So... when will shit actually hit the fan?

We've accepted an apocalypse is coming. It would be nice to know how many beach days we could fit in till then.

Utsav Mamoria (Tumse Na Ho Paayega)

This flash essay is part of a collaborative, constrained-writing challenge undertaken by some members of the Bangalore Substack Writers Group. Each of us examined the concept of ‘TIME’ through our unique perspective, distilled into roughly 400 words. At the bottom of this snippet, you’ll find links to other essays by fellow writers.

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“So… when is end game? When will shit actually hit the fan?”

It’s a question I have heard often since I started working on the issue of climate change. But I still don’t know how to answer it.

I get it. We’re human — and humans don’t do well with uncertainty. Climate change brings a whole lot of it. So we grasp for something solid: a date, a deadline, an apocalypse marked on the calendar. And a lot of us seem to have accepted that the world is going to end, and we at least want to know when.

Here’s the uncomfortable truth: there is no date.

There’s no single moment when the sky cracks open or the earth beneath our feet collapses and life as we know it ends — no cinematic climax like in The Day After Tomorrow, 2012 or Don’t Look Up. I doubt the world is going to end in one glorious flash.

Instead, what we’re living through is more like a long, messy unfolding. A slow transformation. So gradual that we almost don’t notice it, like the frog in boiling water. There won’t be a headline that says “Today, Earth Became Unlivable.” Also humans, being the resilient, inventive, and often resourceful species that we are, will keep adapting. We’ll buy time. Extend our runway.

So what can we say with certainty?

That life will change. It already is changing.

And here’s another thing. It’s not completely hopeless. You’re not dead till you’re dead. We are falling off a cliff. It’s up to us to decide if we want to go into free fall or flap our arms and hope we can find a branch.

Rather than obsessing over the doomsday clock, we’re better off asking what kind of changes we should expect, what can we prevent, what we can’t and how do we adapt to what is now beyond control.

We may not be able to answer what the end date is or even whether there is one, but what we know for sure is there’s a future for now. And whether we believe it or not, our choices today will shape our tomorrow.

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Please find the full list of pieces published here:

• Time: I Just Want to See It, Watch It Move by Abhishek Singh, The Comic Dreamer

• Timekeepers - Retracing the Universe’s Deep-Time Signatures by Devayani Khare, Geosophy

• Keeping Time by Reshma Apte, Fanciful Senorita

• Locating Myself In The Map of Time by Priyanka Sacheti, A Home For Homeless Thoughts

• The Thing We Pretend To Understand by Avinash Shenoy, OfftheWalls

• The lost intimacy with time by Siddharth Batra, Siddharth’s substack

• Lessons Time Taught Me by Aryan Kavan Gowda, Wonderings of a Wanderer

• A Time for Worship by Vaibhav Gupta, Thorough and Unkempt

• “Tata Mummy Tata” by Rakhi Anil, Rakhi’s Substack

• The vicious cycle of sixteen - A dancer’s take on keeping time by Eshna Benegal, The Deep Cut

• How long is twenty years? by Richa Vadini Singh, Here’s What I Think

• How mystery writers play with the clock by Gowri N Kishore, About Murder, She Wrote

• TIME INFLATED, JUSTICE DEFLATED. by Lavina G, The Nexus Terrain

• What keeps the fool in me delighted by Rahul Singh, Mehfil

• The endless ebb and flow of Time by Siddarth RG, Siddarth’s Newsletter

• Time, please! by Shaili Desai - Litcurry