Just like the last single that marks the century from 99, happens to be like the same one as the first single the batsman took to escape getting out without scoring, yet quite significant. In life, there are certain things that are worth the wait for, and built brick by brick, fighting the entropy over time, and there is no point in rushing to make them happen faster, rather it would be better to enjoy the time taken to reach there, howsoever slow it is. If any doubt on this, ask the mothers, if they ever wanted us earlier than the nine months that they carried us in their wombs! So the next time when you want to fast- track something by hook or crook, think again and ask yourselves is it really worth it! Enjoy your time instead. Have a nice time in the weekend. TGIF!
Posted on: Fri, 02 Aug 2013 11:07:37 +0000