The clock, the alarm and the snooze

Ever since I was born and till the time government of India decided that I was of ripe age to go to school, my routine was – have feed, burp, sleep. And repeat. Sleep time and wake time were as per my convenience. OK, sometimes as per convenience of my parents also. That much they deserved.

I was trained to point to fan or recite ABC whenever anyone visited our house. I was taught to identify colors and to wish whosoever looked at me.

But I was never tutored to identify clock or measure time. And that has troubled me ever since.

All day I am looking at clock more than anything else. Time to get up, time to dress up, time to reach the office, time to meals, time to beer, time to sleep. Time is dictating my life more than my family, GST, Tennis Grand Slam and Albert Einstein, all put together.

No one knows what time is, it comes from where and disappears where. But someone devised a clock to measure the time. Use of clocks should have been restricted to the scientific labs only. Whosoever thought of putting them on the wall, coat pocket, wrist, towers, phones and most importantly in the office biometric machines, must have been an evil mind.

And to make matters worse, someone added alarm to the clock. Now my day starts with an alarm. It sounds like a combination of my parents, my wife, my dog and the rooster. I dare not disobey such a strong wake up system.

It must have been a combination of a genius and anti-alarm mind that devised the snooze. Alarm was trying to overpower me, now I have power over the alarm. Hit the snooze and bury the alarm. It might be revenge of few minutes only, but it surely has dented the inflated ego of alarm. And the sleep of those few minutes beyond the alarm is most blissful sleep. It is a victory sleep, victory over the wicked alarm.

Alarms and time, they are not healthy for humans. Sound of alarm or a look at the clock makes us tense. They make us rush and incite us to make hasty decisions. If there was no time, we would not skip deadlines.

Leave aside the mysterious time, the watches and clocks are spinning their own conspiracy. Some have hands and dials and others have digits. Some are made of gold and others are studded with diamonds. All for what? Just to tell us the time, the time which is still a mystery to us. The only time that we know is NOW. We can’t go back to the past. We can’t see in the future.

Time stops for no one. But then, let’s snooze and stop in time and enjoy the NOW.