And today as I sat frowning in the corner of the room after having another intense debate over the appropriateness of logic in the jokes circulating the atmosphere, I had a face to face encounter with the phenomenon called time. Time; scientifically defined, is a continuous chain of existence that appears to proceed in an irrevocable succession. In simple words, it is the civilisational purpose for which clocks and watches were created. It stretches itself to the scale of eons when your parents confiscate your gadgets for the sake of protecting your cornea from its overuse and reduces itself to the scale of grains when you have to write three proper answers in the remaining half hour of your examination.
Now obviously, I am no intergalactic divine creature who is beyond the confines of time. I have successfully lived and completed the phase of my life where my idleness was termed as childhood instead of me being termed as an unemployed liability to the country. I get my daily dose of defeats in my miserably failed conquests of the biological and social phenomenon called adulting.
But this time it was not about my life struggles. It was about the complex plethora of emotions that you experience when you witness your parents undergoing rapid process of aging, you see them getting old. At one end it is a completely normal process, look at yourself for instance. However on the other side of the spectrum, it is about accepting the fact that your assumptions regarding your parents having absolute superhero strength, vitality and vigor was a flawed one. All of this vivaciousness was there but its subscription was for a limited time period only. And you don’t have eternities left to spend together, but you have only a few years left where you’ll actually be together under the same roof. Eventually the roles will get reversed and you’ll be the caretaker; their hands will start to wrinkle even more while you will be busy in simple 20 step skincare routines; their voices will get feeble and yours will get bolder. The ones who got you introduced to the world around you, will get reminders from you to do even the basics task of switching off the appliances. The most fundamental and absolute truths of life are the most difficult ones to accept.
Our precious lives, which we love to refer to as the rat race, are actually not rat races at all. They are the relay races which we run together as a unit with our families. After running their courses, our parents pass the mashal of youth, responsibilities and lineage to us for continuing the game. It is a game of celebration and cooperation where despite the trials and tribulations, we are together as a civilization. They will be done with their parts soon; right now I am warming myself up for the race and eventually I will be running the course with the mashal. Uncertainties and hesitations for the performances and executions during your prime game are normal, sometimes you might get stuck in the pressure of conformity but the trident of experiences of the previous and co players, your own abilities and talents, and the faith of the complete unit over each other will always show the way out. And someday, I will also pass the mashal to someone else by prophesying ‘And My Youth Shall be Passed Upon You’.