Time Travel and Me

It was a Sunday afternoon, some day in 1989, and I was feeling the first pangs of procrastination. The day after was an important test for which I had under prepared (as in not having studied a bit). Irrespective, I was drawn towards 'Indradanush' on good old DD. The need to distract oneself when there is a compulsion to concentrate is the first in the list of procrastinator's creed.

DD Sundays were a blast for me - Walt Disney presents, Bharat Ek Khoj, Indradanush, Spiderman and the afternoon regional movie that put me to sleep like a healthy dose of Benadryl. 'Indradanush' was the rare sci-fi serial on DD. Two brothers end up traveling in time and having zany adventures along the way. I immediately latched on to the concept - If I had a time machine I will pop in, go to Monday, check the question paper for the test, come back to Sunday and just prepare for that particular set of questions. That was my plan. I even drew a block diagram of my time machine prototype. In fact, I was quite confident that I will be time traveling at some point in my life that I wrote a personal checklist and cryptic messages. Yes, I did all this when I could have very well studied for the exam the day after. Shut up!

That notebook is somewhere among my things back in India. I need to go see the percentage of achievements sans time travel. I even wrote an essay (ghost co-authored by my Dad) titled, 'If my life had a second edition what corrections would I make' and ended up winning a prize of sorts. So, the commitment to travel back and forth in time was, is and will be there.

Over the years support and discouragement have vacillated on my time travel aspirations. Stephen Hawking made a major dent on my drool with this observation - "If time travel were possible, we would have already seen people from the future". I wasn't able to counter this annoyingly practical observation for a long time. My hopes were renewed by pioneers like Doctor Who and the Journeyman. Unfortunately, both these guys are fictional. However, they did project the idea that time travelers tend to do all their traveling in a discrete fashion. Ergo, there are people traveling from the future but they are just excellent in not revealing themselves. Double ergo, time travel is possible, we just don't see the journey men. Also, as clearly illustrated in The Butterfly Effect, time travel is possible under extreme duress but has the side affect of alternating your own future. Time travel is also supposed to be an impossible concept according to some theorists as the earth is never in the same cosmic location to return to. The fact that people against my wishes include Stephen Hawking and those for include Ashton Kutcher has to be overlooked.

The Grandfather paradox is another mood spoiler on the adverse effects of time travel. It gives an instance where a girl is born in 1945, has a baby herself after meeting a drifter in 1970, who goes back to meet himself in 1945. In 1985, he is a time traveler and also a facilitator of his own time travel. He takes himself back to 1945, kidnaps his own kid in 1970 and so on... It somehow dwindles down to a loop where the girl is her own mother, father, grandfather, grandmother, son, daughter and bartender.

I am not seeking all this fuss. My simple request is that I get to see the question paper of an inconsequential exam in 1989, so that I can watch TV in peace... in 1989.