Well, this isn't a discussion on why a country of more than a billion people follows one time zone , or why the US has 11 , which of course is inflated by some states choosing to follow daylight savings and some states don't . It also , makes up for a great ice-breaker conversation especially when someone calls in from India and they ask "What time is it there?". Unrelated to this post, people in India seem to think that the most interesting thing in calling someone in the USA is to demonstrate their understanding of the circularity of the globe in addition to suddenly switching to speaking in English when they realise someone has been in the US for a long time.
Actually, this post is about the rather universally distributed nature of people, who always think that birthday invite times always have an associated factor. Similar to Max Planck , Newton and Avogradro, people always feel that there's a constant , which defines , sometimes in minutes or hours, the amount of time you should arrive to a party after the scheduled time.
Many years back, I was invited to a colleague's daughter's birthday party. The invite said 11 am, but unfortunately, something went wrong with my car and I got super late. I stretched the tensile power of my corolla and the flexibility of California speeding laws to barely make it at 11:40 am. Shamefully, I rung the doorbell, and was about to apologize to my heart's content, when someone opened the door in tracks, t-shirt and unkempt hair. It took me a few seconds to realise, that I still had to apologize, but for different reasons . I had reached the party way too soon .
As I sat around and helped the host clean the house, organize their food, and wait for the rest of the guests (who promptly and correctly showed up after 1 pm), it dawned upon me that I should have realised what Jaspal Bhatti did years ago . And that's when I realised how rude I had been to not understand people's feelings and associate the "IST constant" with the party invite.
Growing up, I was actually the person who would always be late. Engineering days at VESIT meant a strict regiment in which we had to get into college by 8:30 am or else stay out for an hour (which I thought was for good reason, that a late coming student should not disturb the decorum of those who showed up on time). It was also sometimes nice to socialize right at the start of the day and simulate your brain for the rest of the day. But still, there was an attempt to get in the door by 8:40 (which was the allowed time), and catch the last possible train which could possible get you there. I was often late to play cricket, to return back home, and sometimes waste my parents' hard earned money on autorickshaws than buses just because I was late.
But as age has progressed, I have realised that in the universe of latecomers, I was just a Hemang Badani of cricket or Avinash Wadhvan of Bollywood. In the course of the last few years, I have been blown away by the Amitabhs and Tendulkars of this sport. What is further notable is that there's a strange bit of pride in being the last one, since in the group of people, you technically optimized for your time in the best possible way. And to top it all, if the majority is composed of latecomers, you are the odd man out and taunted for coming in too early. Not too much respect for Socrates , really.
Parties aside, gatherings, movies, picnics have all had this problem. Which brings me to the main point. The IST factor. Over the last several years, I have mentally modelled the IST factor with most of my friends. While for some Subodhs, the number tends to zero, for most people it tends towards infinity. The IST factor is calculated by a complicated, dynamic and slightly biased equation which involves the number of minutes they arrived late, the stupidity of their reason , the plausibility of their lie the promptness of their informing that they would be late, and often the sheer shamelessness (or pride, as they like to call it) of their actions. It is also a self-training model, meaning your good actions can quickly wipe out your sins of the past, but the converse is also true .
And oh, does not go to say that my late factor is similar to Subodhs, but I certainly don't take pride in it. Back to work in US Pacific time.
