It’s probably unusual for a person who looks unemployed or unemployable to be asking for the time from a mere passerby or a bystander. But that’s what seems to be repeatedly happening. As soon as I started to walk after parking my scooter near a shop, a harried man rushed to buttonhole me.
“What’s the time?” he asked. I told him that I am not wearing a wristwatch and could only guess what time it may be. He gave me the onceover and said, “Well, may be you can check your cellphone for the time, as I need to be someplace urgently.” Some nerve, I seethed inward but told him as politely as I could, “Sorry, I left my cellphone at home.”
Apparently disappointed, the man hurried to accost his next ‘target’. In a crowded bus, during one of my long inter-city commutes, a woman carrying a huge vegetable basket, put it down with a groan and asked, “Thambi (brother), what’s the time?” I faithfully read out the exact time—this time from my cellphone. In a famous mall, a foppish-looking young man approached me tentatively and asked me in a low tone, “Can you tell me the time?” I gave a start as though he had told me that there’s a bomb about to go off. It was my turn now to give him the once-over and recite the time. After all, as oldtimers comment often, the younger generation seems to have consigned wristwatches to history.
But cellphones? What takes the cake, however, was when in an overcrowded train, the man next to me just turned my wrist over and noted the time himself. No words exchanged. Simple. You have a service I require, I will use it. There were times, while in the middle of hurrying somewhere or busy doing something I was stopped in my tracks ‘for the time’. Wiser now and wary of wasting— what else—time, I just tell these people that my cellphone conked out, regardless of their disbelieving looks.
In a country with as big a population as ours, maybe I shouldn’t consider such occurrences out of order. But over the years, it seems to be just about anyone and at anytime. Middle of the night or the wee hours just don’t matter anymore. The hassled bus conductor, the traffic cop standing in the blazing sun, the civic worker who cleans up the streets amid high pollution or the labourer who works in a construction site. All obsessed big over Father Time. After all these encounters, I often mulled ditching the cellphone as well. But modern life requires that I carry it.
R Anantha Subramanian
Email: anand1910@gmail.com