by Anuja Mitra

The clocks all stopped when Grandma died. This isn’t a metaphor. The first gave in the morning of the funeral; the one in the kitchen we’d regarded as a kind of mother-mastermind to other timekeepers. Because of its size, I suppose, and what Grandma called pedigree. The reality was less glamorous than she preferred to report. She’d bought it at a garage sale on her first anniversary, a gift to celebrate a union that was already unraveling. It hung above the pantry for forty-five years until the day it declined every battery we offered it. The other clocks followed later. Suddenly absent was the tick tick tick that punctuated our existence — the tick tick tick that puppeted us from room to room, out of the house and then in it again, gusting us around our lives like some divine wind.

Now we just stood in our expected places while the clocks hoarded their seconds; their faces blank, unknowable. There must have been a week or two of this, when none of our ministrations could entice them back to life. When they did begin, slowly, they refused to stay in sync. My uncle — ever meticulous — affixed labels to each one. The strips of paper hung down like half-hearted banners from a blimp: add 10 minutes, minus 35 minutes, add 4 hours, take back 2. All this to align our internal time with the time out there, the world’s time, the world where Grandma had slipped away with only our notice.

In her younger days she was voted leading weather woman eight years in a row. My father spent his boyhood on the living room floor while Grandma was on TV, prophesying the clouds. Later she’d say you’d think no one has windows, the way they need me. The outdoors were a religion for her. Growing up she never missed a chance to herd us outside, unfazed by the most inclement conditions. And there we were now, deferring to machines and my uncle’s corrections to tell us when we might see the sun. It wasn’t unusual to find my brother-in-law beneath the hall clock, hands frozen in the act of looping his tie, counting inside his head. Or my sister gazing thoughtfully at the study wall, lipstick paused en route to her mouth. Add 10 minutes, minus 35 minutes, add 4 hours, take back 2. Everything slowed down when you did these morning mathematics; figuring out if you were late, or would be once you decided you weren’t, while the clocks dispensed their minutes only hours at a time.

Life slid into its former rhythm. And yet I noticed how the ticking felt unwelcome, an intruder at the edges of thought. I noticed how the clocks set a lifespan on our every moment, how they made my body move through space without my willing it. All through my youth and my father’s before me we had let them keep time, keep it away from us; shut up behind those masks of glass. Our yesterdays turned distant. Our present turned past. One of my best and earliest memories was Grandma taking us up the hill by the harbor to watch the sunset. I was too young, I had no word for evening; for how the sky forgot itself at the same time every day, going indigo-gold over the water. I could close my eyes now and return to that hill, make that moment a small forever.

When the clocks stopped again we felt no great urgency. I suppose there was a sense of peace in knowing you were outside of time. It made you relax your routines, enjoy the stillness without needing to fill it. I started leaving the house less and less. To leave was to be assaulted by everyone else’s pace: constantly late for the next appointment, relying on screens in their pockets to tell them when to rise and when to rest. Caught in a tailspin of their own creation; a timespin, if you will. Grandma said life only goes as fast as you let it. She was divorced early, educated late — but by whose measure?

I’ve quit my job. I look far more at the sky now. I do what my body needs when it needs it. My friends couldn’t understand, but I didn’t expect them to. My boss visited once. He sat drumming his fingers on the chair Grandma bought on her last overseas trip, the trip she’d taken against everyone’s advice. We’re all just worried about you, he said, but he couldn’t stop checking his watch. I no longer use my devices. I note vaguely the passage of days. I’ve moved my bed over to the window, keep my blinds open whatever the season. Now I don’t resist the darkness when it floods my room like rain. Now I only know it’s sunrise when I feel it on my face.

Image by Manish Jangid via Pexels