Time passes: Some 'Reflections'

 One never steps in the same river twice, said Heraclitus. Indeed! In between the first and the next step, much water flows down the bridge. We change, contexts continually shift. Like this ever fluid (of course, in all senses of this term) river is time. It flies. At all sorts of speeds, some times like the snail, at the slowest pace; at times, with a supersonic sprint. Truly a long distance runner, in its wake, everything changes!

Look at May 1, for instance. It continues to be called the International Labour Day. But the spirit is missing, unlike that 1886 Second International when began the march for the 'eight hours a day' demand. In our days when the Murti's of the I/T world demand  a seventy hour week, while the Gen Z, et al, wanna retire in the mid-thirties, the concept of labour itself has gotten complicated beyond recognition, what with the AI looming large on the horizon.

The thin line between the white collar and  the blue collar workers seems to have blurred now as technology has invaded every field, be it farming or the shop floor. Why, every corner, be it at home or the office or the road side, is now cleaned and dusted with a vaccum cleaner, most often robotic! Why, now, there are robotic soldiers; there is online multi media teaching; even birth is often, not only caesarean, but also via the IVF mode! In the process, the very definition of labour has transmogrified!

Look at our very own Maharashtra, born on May 1. Sixty-five years later, it is vastly different from the original version. It has literally undergone a sea change, what with the criss-crossing sea bridges, right? The famous Marathi spirit, too, has developed interesting as well as intriguing contours.

Yet celebrating the May Day is a ritual that has the same festive feel, like the spring celebrations in Europe. Somehow, this customary salute, be it to the clenched fist logo or to the ochre Marathi pennant, seems to be the placenta to the erstwhile idealism and fervour, never dead, ever reborn in newer versions!

Pratima@ Yes, time does pass. But is not  yesterday today's memory, and tomorrow today's dream, as Khalil Gibran put it most poetically!