Time Travel Is Possible

Time travel is possible. We do it all the time. From nostalgia to anxiety, we are never really ‘here’. On those rare occasions of clarity when the WiFi has stopped working or the phone battery has finally died, when the background static dies down for a bit and you are finally with yourself — the here and now is always the same. In the toughest of times, I have found myself in communion with this ‘here’. Knowing that no matter how good or bad the times are, this too shall pass. And when I am ‘here’ again, it feels like no time has really passed between these two moments of clarity. The interlude was just a daydream, perhaps. Comforting at times but also scary. That years, decades from now, when it’s too late, maybe on my deathbed, I will plug into ‘here’ and it will seem like no time has really passed between now and the moments of extreme joy and extreme sorrow years ago. It is still the same person asking what is this life for and finding nothing but bad poetry as answers. All the intervening years were just an ad break with no real progress in the storyline. All the distractions helped you time travel but did you really get anywhere? If only you could be ‘here’ more often, the string of nows would make time itself disappear, and so would your nostalgia and your anxieties.

• Punit Pania