Darkness at dawn
WE as a people are going through a most exciting phase in our collective life. Never have so many been hostage to the whims of so few ensconced in such grand pavilions of power. The powers that be decreed months ago that this country and everything in it would move ahead by an hour, the better to conserve some electricity in the evening.
Now, that was a fine idea, though it did take millions of us a pretty long time to get used to getting up earlier than usual, giving ourselves a shake and be off to doing whatever it is we have been doing for years. Come to think of it, we almost persuaded ourselves in believing that finally, at least where daylight saving time was concerned, we had caught up with the more mature West, where people see quite a difference in the way their watches work in summer and winter.
Not many of us complained, of course, in the belief that come winter the wise men and women in the government would, again in happy imitation of foreign lands, take us back to the clock time we had had for generations on end. We waited. Our little babies, tiring themselves out with homework till late in the evening and then sleeping for a few hours before being called back to a new day, waited.
Meanwhile, autumn came along. Outside your window you could feel on your ageing cheeks the early tremors of oncoming winter. In the deepening hours of the night, even as you lay in slumber, your hands moved furtively in search of that essential quilt to keep that invasive cold from seeping into your skin. And then came that hour when the faithful recalled the Almighty through the muezzin's call to prayer. You looked out the window and made a bizarre discovery: night was all over the place. So why was the muezzin remembering God so early? Ah, you remembered. It all had to do with daylight saving time.
These days you get up, or are compelled to, at the very witching hour of the night. Of course, the watch beside your pillow tells you it is six in the morning. But, wait! Why put the blame on the watch? It is the government which tells you it is six in the morning, that the enveloping darkness you see all around you is really dawn in its new colours. Deep inside your heart, though, a little voice whispers that it is five in the morning, that five is different from what some naughty people have begun to describe as digital time.
Time flies and yet there is something adamant about the sky and the sun. The sky refuses to discard its dark raiment; and the sun is in little mood to wake up before its time. Do you see the dilemma here? The government forces you, because you have a job to do, because you have children who must go to school, to rise at an ungodly hour. Its writ does not run on the way the sun conducts its life. Your little son grumbles, for he does not wish to go to school in the night (and it is yet night). That sun ninety three million miles away does not grumble, does not complain. It is beyond the pale of the laws devised by mere mortals.
And so we slog through life in newer pain. As a nation, we have consistently walked through pain, of various sorts and hues. Life has never been fair to us; and our politicians have had little time to understand, even vicariously, the agony we endure every day and all the nights of our lives.
An advisor to the prime minister (only the Almighty knows why they are there around the head of government and what it is they are expected to do in a political system that has no room for them) tries to enlighten us on the endless benefits accruing from pushing the clock an hour forward. He tries to be dismissive about the time idea in the West. And he and people of his philosophical persuasion truly believe that this relocation of time has been a boon to the country. And well they might say that! The advisor does not have to teach a class at school or college or university early in the morning. And since he outgrew school decades ago, he does not comprehend the thousand and one perils and problems schoolchildren must endure as they set out for classes in the dark of winter.
Here is the picture, one where you spot the dichotomy between the real world we commoners inhabit and the unreal universe that ministers and bureaucrats in all their majesty live and thrive in. The head of government does not have to leave home at seven in the darkness of dawn. Her ministers will take their own time leaving their beds and making their way to their workplaces. Government employees know they have no worries till nine in the morning.
But in our lives, ladies and gentlemen, it is perpetual night. In that daylight saving time, it is daylight we look for. It is darkness at dawn we battle our way through, even as the wise, powerful ones weave embroidered dreams in their sleep.
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