# The Correct Second Of A Broken Clock The clock had stopped at 3:47 for three years now. My father had hung it in the drawing room on the day he retired, wound it carefully, and declared, "This clock will outlast us all." It didn't. By the third week, it had quit. We all thought he would fix it. He never did. I used to wonder if it was stubbornness. My father was the sort of man who kept his promises to inanimate objects the way others kept them to God. A broken thing in his house was not a failure; it was a choice. The clock became part of the room's furniture, like the sofa with the faded chintz or the bookshelf that leaned slightly to the left. Nobody noticed it anymore. Until the day my mother asked me to wind it. She was standing in the doorway with that particular expression women wear when they've decided something without consulting the men in the house. "It's been three years, Rishi. Even a broken clock is better than no clock." "It was broken before that," I said. "Exactly. So we've gotten used to lies. Now we can try honesty." I took the key from the small brass hook behind the portrait of my grandfather and climbed the chair. The mechanism was stiff. Dust had settled into the joints like sediment in a river. As I wound it, I could feel the resistance, the small protestations of metal that had forgotten its purpose. The clock began to tick. It was a sound I hadn't heard in three years. The drawing room, which had been silent in a particular way—the silence of things that have given up—suddenly filled with rhythm. My mother smiled as if I'd done something miraculous. "See?" she said. "It works." It didn't work. It ticked, but the hands didn't move. I wound it further, heard the spring tighten, felt something catch. Still nothing. After about six minutes, the ticking stopped. The hands remained at 3:47, frozen in their moment of surrender. My father came in while I was still standing on the chair, key in hand. "Leave it," he said. I descended. "It won't work, Baba. Something's broken inside." "I know." "Then why did Mother ask me to—" "She didn't ask you to fix it. She asked you to wind it. There's a difference." He looked at the clock with an expression I couldn't read. Affection, perhaps, or recognition. The look a man gives to something that has finally become what it always was meant to be. That night, I sat in the dark drawing room and watched the clock. I thought about my father's retirement, the way he'd filled the house with his presence all day, the way my mother had learned to work around him like water around a stone. I thought about how he'd spent three years not fixing the clock, which was another way of saying he'd spent three years learning to live with time that didn't move. The next morning, something strange happened. At exactly 3:47 in the afternoon—I noticed because the light fell through the window at that particular angle it falls at 3:47—the clock ticked. Once. A single, solitary sound, like a heartbeat that had skipped, remembered itself, and resumed. I didn't mention it to anyone. But I began to watch for it. And every day, at 3:47 in the afternoon, the clock would tick. Just once. Always the same second, always precisely accurate. My mother noticed eventually. She pointed it out at tea one day: "The clock is working." "It ticks at 3:47," I said. "Once a day." She and my father exchanged a look—the kind of look married people exchange when they've just discovered they've been living in the same house as a miracle and didn't know it. "Maybe it's the only time it remembers," my mother said. My father smiled. "Or the only time that remembers it." I never did fix that clock. Neither did he. We let it sit there in the drawing room, keeping the wrong time for 365 days a year, and on the 366th day, keeping the correct second. I think my father understood something about that clock that I'm only beginning to understand now. That broken things don't need to be repaired—they need to be understood. They need someone to stand in front of them and wait for the moment when they tell you what they're meant to tell you. The clock stopped ticking at 3:47 again about a year ago. My father has been dead for six months. Sometimes I wind it, even though nothing happens. My mother never asks me to. We both know what we're looking for now. We're waiting for the correct second of a broken clock to come around again.

June 22, 2020 3 min read By Sushanta Paul

# The Second Hand

It’s interesting how a broken clock shows the correct time, exactly one second a day. At some point, the beatings of our hearts get synchronized. They are overlapped. One by one, the clock broke them. Some people call it ‘here, now.’ To me, it’s the unwritten law that people can belong to each other for an eternity.

I, sometimes, shut up a lot. I’m thinking about the mechanism of operation behind everything. I’m thinking about the gap in the steps between us. That’s why sometimes I’m two or three breaths ahead. About two or three heartbeats ahead. That sometimes I know exactly what you’re going to say. Or I should say. All this time I’m looking for the second I was talking about. The one where our tandem becomes movable perpetuity. A micro-eternity. That is if you’re going to dissect the depth of the situation.

That damn second fixes the clock that only works once a day. Reorder the universe according to the new data. Common pulse. Common walking. It’s like a clap that closes a circle of silence. It’s life springing from her nothingness. A twinkle. A test of the algorithm in the name of love. An impending catastrophe. The Big Bang.

A knotted Yo-yo in the middle will never climb as the child who buys it waits. Change occurs when the centre becomes the new end. And the baby only enjoys half a Yo-yo. However, conflicting theories claim that the toy half is the equivalent of half joy.

Before you die, you used to live. You’re your own whole. Many times, half happy. You’re knotted in the middle. A limb pulsates blood and life inside you—every second counts. Your mechanism varies over time and merges with the mechanism of another unique being. It dissipates loneliness. Minor start errors are supported. Any gap gradually fades after that.

I’m always dreaming about this moment. A sunset I can’t watch on my own. Then, someone, I feel right to shut up with. In fact, I don’t have to say a word until the light’s gone. And not even in the dark. Time to stop at the right second. You close your eyes and hold your breath.

We’re about to go through something that brings the Queen of the Night. I’d rather you didn’t smell it before I described it to you. Know. I know it sounds absurd. But I need to know. I want to see how your face lights up when I tell you what the total happiness of the world means to the smell of this flower. I don’t want it to become your favourite flower. You can hate it, too. I’m going to do my simple storytelling duty. Only if you agree, close your eyes. And hold your breath. Trust me.

One word slips and opens up a new sense. It’s nothing you’ve ever known. Still, conflicting theories claim it’s all you’ve ever known—focused on the olfactory mystery. It’s enough for one flower for the image of a field full of flowers to be born. It’s enough to be quiet for a while. Now we wait for the only proper moment of the day. At some point, the beatings of our hearts synchronize. Overlap. They make one by the second of the broken clock.

The smell like the Queen of the Night surprises you the moment you can’t hold your breath. Your lungs fill up faster than my stories. You smile at me and tell me I’m a terrible storyteller. I’ll give you a Yo-yo. I’m telling you never to swim it in the middle. I laugh about it as soon as I hear myself. Even if you float it in the middle, never enjoy it less. To me, it’s the unwritten law that people can belong to each other for an eternity.

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