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You got one extra second today: What did you do with it?

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Angshukanta Chakraborty
Angshukanta ChakrabortyJun 30, 2015 | 20:00

You got one extra second today: What did you do with it?

Because the Earth is a wobbly thing, and because it has a mind of its own which we euphemistically call electromagnetic field fluctuations, quirky gifts of time and visual treats emerge from its belly every now and then. The "leap second", or the 86,401th second that June 30, 2015 is supposed to have, is one such gift.

Or is it? Naturally, the extra one second at Greenwich Mean Time 23:59:60 on June 30 is basically our way of acknowledging the time swings. It's as artificial as our concept of time, dividing up the moody, unpredictable and stretchable solar day into 24 hours, 3,600 minutes and 86,400 seconds. That we won't exactly have the extra one second at any one point, that it will be spread out over the whole day, with each second getting a miniscule 1/ 86,400 bit more, and that perhaps the math is equally applicable to the months, years and centuries - is disheartening.

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We have invented time because we are hungry for meaning. For meaningful moments. That's why we celebrate anniversaries. That's why we remember. And today, we have one extra second to be, to recall, to create. What will we do?

Nothing.

Let's do nothing at all. Let's not try fit this tiny tick in the train of time into preconceived notions of what to do and not. Let's not make listicles and go through endless infinite banalities of how to experience this moment at all. Let's not insist on recording it and filing it in the binder that is bursting from the seams bloated with too many to-dos, have-dones.

Instead, let's pause.

Like the Earth, let's slow down for a jiffy. Let's see what happens when we slow down.

What flashes before our eyes? Whose face or faces, what memories of touch, what words spoken a lifetime before? Whom do we miss? Who do we want to be next to us, so that we can squeeze their hands, exchange a smile, a wink, a polite nod, just bask in the nearness?

Whom do we meet in that stolen one second?

Whom does a widowed homeless woman in Gaza meet in the leap second? When she closes her eyes, and in that very moment if a grenade doesn't go off in the vicinity, filling up her world with just the terror of sound and heat and the remains thereof, what does she think of? Does a prayer escape her battered mouth? Or is it a curse, a curse for those sitting in Tel Aviv, Riyadh and Washington? How can we tell her to take a deep breath and shut down her smartphone and experience the leap second?

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How does a soldier patrolling the border along Siachen glacier clock the second more? Perhaps, he's yearning to click #SelfieWithDaughter, the two-year-old he hasn't seen in 11 months? Or with the father, who having proudly served in earlier wars, is now nursing a broken spirit. What bullets and tanks couldn't do, a mere pension battle could: suck out his soul and leave him a lesser man, an old man.

One extra second. A gift from Earth. But where is the concern for Earth? Most of us are perfectly content skipping that one pesky article on climate change when we do our idle browsing. We stop to look at a piece of clothing, buy yet another pair of shoes, a faux designer handbag. Most of us want to live in the eternal present, with a stream of those extra seconds coming along, surrounded with buyable things.

Such amnesiacs. Craving eternal velocity. Craving speed, not always directionless, but then leaving such a trail of ruins behind. Ruins of time. Ruins of moments.

Some of us don't want to have children because children are reminders of passage of time, its cruel arrow. An arrow that is hurtling towards a toxic temporal dystopia.

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Who among us is really dreaming? Who loves time, and doesn't kill it, doesn't churn it to manufacture usefulness, doesn't turn it to money, capital - emotional and otherwise?

Whoever spares a thought, spares a moment. 

For believers, a spare second might be the sigh of god, a deep lament. For others, it could be a moment of choice. Of a gentle resolve. To undo a few things. And dream up a few more.

Last updated: July 01, 2015 | 13:33
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