Le temps.

When my parents were still a number of inches taller than me, I imagined that by removing the batteries behind the wall clock Time would come to a standstill. When I finally did it our of sheer boredom, I thought I stopped Time. But my goldfishes kept on swimming about in the aquarium. People inside the television box kept on moving. Floral curtains were still dancing to the incessantly changing direction of the wind. House appliances kept on doing their daily chores. Mum was still talking on the phone, Dad was still outside practising his golf swings, and my brothers were still playing their favorite computer game. Birds could still be overheard chirping on the tree. Even the gentle rustling of the leaves was audible enough from inside the house. The aromatic smell of stir-fried vegetables in the kitchen spread like good news and wafted on the air under my hungry nose. And pasted on the window was the setting sun, sinking beneath a sea of houses, its orange rays slowly dissolving in the vast expanse of indigo.

For that moment, on the exact same place, when everything else was moving, I stood still. Gripping the edges of the clock with my hands, I wondered why I couldn’t stop Time.

When my parents were still a number of inches taller than me, I wished Time would  just shut up and stand still  and leave me alone because I wanted to do as many things as possible. As a kid, twelve hours of sunlight was never enough for studying in school and playing with my friends. Four or five hours in the evening was never enough to do my homework, watch my favorite shows on TV, and spend time with my parents and siblings. And the remaining seven or eight hours was never enough for me to get sufficient sleep or to finish my dream before waking up.

After all these years, it seems that Time had been such a scarce, selfish resource that I had to chase every single day.

Well, it still is.

And it’s only starting to become worse than anything I’ve ever seen before.