Kāla in the Banyan: Witnessing Time

I took this photo in Goa, zoomed in eight times on my iPhone, capturing a deep red sun slipping through a small opening in the branches of a banyan tree behind my hotel. In the distance, visible between the large banyan leaves, stood one of man’s temples, in this case a church. The entire scene lasted less than a minute at that magnification. You could literally watch the sun move across that narrow frame of leaves until it vanished. 

I have watched sunsets in Madeira, on the plains of Africa, and outside my yoga studio in Orlando overlooking a lake. I never grow tired of it. The ritual of light appearing and disappearing has followed me across continents. But this morning in Goa was different. Because the branches of the banyan tree created a window. A small aperture through which I could literally see time passing.

When the horizon is vast, the sun’s movement feels slow, almost abstract. But when you constrain it to a narrow frame — a gap in leaves — you watch it move. You watch it slip. You can measure the arc with your eyes. It becomes undeniable. Time is not theoretical. It is visible.

And in that moment, I felt something else: my own life moving with it.

I am fifty-two, old by most means, though I don’t feel that way because I try to live a life without setting alarms or looking at a clock, unless I have to go to a pilates or yoga class or catch a flight. It feels like yesterday that I was a child. Not long from now, my children will stand over my grave. The number of heartbeats remaining is finite. The breaths are countable. We rarely feel that truth because our horizon is too wide. But narrow the frame, and it becomes obvious.

There is another lesson in these moments.

The first time you see it — the sun threading its way through banyan leaves — it is alive with spontaneity. Every variable in the universe conspired to create that exact alignment of light, branch, wind, and witness. The second time you try to see it, to recreate it, to relive it, something is different. The energy has shifted. The moment has passed.

We spend much of our lives trying to reproduce what once felt alive. But life does not repeat. It renews. There will never be that sunrise again. Only another one. And another. Each completely new.

You do not lose moments because they end. You lose them because you are thinking about something else when they are happening.

The banyan tree did not try to hold the sun. The temple did not try to freeze the light. They simply received it. And let it pass.

Live the life you want to live. Watch the sunrise. Watch the sunset. Watch the sun move through leaves. Narrow the window sometimes so you can actually see time moving. Because it is. It’s passing. For all of us — whether we are present for it or not.

— Saad

Candolim, Goa, India.
December 2025