Keeping Ahead of Time, yet Always Arriving Late - by Sanju Dabi
What made me think and wirte this was a call I got from my sister at 7:45 am (instead of 8:00 am) on a Sunday morning when I was feeling lazy to wake up and felt like sleeping few more minutes. Why did she call me 15 minutes early???
Keeping clock ahead is common trend with lots of people in India. Keeping ahead by 5 minutes would for sure go unnoticed, but for sure it’s easy to encounter situations where clocks at home and offices would be ahead by 5-15 minutes, in some cases even up to 20-30 minutes.
It’s obliviously a reason to wonder why this is being done. How does it help? Does it cause confusion? Who benefits by this? Why people keep their time ahead?
Some of the replies are: “It helps me to be on time (how come you know your watch is ahead)”, “If i am not on time as per my watch I will be on time at least as per the Standard time (makes sense)”, “I don’t want to miss my bus in case it arrives/departs early (makes sense)”.
Well where you can find this clock to be most synchronized with the Indian Standard Time (IST) would be probably at Railway Stations, where its not uncommon to find people commenting that the clock of government is behind (which may not be the case). However looks like people like to have their own standard time and feel distinguished from others. Another use of keeping time ahead is to tell others to work faster by showing that they are being delayed. Certainly this gives some buffer to avoid some small delays.
I worked for a multinational firm at my hometown of Baroda for 3-4 months in 1998, obliviously the administration staff there was composed of all local people with a rule that people reaching later than 9.15 need to report to the respective manager for reason that caused them to delay. That was a time when I used to keep my watch less than 3 min ahead of IST and one day I reached office certainly a minute before 9:15 on my watch but was put into category of people coming later than 9:15 for that day. There was no point to argue with people at office reception who kept the office clock at entrance ahead by at least 7 minutes because for sure they kept a pride in keeping office ahead of time.
Well 3 minutes ahead of Standard Time doesn’t looks unreasonable if you are surrounded by people who keep it 10-15 minutes ahead. But on my first trip to Denmark being 3 minutes ahead of Standard Time left me in cold. I came out of the apartment to get on bus that would take me to office as per time in my watch and it was first week of February, 1999 really cold in Ordrup, a suburb of Copenhagen. The bus arrived and departed exactly on time and other people who got on the same bus arrived on the bus stop were present there less than 10-15 seconds before the bus arrived. Well so all I had to do was to synchronize my watch with the standard time in Copenhagen and it was really convenient.
It can be an easy conclusion that services are on time and better in Denmark than India, however this conclusion incomplete and incorrect if volume of traffic and passengers is considered per unit of infrastructure (I wont take up this discussion here, its another very interesting discussion).
On other side it’s a trend of not arriving at any party or casual gathering on time. Normally people start coming like 1 hour later than proposed time. Why is that so? Well why should I be at some place when I am not sure about the time when others will arrive? I want to go when people are there and not when crows are flying. You can spend a nice time explaining all good reasons of your busy life that caused you to come with late (maybe this can help you to become talk of the party). It’s natural to feel more important and busy in life by arriving late and you get the full party atmosphere and no need to be the ones who are trying to create it.
These practices are not bad at all, these give people more space to talk and feel distinguished and have been adopted even by Europeans living in India. In the company where I worked last in India we had a Danish appointed as a project manager who was got an invitation for an expatriate party which was supposed to be of only Germans and Danish people working in Baroda. This gentleman went at 7 pm sharp only to ask a question at the reception of the party hall “Is this the location where we are supposed to have party today?” and the answer was “Yes Sir, you are quite early”. Well they had a great party but this gentleman was wondering all next day about this culture and how quickly it was adopted by his fellow countrymen.
Well there is no harm in keeping ahead of time and arriving late. Its your time, its important and if you arrive late it only means that you are really important!
Keeping clock ahead is common trend with lots of people in India. Keeping ahead by 5 minutes would for sure go unnoticed, but for sure it’s easy to encounter situations where clocks at home and offices would be ahead by 5-15 minutes, in some cases even up to 20-30 minutes.
It’s obliviously a reason to wonder why this is being done. How does it help? Does it cause confusion? Who benefits by this? Why people keep their time ahead?
Some of the replies are: “It helps me to be on time (how come you know your watch is ahead)”, “If i am not on time as per my watch I will be on time at least as per the Standard time (makes sense)”, “I don’t want to miss my bus in case it arrives/departs early (makes sense)”.
Well where you can find this clock to be most synchronized with the Indian Standard Time (IST) would be probably at Railway Stations, where its not uncommon to find people commenting that the clock of government is behind (which may not be the case). However looks like people like to have their own standard time and feel distinguished from others. Another use of keeping time ahead is to tell others to work faster by showing that they are being delayed. Certainly this gives some buffer to avoid some small delays.
I worked for a multinational firm at my hometown of Baroda for 3-4 months in 1998, obliviously the administration staff there was composed of all local people with a rule that people reaching later than 9.15 need to report to the respective manager for reason that caused them to delay. That was a time when I used to keep my watch less than 3 min ahead of IST and one day I reached office certainly a minute before 9:15 on my watch but was put into category of people coming later than 9:15 for that day. There was no point to argue with people at office reception who kept the office clock at entrance ahead by at least 7 minutes because for sure they kept a pride in keeping office ahead of time.
Well 3 minutes ahead of Standard Time doesn’t looks unreasonable if you are surrounded by people who keep it 10-15 minutes ahead. But on my first trip to Denmark being 3 minutes ahead of Standard Time left me in cold. I came out of the apartment to get on bus that would take me to office as per time in my watch and it was first week of February, 1999 really cold in Ordrup, a suburb of Copenhagen. The bus arrived and departed exactly on time and other people who got on the same bus arrived on the bus stop were present there less than 10-15 seconds before the bus arrived. Well so all I had to do was to synchronize my watch with the standard time in Copenhagen and it was really convenient.
It can be an easy conclusion that services are on time and better in Denmark than India, however this conclusion incomplete and incorrect if volume of traffic and passengers is considered per unit of infrastructure (I wont take up this discussion here, its another very interesting discussion).
On other side it’s a trend of not arriving at any party or casual gathering on time. Normally people start coming like 1 hour later than proposed time. Why is that so? Well why should I be at some place when I am not sure about the time when others will arrive? I want to go when people are there and not when crows are flying. You can spend a nice time explaining all good reasons of your busy life that caused you to come with late (maybe this can help you to become talk of the party). It’s natural to feel more important and busy in life by arriving late and you get the full party atmosphere and no need to be the ones who are trying to create it.
These practices are not bad at all, these give people more space to talk and feel distinguished and have been adopted even by Europeans living in India. In the company where I worked last in India we had a Danish appointed as a project manager who was got an invitation for an expatriate party which was supposed to be of only Germans and Danish people working in Baroda. This gentleman went at 7 pm sharp only to ask a question at the reception of the party hall “Is this the location where we are supposed to have party today?” and the answer was “Yes Sir, you are quite early”. Well they had a great party but this gentleman was wondering all next day about this culture and how quickly it was adopted by his fellow countrymen.
Well there is no harm in keeping ahead of time and arriving late. Its your time, its important and if you arrive late it only means that you are really important!
posted by Sanju Dabi at 5:17 AM
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