time, speed, and pace
The notion of ‘time’ is a universally accepted (if somewhat misleading) construct that we all embrace for its consistency, predictablity and universal acceptance. Hours, minutes and seconds give rhythm to commerce, breakfast and midnight countdowns. In the US, people often define their geographic location, the city they live in and thus their lifestyle, by the speed at which time appears to pass. Everyone knows that there are only 24 hours in the day - whether you’re in New York, Little Rock or San Francisco - but nobody denies the sensation of places having their own unique pace. It should come as no surprise then that India (along with a few other time rebels: Newfoundland, Iran, Afghanistan, Nepal, Myanmar, and central Australia) differs from Greenwich standard time by an odd number of half hours. When it is noon in New York, it’s 9:30 from Mumbai to Chennai. An especially fascinating Wikipedia entry can be found here.
Time in India has a very peculiar presence. Some days seem to stretch into hot eternities with the sun fighting its own descent and early evenings claiming their own significant part of the day. Morning too come earlier and faster - roosters crowing, men having their pre-sunrise walk and women doing laundry while the local temple cranks the devotional music. Strangely though, businesses don’t open until mid morning and then, depending on where you are in the country and what day of the week it is, they often close for unknown hours in the afternoon. Vegetable markets, on the other hand, will start up when there are still stars in the sky and seem to do most of their business before sunrise.
The Indian people at first appear very conscious of time and schedules - but it doesn’t take long before one realizes it’s a ruse the entire country is coordinating for unsuspecting travellers. With great confidence, attendants at a bus or train station will give conflicting times for the same departure. But it doesn’t matter really because they rarely arrive on time and tend to leave when they reach capacity. Perhaps it is a problem with the watches almost every Indian man wears - each golden timepiece seems set to their own hopeful schedule.
Not everything is slow. In fact, it is the contrast of the very fast and the sluggish… the syncopated rhythm, the herky-jerky motion, the 21st century embedded in a bronze age… all of this combines to give an Indian travel such a notably incongruous sense of time and pace:
- intense traffic yields to a lumbering cow
- bollywood drum beats
- coffee first and rice last
- bicycles on the highway
- broadband in the desert
- computers on a hand pulled cart
- cell phones but no electricity
- a custom shirt tailored in an hour