Time, time.

He is two, a tot jumping in front of his mirror, giggling in delight at the sight of his own face that is in phase with itself. A dry toothbrush sticks out from his mouth. It is memory, of the earliest years, of an old shade of greenish golden. The borders around the room in which the mirror was have blurred, and now all that rests in it is a fondness, and time, time, time. Like royal silence, where none can sense or trace it, time, time.
A blinding light pervades the room and at once, he is seven, and walking through the Moorish streets of Lake Gardens holding his mother’s arm. She leaves him there at a park, tells him she is a working woman, she has work, she has to go. He stands there, in drab silence in the midst of the green earth, looking around at other toddlers with glee on their faces. That glee, which is rare and unperturbed, which marks no creases on your face, but simply carries you forward. The earth slowly turns greener as the day brightens and it reaches a peak until it all fades away again.
Thirteen, and there is a sudden flurry of activity, of noise. In the midst of it all, suddenly he is burdened with death. He does not know how to deal with it, he has heard frightful things about it, yet he doesn’t know how to deal with it. As the November rains drains the earth, as if in defeat, he simply stands by his grandfather’s cot, studying minutely the creases on his face. There is an absurd naivety in the old man’s face, a naivety of the kind where you have completely given in, completely scorned feeling and doubt and gone beyond. He sees all around him crying, he doesn’t know what he is supposed to do. He walks away. He remembers the rain. It fades away.
Fourteen, Fifteen, teen. He says those words over and over again, rounds them around his lips, feels the exciting prospects that are invested in that word. Once when he was young, he had dreamed of growing up. And now, Neverland was here, in all its promised treasures. And yet, he is more often than not entwined in human tussles. Something has begun, something genuinely and strikingly different.
The earth seems to have opened up. Beauty and treachery lie on the same bed. He doesn’t know which is more exciting, which disturbs him more. Slowly he realizes that time is ripe for him to move away from all that claims to be his authority. Instead now, he is possessed of this desire to explore himself, to explore what he wants and more importantly, why he wants it.
The days have meandered off since then, the earth has taken its turn in being green. When he was young, he used to share a silly little dream of waking up one winter morning to a snowing Calcutta. Calcutta hasn’t remained, the snow hasn’t come.
The world is now a hodge-podge, where fantasy and desire and sorrow and pain aren’t mere articulate words, they are part of each other.
There are a million voices, a thousand crazy whispers. Winter is here for now, biting into human skin like conscience, telling them not to take anything as a joke, not even themselves.

The winter is now at its peak, the skies absorbed in royal silence, and humanity tussles on beneath, its own course unknown and bleak, but for now breathing in relief, for a year has ended and with it, its sorrows and the next turn marks a new beginning. There is a chance after all. India, abysmally dry, is gearing up for an end of year bash, and nothing will rob a nation of that chance at glory, the glory of forgetting, the glory of washing yourself away, of renewing, of having another chance.
And he has spent himself here for a while, he is looking aside, looking beyond. Time, time.