Time

Is it
6:00 am when the peacocks…

…start their poignant calls or when the lizard makes the first chkk chkkchkk sound on the wall? Or when the veil of darkness lifts? Is it Monday when we mustn’t eat meat and Tuesday when we mustn’t cut hair or nails? Basically, tell me sister, why is it morning where Kirtana is and afternoon where Nagamma is? The sun will soon go down here and the buffalo will come back to their shed. The chickens are the last to sleep and willingly come in when it is dark…what time is that? And there, where Kirtana is, it’s still dark over the lake, the sun, yet to arrive, the tall tall trees white with snow…

Is Kirtana running late or Nagamma running too fast? Is Nagamma’s experience more real because it’s already happened while Kirtana was in quarantine, confused by jet lag? If I must trust my experience of now, must I forget what went before and what will come?

“Just as space does not have a fixed span, time does not have a fixed span either.

Just as the world and its creation are mere appearances, a moment and an epoch are also imaginary.”