8 Minutes.

 

“If the sun were to explode, you wouldn’t even know about it for 8 minutes. Because that is how long it takes for light to travel to us. For 8 minutes, the world would still be bright. And it would feel warm.”

- Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

We live our mundane lives every day, oblivious of what is going to happen to us tomorrow. Every next second is a surprise. Or rather, what it is intended to be. By who? Let’s not get into that now. Later, maybe.

Today, all we have is ‘8 Minutes’. What if some day, it really happened. And all we had was 8 minutes. Haah! Sounds like those cheesy forwarded texts, saying, “What would you do? Forward to falana-dimka people to get interesting answers, but first answer me.”

Let’s call the day when it happens, The Worst Day. So what would you do? In those last 8 minutes? The worst day, would also mean that it most certainly would be the last day. And hence it would mean that the Worst day would make the list of things to do a lot longer. Would it not?

You all would have your own lists. I have mine. But keeping in mind that we would have just 8 minutes, I am in a fix. What would I most certainly do? And what would I skip? There would be so many things I would have wanted to do in life. But those 8 minutes are not the time to do them. How would I know without ever doing them before if I like them? And would it be wise to do them in those 8 minutes? Would those 8 minutes be enough for all of them? It most certainly would not. And even if it were, I would not want to do them. Primarily because that would be the first time I would be doing them. I want to do only good things in those 8 minutes.

Good things. All in 8 minutes. So where do we start? How about, “What makes most number of memories?” Touch? Audio Clips? Video clips? Pictures? Pictures.

Pictures. Photographs. Photographs, to capture a particular moment in time. Photographs, to re-live a previously captured moment in time. Photographs, to remember people by. Or a place. Photographs to make your nostrils pain and your eyes itch because you miss the person, or the moment. Photographs to remind you how much you love someone. Photographs to remind you of the glorious gone-by days. Photographs to live them, just once more.

So that seals it. My last 8 minutes, I would want to re-live the gone-by moments. Rewind and play through those moments in my mind. Like a movie. A movie with just photographs. Moments frozen and captured in time. Yes, that should do the trick.

The Last 8 minutes. Now I am prepared for it.

Bring it on.