For a while now, Avis, who will be in Mumbai soon, has been on a cross-continent search for his 'Time Twins' because at the age of 36, he felt unsuccessful by British standards. Avis was single and living in a shared home in London with friends. As a management consultant of 13 years, his job was to improve the systems and processes for corporate but one day, he returned home with questions about the mechanics of his own life. Instead of getting depressed though, Avis wondered if people in other parts of the world, born on the same day as him, also suffered similar thoughts. Soon, the seemingly eccentric idea of meeting Time Twins was born.
The aim wasn't to compare one life against another though. "The project is about exploring how people's circumstances, locations and heritages impact their lives," says Avis, who began his search in 2012 when inside the cafe of a cinema in central London, three of his friends, challenged him to meet 40 Time Twins before he turned 40. So far, Avis has met 38 and he is over five months away from forty.
Initially, Avis made his Time Twins trips during weekends or holidays. For instance, before his vacation in New York City, he had found the details of Time Twin Dan Parilis, a self-styled cultural omnivore in Brooklyn online and sent him an email explaining the project. "To my surprise, he replied and was very keen to meet." However, the year 2013 rather cruelly persuaded Avis to take up the project full-time. It claimed both his parents. Avis' mother died "very unexpectedly" and then, his father succumbed to dementia. "When one loses the most important people in one's life, you have to think what is important in life, as it reminds you of your own mortality," says Avis, who took a sixmonth unpaid sabbatical and flew to Sydney the day after Christmas, armed with the small fortune he had bequeathed and the names of 333 Time Twins from 111 countries.
Soon, the Englishman — who has always been fascinated by cultures u found himself swimming in a crucible of priceless experiences.
His personal gems include attending the Dutch national bodybuilding championships where he met a Time Twin who was the over 35s ladies `model physique' champion, being shown around an Italian village destroyed by an earthquake by the mayor, learning one man's fear of the homophobia in his society in Eastern Europe; being invited to the family temple of a Balinese Time Twin for the New Year's ceremony and finding the photograph of his Time Twin in the list of candidates in the Indonesian election at a polling station in Makassar.
"The project is, on one level, mini biographies of these disparate people around the world," says Avis, who has a standard set of questions but allows his conversations to flow. For many of the people he met, the countries they were born into in December 1974 were very different than they are now. His Vietnamese Time Twins, for instance, were born into a country ravaged by the American War. His Latvian Time Twins were born in the Soviet Union and experienced the changes from Soviet collectivized economy to independence, democracy and free-market economics. "We have sociology, the study of groups of people, biology, the study of life and biography, the study of the lives of `important people', but Time Twins looks at the lives of `ordinary people'," says Avis, whose project will culminate in a book and adocumentary.
Currently, the 39-year-old, is in Vietnam, near the end of his savings. Having met 38 Time Twins, he is about to fly back to London via Mumbai. While he hasn't set up any meetings in the city yet, Avis — whose project has so far led him largely to Time Twins who are graduate professionals — is keen to hear the story of Mumbai's transition in the last 40 years from a cross-section, including a Time Twin from Dharavi perhaps. In fact, Indian Time Twins could make for a fascinating separate project, believes Avis, who will return, having travelled to the other side of midlife crisis.
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