Tuesday, January 12, 2010

A Traveller's Log

We underestimate things which lie below a pre-decided magnitude, and most of the times we, as a species, are completely wrong...this comes hardly as a surprise considering we are human and inspite of being the undisputed ruler of an entire planet, we are not far away from destroying the same planet we like to call our throne... But coming back to the miniscule watch on our hands, I realised how significant, how important and how amazingly brilliant just something as small as a day can be... We have lived our lives for a number of days too large to calculate without a calculator and we certainly do not remember all the days we have lived. Modern science has gone so far as to predict that one more day we live is one more day towards the end, and yet we as a species, we as an individual and we as organisms leaning towards something undeniable and unavoidable have utterly failed to make the best of a day, so to speak. Isnt the whole point of conquering and dominating a planet, making the best of whatever the planet offers us?

Technically it is. We evolved out of shells and bones and skulls and cartilages and made ourselves brains that helped us get rid of most of the competition. We conquered all land and decided that we are the sole rulers of the land of a huge blue planet. We patted our own backs and smiled and cheered.

But conquering a planet isnt something easy and the old blue planet had an ace up her sleeve...

It started rotating and going around a huge ball of fire, and consistently and periodically plunging a whole population into darkness and then consistently coming out into the bright light. It was this periodicity that gave birth to probably what can be called as the most dangerous weapon of all time... a pun if you may... This weapon is nothing but time. Reasons for the human desires for a time-machine go beyond education and exploration because of one simple understanding- He/ She who controls time, controls the world...

A kind of a rather drastic way to begin a traveller's log but we often forget what usually we travel through. It was after travelling through space and travelling through a day, I was forced to see a different world, or rather, a same world through a different perspective with the same eyes but not the same sight, and I realised how one day seperated and distinguised a people from another people and the entire day fit brilliantly on my wrist.

Now here was the beauty of the thing I wore on my wrist, a rather twisted irony, that man wears a watch always on himself for his entire life, to remind him of a simple truth- bitter, yes, but a truth that he is not the master of the world but merely reached a hieght from which he could not step down and now sits and bows down to the huge blue planet that has, till today, decided to forgive him....