Time. Please.

They are called Kanwarias. Every year around this time, you can see them - determinely plodding, with their heads down, along the highways of Delhi and Gurgaon. They go to Hardwar I am told, to the holy Ganges. Dressed in saffron, with a strange contraption slung on their shoulders. When I first saw them, they intrigued me - an unending stream of saffron in single file, like ants marching on. Now, however, what intrigues me is the fact that they seem to be doing this march more often, and with increasing frequency.

The same is true of my weekly magazine buying: every Saturday, I go over to this guy in Delhi to buy our vast and varied quota of weeklies, fortnightlies and monthlies. There was a time I looked forward to it. Now I do not need to - Saturday is upon me, before I know. The same is true of my monthly visit to the Gurudwara every 16th of the month, to bow my head to God and to the person I loved the most in life. The 16th of every month comes up very rapidly now - like a giant prayerwheel with dates written on it, but just spinning faster and faster...

I thought it was just me who felt that way - this quickening frequency of events, the shortening of hours and days between occurences. But I find I am not alone - everyone I talk to feels that way. They feel that stuff is happening faster, the duration between events of all kinds is shortening every year they live, the hands of the clock have hastened.

Time, if it may, is accelerating.

And that is what I have come to strongly believe - time is accelerating. While a day is still 24 hours, and not 23, the 24 just happen faster. The hour is still 60 minutes, and the minute is still 60 seconds. But just that each second is ticking just infinitesimaly faster, every time it ticks. And, again as if to validate me, everyone I tell this to agrees with me - first a little hesitantly, but then with complete conviction. Of course, they say, that is it, that explains everything - time is accelerating.

But, can time do that? Perhaps it can. What is time, after all? It started for us a millionth of a nano second after the Big Bang. And the Big Bang was the event where a single point, or Singularity, exploded out to form the known universe. Imagine that explosion - a trillion planets pushing out from that point, accelerating as they go outwards and onwards, creating our universe. And the universe is still expanding, and perhaps at an accelerating rate - in the bargain, it accelerates time..

Or perhaps the explanation is more prosaic. Every day we live, there are more and more things created to fill up our day. Even in my lifetime, my day 20 years back had only so many things to fill it - three meals, 1 hour of television, 7 hours of school, 1 hour of reading, perhaps an hour of playing and friends. Think of the day now - 10 hours of work, 2 hours of commuting, 2 hours of making things work at home, 24x7x500 hours of television, a billion online videos, 200 real friends, 500 friends on Facebook,  1500 colleagues on linkedin, 150 mails, 50 SMSes, 400 tweets... the list is endless. And before, we can deal with even a tenth of them, the day is over!

Or is it something else? Are our cells aging faster, perhaps? Or perhaps the Higgs Boson explains this - little massless particles of time hurtling away, faster and faster. Or is our planet on its final accleration - like the last gasp sprint of a long distance runner -, as it rushes to hurtle off the cliff its denizens are rapidly and relentlessly pushing it off?

If I was a physicist, I would have loved to model this - create an elegant little equation which explains this whole concept of acceleration of time. Perhaps it would win me the Nobel. Talking of which, I believe that the results of this years Nobels are going to be out very soon. Had they not just given last year's awards?

Addition: Thanks Rajnish. This is a great video to accompany the blog