Watch words

Today, I decided to sleep with my wristwatch facing the other way.

Now, the dial is not luminous. It does not smirk at me like the painted clown mask at two in the morning when I am already seeing light sans the tunnel, Pandora be blessed. It does not go tick tock which, to me, is the heartbeat of the universe - the siren and the chugga chugga of the distant train being the sound of blood pumping through its veins. It does not wake me up at seven in the morning, shattering the cobwebs like a drunk horsefly. It does however tend to slip from my wrist down to the heel of my palm which often shocks my mother into a feeding frenzy so that the Lorus stays smack on my wrist. But I don't wear it when I am sleeping. No fetishes there.

So, you may be curious to know why I am specific about the physical alignment of the watch to my somnambulant self, when it does nothing but lie in nocturnal dormancy.

I hate it when someone tells me the time. It's like saying, "It is five in the morning. This marks the 2,09,970th hour of your lifetime that has an average of 5,25,600 hours. Go figure."

And when I wake up for that much needed glass of water after an evening of engorged intellectual debate over several pitchers of beer, I do not want to open my eyes to the mocking face of the Lorus which, I know, is sitting smugly in the light of its immortality.