Time

Time stood still.

So I had to take my favorite wristwatch to the watch repair shop in the neighborhood for battery replacement. 

Fred, of Fred’s Watch and Jewelry Repair, took all of 5 minutes to do his job. I didn’t even have enough time to settle down with a magazine—an October 2011 copy of Motorsports that I picked up from a delectable menu of several neat stacks of various magazines that Fred has stocked. Not that I am into cars. But when I visit my dentist, or wait outside a pediatrician’s office, or at the DMV, I tend to pick up something—Golf Digest, Vogue, Men’s Health—that I am the least likely to read in the normal course of life. And when the magazine is a couple of years old, I get the delight of revisiting a slice of time that has passed. It is like turning the pages of an old album.

Fred calls himself an artisan of a dying art. Millennials hardly wear watches. But I am no millennial. Visiting Fred's repair shop gave me the feeling of stepping into some place sacred. The cleanliness of the floor. The meticulous organization of the shop. The showcases full of wristwatches and ornate table-top watches. The tick-tock of the standing grandfather clock. Did I say the neatly stacked magazines? I completely got into the perfect ‘Saturday-of-a-long-weekend-in-January’ mood for idle musing.

They say January babies have a special connection (or shall we say obsession?) with the concept of time. Yesterday a friend reached a milestone birthday. Also, yesterday I learnt that an elderly family friend recently got diagnosed with a serious illness. In situations like these, everyone to a certain extent thinks about time. How much time has passed. How much time is left. But we the Capricorns take it to another level altogether. We write blogs after visiting a watch repair shop!

In a desperate bid to try to fit everything that I am experiencing into a framework of time, I start (over)thinking. Did the stalled watch symbolize the specter of a terminal illness? Did I take my watch to the repair shop immediately because accepting the finality of a terminal illness is still difficult for me after losing my mom two years back? Could it be that reviving the watch reflects that I am embracing getting older rather than artificially trying to hold time at a standstill? Or could it be that unknowingly I have made a new year’s resolution this time? One that involves not avoiding doing things just because I can get around it? Like switching to another wristwatch without bothering to fix the one that stalled? Or may be ironing my clothes once in a while rather than buying only wrinkle-proof clothes?

Most likely it is the case of an unofficial resolution. Not doing certain things, and figuring out a way to go on living my life without doing those things felt great for a period of time. But now it is losing its charm. Now getting the wristwatch fixed feels nicer, because it leads to the inspiration of writing a blog early into the new year. May be the real resolution is getting back more to writing. I have been averaging two blogs a year for the last few years. May be finally I am tired of thinking of myself as someone who ‘used to write.’ Even if I write three blogs this year, that will be one more than last year. After all, it is still mid-January, and I am one down already. I have enough time left. Don’t I?