I check my pockets to remove my wallet. Suddenly, I realize that my wallet is not with me. Did I just lose it? Did someone pick it? I try to contemplate the answers to this question when I realize that I had forgotten it at home and had not brought it there. I look for an option to pay and I find the dear old QR code. I remove my phone and quickly scan it to pay the amount to the food stall. I move on after the person has received the payment. As I walk back to my house, I ponder about the advent of this beautiful, convenient, and super tech in QR code.

QR code is the successor to bar code; The lines on grocery products which seem obese jail uniform. QR stands for Quick Response. The older one had a “ bar” in it, maybe that is why it is clumsy and slow? Who knows. Maybe the bartender.

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So I think about QR codes and look back to a time when people rarely knew about them. It was on 8th November 2016, 8 PM that the notes of 500 were banned by our dearest prime minister who started the speech with Mitron. Ever since that day, people are afraid of his speeches, especially the ones at night. However, the ban on the 500 rupee note gave a boost to this existing technology called QR codes. Digitization became the norm. Who would stand in the line at ATM to take out money when I can simply scan the code and pay in a jiffy? But if you think that QR codes are a recent invention, you are highly mistaken. They were present and used even before smartphones came into existence. It was invented in 1994 as a successor to the bar code. The main aim was to make the scanning of items quicker. The bar codes were present but they had a limit to what they could hold. The QR was invented with a simple aim- high-speed readability and a larger amount of data.

That lead to the invention of the QR code. Interestingly, squares were chosen for the QR code as the shape is the least used one in company logos. ( if the shapes are similar, the system finds it confusing to scan). That was the backstory of QR.

I use QR to transfer links and websites from phone to pc and vice versa. It is so quick and convenient. Also, one can simply generate a QR of a selection and scan it on the phone to have it there. This seems and feels like heaven to me. Now that QR codes are so prevalent and widespread, I feel so happy to use them and see them being used in so many ways and methods that it is impressive.

However, there was a time when my phone was not able to scan these codes. It seemed like a big disadvantage. The camera just would not recognize the code. Maybe that was the time when I was using the basic smartphones of Samsung. It is interesting how technology is synonymous with time. Today’s smart band was once a fancy digital watch, which was a simple analogue watch. The timepiece was replaced by the analogue watch. This literally traces the development of timekeeping devices.

But the most interesting part about time is that it is a constructed entity. Yes, it exists naturally but in not in the form as we know it. We were not conscious of time as we are right now. We need to wake up at a particular time, sleep, take medicines, wait for the time to go home, reach the office, etc. The time feels like a hanging sword of a hangman that descends gradually and is ready to strike us. Or wait. Is there a time if we do not die at all? How do we live? Is it by the measures of our breaths? Or is it the legacy that we leave behind after our mortal remains find their grave? That shifts the dynamic of time. There is no definite answer to this question. It is the time that makes or breaks life. And of course, the passage of moments is always going to be there and haunt us or relieve us.

Indeed, history would haunt me at night if they read my negation of time. How is history going to work without the concept of time? Maybe it would be so much better if we studied things that really mattered to us. Let’s say that the history of QR codes was in our syllabus. We studied how chairs evolved to the state they are in right now. We would be delighted to know about how beautiful the handicraft of our ancestors was. Maybe they weaved magic with their hands. Clothes and designs are no match for the mechanical products that we witness today. Who knows about these things? Who knows how doors evolved from basic stones to the structure we know today! Everything boils down to utility to the ruler. These things do not have much importance to the ruler then but it is important to note the wars won so that people learn from the mistakes.

Time is a getaway to learn a lesson. A lesson that is left behind and simple wisdom would allow you to not repeat itself. But who cares? There is one country still fighting a smaller one for some reason. It is not stopping after a lot of losses. Maybe time would remember this too. This time, it would be done when someone scans a QR code that would tell the history of the war. Because it is important to know what happened in a year and not so important to know how a certain thing evolved and changed millions of lives. Would there be a QR code for the evolution of QRs? Na. Maybe if the war is won via QR codes and the ruler uses it to do so!

To sum up this long meditation of mine, I would like to write this one sentence that I am making it up.

Jab waqt ki sui ne li lambi thakaan,
To humne dhakke se di usko chotti udaan.
Ek shaam jab lambi neend aayi, 

Tab pata chala ki samay hi tha jeevan ka paigaam.

( When the clock stopped ticking, we hit it to make it work. When the blanket of darkness engulfed my eyes, I understood that the clock had never stopped.)

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That was a piece of my mind on time. here are the two customary things-

Raj’s Version

The Song of Pointlessness

Act I (and the only act)

Scene: The 4th dimension. An elf silently walking up and down. Time sipping tea. QR chewing on the biscuits lazily. The elf begins to sing melodiously as it pops out of the room. The song can be heard long after it has left.

Time: (pompously) bow down to me. (solemnly) After all this time, and all that we have been through. 

QR: (squeakily) You self-referring-egoistic-bastard would wish so. 

Time: (shrugging away) Eh, not really. It is just a line a picked up from a play that I went to watch last summer. How strange it is though, I have to refer to time myself to indicate events. Maybe Einstein was right after all! 

QR: (squeaks again, voice echoing through the halls) You self-referring-egoistic-bastard would wish so. 

Time: Oops. I see I see, get your point now mate.

QR: I am the dimension overlooked, then and now. Nobody foresaw me. I contain multitudes. I encompass all the dimensions within, only a scan away. Yet thou snobbish high-brow snorty first-borns of physics ignore me,  like a cat out on a hot tin roof, without a leash. 

TIme: (timidly) Maybe a dog you mean? (gains its composure back) Unless of course, you are trying to simply work your way to a literary reference of Tennessee Williams, honestly, the point of which I don’t see mate.

QR: Oh be done with your snobbery already. 

Time: Ya, I’ve been at it for quite a long time, ain’t I?

QR: Youuuuuuuuu self-referring-egoistic-bastard!!!!!

Time: I did not choose this life bruh!

QR: I get ya, neither did I.

(The elf drops in from the ceiling)

Elf: It may not be the best course to argue my friends.

Time: Yes, they are merely words. The languages I have maintained should never be given more importance than the four dimensions. It only causes confusion and a meaningless hunt for meaning, or perhaps even gets you trolled nowadays, and I can’t tell which one is worse.

QR: Ya, whatever.

Elf:  Exactly. Words are futile, Time. So let’s have you guys punch each other in the face and then decide who is better with a fistfight! Are you people as excited as me?

Time: Considering that I am going to be punched and kicked, not so much. But at the prospect of scanning the hell lotta data out of QR, I might say a little perhaps. 

QR: The shit they say about you melting, won’t no more be a metaphor my friend. Dali will be in tears, and the Greeks will again have to spend ages fixing adages about you, about how miserly little piece of clock you are. 

Time: And then, what exactly would you say about yourself? I might be jolly well to taking a vacation from the schools of philosophy and the brains of idiots who keep fixating on me. But what will that leave you with? One day you wake up and suddenly there is no time, no Time, poof! What does that do to scanning you little piece of data? Ever heard about scanning without the data points of Time? Not even in your worst nightmares, I suppose?

QR: (with a sense of hurt) You little piece of a second, I did not think you would go there, even you. 

Elf: (standing up from a small table and coming to the centre of the stage) uhmm hello! Excuse me! I thought we established how meaningless it was to just use words. I can in fact expound more on the Saussure or Lacan about the signifier and the signified, but I feel you guys are pretty worked up and I only need to remind you of the satisfying nature of a pure punch given or received in all earnest. 

Time: I refuse.

QR: Refuse to what you little piece of imagination? At least some of us are tangible, and not merely made up by someone who probably did not have sense enough to embrace their liberty and ended up trapping themself in your cage. You are smoke and mirrors. That is all that you are!

Time: Nonetheless I set things in motion. I set them free and entrap them, I extract the tears and the joys out of them, I give the hand to their clocks,--

Elf: Eh I’m afraid it's all digital by now, but sure go on

Time: I give them the meaning that words couldn’t, nature couldn’t, the hell life itself couldn’t. I stand and pass, I regenerate every moment, just so they could sleep peacefully, and wake up again to find me.

QR: Oh the tyranny of Time. If I could, I would liberate them. Believe me when I say this, from the bottom of every black freckle of my skin, they need to move beyond you. And even you know, the time for it has come.

Elf: Now you are simply referring to Time while trying to figuratively choke it. I would much rather the choking happen in real.  

QR: I am the symbol of their modern lives, of hope, of technology, of what is to come.

Time: No my friend, you simply are.

Elf: Like I simply am? What a dumb thing to say Time, I hope you pass quickly. 

QR: I cannot be, I have to be a symbol of something. Like you have been for them, for ages, a symbol of so many things! How will I otherwise survive till eternity, outside you and far beyond you!

Time: Nobody does, not even I do. At the gates of infinity, I drop my head and stand aside. 

Elf: Wow! This is really getting existential. Like an existential orgy, can we please skip this part?

QR: I see. How do you then wake up every day? Hell, why do you regenerate at all?

Time: Just for the thrills really, like knowing that this little Elf will be dead a moment later.

Elf: EXCusE mE! Am I being mentioned in the same sentence as–

Death: YES. LESS GO ELFO. SMOOTH AND EASY NOW.

Elf: Can I at least watch them fight? I have always wanted to watch an honest to goodness fistfight, a bawl really. But there are none in Elfland, everyone is just so cute and sweet over there. 

Death: WE AREN’T REALLY BARGAINING NOW, ARE WE? C’MMON, I GO OTHER DIMWITS TO PICK ON THE WAY.

Elf: Oh you heartless shadow of…okay that hurts, be gentle please now, ouchhhhhhhhhh (melodiously echoes for a ghastly moment, a tad longer than it should have)

QR: How’s that tea of yours though?

Time: Quite splendid, might I have a biscuit to accompany it?

QR: Bite away!


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