<p>Twenty-four moons have waned since I last wore a watch and I would feel distinctly inconvenienced if I put on one today. Now that’s a real turnabout. I know how distraught I was the day my old wristwatch (we had started our association in college) decided to take a break from its uninterrupted diurnal sweep, refusing despite any cajoling taps to activate the sweep-second hand.<br /><br />I showed my watch to old watchmaker Rashid who sat in the quiet alley behind the raucous bazaar. Screwing on an eyeglass he examined the watch. Letting out a deep sigh, he pronounced the diagnosis and said that it needed replacement of a few parts. But suggested to put that aside and get a new one. So I laid my companion to rest.<br /><br />Being without a watch could be fun, I realised. It certainly made for a more exciting working day. What was previously a straitjacketed aggregate of busy hours, predetermined by the appointments pad and monitored by my wristwatch was now an amorphous mix of issues.<br /><br />The office had suddenly become an uncertain, slippery place where the mind had to be kept constantly honed and readied for action. I rolled with the tide, taking the jobs as they came. It was all along a heady combination of improvisation and control and a lapse meant getting a cold shoulder from the boss.<br /><br />But more satisfying than my office roller coasting was the quieter, deeper strain of ‘timeless’ existence I had begun to uncover with every passing day. The absence of a watch set me off on a search for the real pulse beats of the present.<br /><br />From a speeding bus, I had once seen a great red orb sink below the world. The horizon rose and rose till only a fiery afterglow remained in the heavens. For the first time I perceived the steady and near imperceptible stages of the sun’s descent. I had gone beyond the calibrated seconds, minutes and hours to see the process in the raw.<br /><br />I like to imagine that the hominid Lucy, moving through the scrubby African savannah some 3,000 millennia ago must have seen the same, followed the sun’s exit with a sharper eye, perhaps quickening her strides just that much so to arrive at her cavernous home with a little light still left over.</p>
<p>Twenty-four moons have waned since I last wore a watch and I would feel distinctly inconvenienced if I put on one today. Now that’s a real turnabout. I know how distraught I was the day my old wristwatch (we had started our association in college) decided to take a break from its uninterrupted diurnal sweep, refusing despite any cajoling taps to activate the sweep-second hand.<br /><br />I showed my watch to old watchmaker Rashid who sat in the quiet alley behind the raucous bazaar. Screwing on an eyeglass he examined the watch. Letting out a deep sigh, he pronounced the diagnosis and said that it needed replacement of a few parts. But suggested to put that aside and get a new one. So I laid my companion to rest.<br /><br />Being without a watch could be fun, I realised. It certainly made for a more exciting working day. What was previously a straitjacketed aggregate of busy hours, predetermined by the appointments pad and monitored by my wristwatch was now an amorphous mix of issues.<br /><br />The office had suddenly become an uncertain, slippery place where the mind had to be kept constantly honed and readied for action. I rolled with the tide, taking the jobs as they came. It was all along a heady combination of improvisation and control and a lapse meant getting a cold shoulder from the boss.<br /><br />But more satisfying than my office roller coasting was the quieter, deeper strain of ‘timeless’ existence I had begun to uncover with every passing day. The absence of a watch set me off on a search for the real pulse beats of the present.<br /><br />From a speeding bus, I had once seen a great red orb sink below the world. The horizon rose and rose till only a fiery afterglow remained in the heavens. For the first time I perceived the steady and near imperceptible stages of the sun’s descent. I had gone beyond the calibrated seconds, minutes and hours to see the process in the raw.<br /><br />I like to imagine that the hominid Lucy, moving through the scrubby African savannah some 3,000 millennia ago must have seen the same, followed the sun’s exit with a sharper eye, perhaps quickening her strides just that much so to arrive at her cavernous home with a little light still left over.</p>
