This column appeared in The Asian Age and The deccan chronicle for
‘Know it as that which moves when time stands still’ Katha Upanishad 2-1-13
Half a second — that’s how quickly lovers can embrace. One fifth of a second... that’s all it takes to blink. One tenth of a second... that’s how soon your eyelashes kissed each other as you just blinked. One sixteenth of a second... that’s the time interval between a new pinch and the pain. One twentieth of a second... that’s the crack of a whip from curl to curl. One fiftieth of a second... the flutter of bee’s wings, so fast you can’t see it happen. One hundredth of a second... that’s all it takes for a Ferrari to zip across a shoulder’s width. One thousandth of a second... it’s a nice freeze strobe for a falling droplet. Watch as it bounces slowly and breaks into a hundred tiny spheres. One ten thousandth of a second — a sniper’s bullet penetrates a body from the chest and leaves from the back. One millionth of a second — now you are in a different time zone. The only happening place is inside a living cell. In one millionth of a second, a million things have already happened... another million things are happening and the DNA molecule waits impatient. One billionth of a second... you are at the cutting edge of time for life’s workings. If you acquire such eyes you can see the long twirling molecule lazily dancing, grabbing, stitching, weaving an image of itself... telling long funny stories to its twin as they separate, each on a mission of their own.
One trillionth of a second... you are beyond the molecule now... nothing moves, even the super busy DNA looks dead and motionless... The scene is like nothing we can imagine, but regard it if you wish as an idyllic picture. Photons are sauntering lazily by in an otherwise dark universe. The world is stiff like a photograph, the bee hangs frozen in flight, the Ferrari remains motionless, the sniper’s bullet peeps out of the barrel but never leaves, lovers stretch out arms that never meet, and you are at last reaching the known edge of time. One quadrillionth of a second and time no longer exists for life or matter. Yet something mysterious is at work. Some force that choreographs the dance of life, of atoms, of subatomic particles, some force that keeps iron laws that hold a jumping, jiving universe in its place. Enter the Field at last. When everything is frozen, the Field is all that moves.
What is the Field anyway? It is ‘that which moves when time stands still’. It is everywhere all at once and for all time. On its silent command the bee flaps its frozen wing, the Ferrari zips past at breakneck speed, lovers inch closer in embrace, the bullet smokes its way out of the barrel. From the stillness, time wakes up and yawns, chaos suddenly erupts. You check your watch. It is already too late. You are heading for the fast track. No time for Vedanta and its subtleties.
Got to go. Honk-honk. That's life.
