HG Well’s The Time Machine! I am completely obsessed with that book and the whole concept of travelling back and forth in time. I have watched American sci fi film Back to the Future and its sequels over and over. Be it the extra-terrestrial Dr. Who, Stephen King’s 11-22-63 where the protagonist time travels to prevent JFK’s assassination or Stephen Fry’s Making History – somewhat hilarious account of time travel to prevent Hitler from coming into being, the concept has always deeply intrigued me.
What was so far figment of wild imagination might very well become a reality. For physicists believe time travel maybe a possibility by 2028. That would be exhilarating isn’t it? Fascinating, exciting, scary and spooky all at once.
I have often wondered what I would do if I had a time machine. No matter what the odds are against time travel I would definitely like to undertake that adventure, especially travelling back in time. But unlike most people I wouldn’t be bothered about fixing my past mistakes. For my mistakes and misadventures don’t define, they have helped me become the person that I am today. Rather, I would ponder upon the moments that I so miss – the starry nights, the rainy afternoons, those summer vacations when I would plunge into the world of literature and poetry, the girly gossips, the first crush – time travel to relive those moments once again.
And better still, what if my time machine came with a feature that could take me the world of my favourite novels. Imagine walking into Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice and encountering the proud Mr. Darcy. Or the tumultuous world of Anna Karenina or Scarlett O’Hara of Gone with the Wind. How about walking the lanes of James Joyce’s Dubliners or getting lost in the multitude of realism of Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude. If that is too much to ask, I could at least go sit next to Keats while he would be penning his Ode to the Nightingale or witness intoxicated Coleridge dream up The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. No, I wouldn’t change a thing, I wouldn’t touch a thing, I would just be an onlooker trying to soak up the past.
Travel to future I would never. For what would the present hold if the future was all revealed!!