It was H.G. Wells who first popularised the concept of time-travel using a machine in his 1895 book, The Time Machine. Fast forward to today’s elaborately-upgraded, cutting-edge version of a contraption that now teleports one to unimaginable distances, both backwards and forwards in time. Nevertheless, H.G. Well’s brainchild of someone stepping into the apparatus to disappear – poof— and instantaneously reappear someplace else, in another era, remains unchanged.

Writers and thinkers have long fantasised about visiting a time long gone, or a time beyond what one will live to see. Stories were woven of protagonists like Rip Van Winkle, who fell asleep in the Americas under the Imperial rule, to wake up in a free America, 20 years later! The Jewish protagonist, Honi Ha-M’agel, slept through 70 years; the fisherman Urashima no ko re-emerged 300 years later from a supposed three-day visit to an undersea palace; while Charles Dickens transported Ebenezer Scrooge, via mystical time travel, to Christmases past and future, in The Christmas Carol.

However, time travel isn’t all fluff. We are travelling in time, forward, at the rate of one second per second; one birthday to the next. Time-travel was never a matter of debate to our earliest forefathers. With the power of their enlightened minds, they’d visited other dimensions and planes; planets and galaxies in an infinite number of universes. There’s the instance in the Puranas of King Kakudmi’s brief visit to Lord Brahma, equalling innumerable existential cycles of earth. We also have Kumara Kassapa, the Buddha’s chief disciple, expounding to the sceptic Payasi Sutta on the relativity of time between heaven and here. When all is said and done, while we still cannot twitch our noses to teleport like the genie in Bewitched (1964) nonetheless we, above sixty, are letting our imaginations take flights-of-fancy (plus a few insights from my family members of all ages):

• “I’d wish to go back in time to sit at the feet of one particular spiritual Master and soak in the darshan while listening to his satsangs.”

• “Time travel is impractical as it would raise questions of causality. However, if at all possible, it would be to Chandragupta II’s time to learn under Chanakya.”

• “Back to the Jurassic era, to see dinosaurs for real!”

• “I don’t believe time is linear, so it’s a possibility. The era I’d like to visit is the era of enlightenment, the times when the great Rishis went deep within and discovered both themselves and the secrets of the universe.”

• “I would love to go forward 100 years or even 1,000 years from now. It would blow my mind to see the culture and norms then.”

• “I’d prefer to stay in the present or maybe for my next life, I’d like to be in close proximity with wildlife that aren’t caged, but roam freely, like in Africa.”

• “I doubt time travel is possible, but if at all, I’d revert to my teenage days and urge the education system to also include lessons on honesty, understanding and respect for every person whatever their caste, colour or religion, as well as reverence for nature.”

• “Back to the Big Bang.” – my husband

• “The start of one-cell life; but better still to when my father was still around.” – my daughter-in-law

• “To the 90’s!” – my 16-year-old granddaughter

• “To Goldilock’s kingdom.” – my 12-year-old granddaughter

• “To the Stone Age era.” – my 9-year-old granddaughter

• “I want to be there in the crowd listening to Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I have a dream” speech!” – my 6-year-old grandson

• “I’d like to fast forward to see what I’m doing on the last day of my life.” – my daughter

• “To the O-edo (great Edo) era of Japan.” – my daughter