Hi Varun,
Sorry, have been busy preparing for a trip and have had little time to try your suggestions out. I tried a new blank project and BRIEFLY tried it by throwing a couple of images in and it seems to be fine.
So it may be that one project. Something one of my colleagues found (as she is having the same issue, so not sure if it is just isolated to this one project) is that by manually shifting the slide bar at the bottom the time display. She found this screen shot online:
This seems to be a stop-gap and gives the display in the moment, but is not a permanent fix. This may be a clue that it disappears by manually moving the slider at the bottom in the first place. A hypothesis, I have yet to try it out at this point. Will let you know when I get back from my trip in a couple of weeks.
Thanks!