A Circle of Time"

The Continuum of Time The old clock in Mr. Basu’s study had stopped ticking exactly at midnight. It was an heirloom, passed down through generations—its brass hands shaped like delicate vines, its wooden case carved with intricate lotus patterns. Nobody in the family had touched it in years. Yet, when it stopped, everyone felt it.

Rini, Mr. Basu’s granddaughter, was the first to notice. A university student home for the holidays, she had developed a habit of studying late into the night. That night, as she poured over her thesis notes, she heard a faint click. She turned to see the clock’s pendulum, once so steady, frozen mid-swing.

“It’s just old,” her mother said in the morning. “Let it rest.”

But Rini wasn’t convinced. Something about the stillness of the clock unsettled her. It felt... symbolic. That afternoon, she climbed up to the attic, where her grandfather had kept old journals and family artifacts. Dust floated in the sunlight like tiny time travelers. There, she found a worn leather-bound notebook labeled “1943 – Basudev Basu.”

Her grandfather had once told her stories of his youth during India’s independence struggle, of lost friends, of secrets whispered through barred windows. She opened the journal out of curiosity. “Time moves in circles,” the first page read. “In reality, we return—to memories, choices, and our own selves—even though we believe we are moving forward. I have seen this. I have lived it.”

The entries described a strange experience during his college years. In 1943, while hiding from British police after a protest, he had taken shelter in a clockmaker’s shop in north Kolkata. The old man there, quiet and mysterious, spoke in riddles. He told Basudev that time was not linear, but circular—that the past never truly disappears, and the future often repeats what the past has forgotten.

The clockmaker had given Basudev a small brass key, saying, “When time stops for you, use this. But remember, every return has its price.”

The last entry in the journal was dated August 15, 1947—India’s Independence Day. It simply read: “The circle has begun. I wonder where it will close.”

Rini’s hands trembled as she read the words. Tucked between the pages, she found the key—a tiny object shaped like a crescent moon. She looked up at the stopped clock in the study. On impulse, she inserted the key into a hidden slot beneath the pendulum.

The clock ticked once. But then again. And suddenly, the room shimmered.

The light changed. The air felt denser. Through the window, the neighborhood looked... different. Narrower streets, older buildings, people in 1940s attire hurried by. Rini gasped—she was in the past.

She spent hours wandering the streets of wartime Kolkata, stunned by the reality of it all. She saw students chanting “Vande Mataram”, police with rifles, women in white sarees selling rice from wooden stalls. Eventually, she found the clockmaker’s shop, just as her grandfather had described.

The old man was still there—unchanged, as if untouched by time. “Ah,” he said, smiling, “so the key found the next one.”

Rini asked how this was possible, how time could be breached.

“Time is a river that loops,” he replied. “Some of us fall through eddies. Your grandfather was one. Now, it is your turn.”

“But why me?” she asked.

“You carry memory in your blood, and questions in your mind. That is all it takes.”

Before she could ask more, the clock in the shop struck midnight. The sound reverberated strangely, like water ripples. The light shimmered again.

Rini found herself back in the study, the brass key still warm in her palm. Outside, nothing had changed—or had it?

Later that night, she opened her laptop to continue her thesis. She had been writing about the 1940s' sociopolitical movements, especially the lesser-known student uprisings in Bengal. To her astonishment, she found detailed historical records that had never existed before—descriptions of a mysterious girl from the future who had appeared and helped organize underground student protests. She recognized her own actions, her own words, preserved in forgotten pages of history.

The clock on the wall ticked steadily again.

Rini realized the truth—she had become part of the loop. Her grandfather had once stepped back to witness history. She had returned to take on the role. From then on, every year, on the same night the clock had first stopped, Rini would wind it with the brass key. Each time, she slipped into a different era of her family’s past—watching, learning, understanding the sacrifices and stories that shaped her.

She no longer feared the past. It was not something gone, but something living—waiting to be remembered.

Because time, after all, is not a line.

It is a circle.