How time flies

The Cold War was at its peak when a prominent young journalist from Punjab visited the US half a century ago. He began his first article wit...

The Cold War was at its peak when a prominent young journalist from Punjab visited the US half a century ago. He began his first article with the words, 8220;When I started for America, I imagined their biggest problem was communism. After reaching here I realised I was wrong. The biggest problem faced by Americans is parking space8221;!

Motorists were reported to be having to drive from one end of a market to the other and back for an hour or more 8212; looking for some car vacating its space, and swooping in on that vacant lot before it was grabbed by someone else. I am not sure if the problem has worsened over the intervening decades or has lessened through multistoried and metered parkings. But we in our big cities in India are fast reaching that stage.

Now a first-time visitor to the US is struck more by the typical American struggle over the lack of time. It is a common complaint of most doting parents who visit their sons or daughters in the US that they have plenty of everything but spare time for them. Working couples have to rush through their morning chores and jump into the drivers8217; seats to drive like hell to their places of work. All they can manage by way of time for their parents, with the exception of weekends, is to utter 8212; between brushing their teeth and gargling 8212; is this: 8220;Dad/Mom, everything is there is the frig. Help yourself to whatever you like when you8217;re hungry. Switch on the TV for any programme you like. See you in the evening. Have a good day. 8217;Bye.8221;

This scarcity of time gets reflected in all spheres of a human being8217;s social existence. One notices this is in Hollywood movies, where the average person keeps rushing around 8212; to offices, to keep appointments, to attend urgent meetings, to catch a plane, to buy their birthday gifts.

Where is the time then to notice what is happening around them: Is somebody being robbed or kidnapped? Did somebody wish you a good morning or a pleasant day? How can you notice somebody trying to catch your eye to greet you with a 8216;How do you do?8217; You just do not have an infinitesimal bit of time for these formalities, so the easier, less time-consuming and, therefore, most appropriate greeting is a quick 8216;Hi8217;. Then there is the ubiquitous 8216;Yeah!8217; and 8216;Wow!8217; 8212; which, incidentally, captures beautifully the exclamation, 8220;How wonderful!8221;

All this reminds me of the story of the man who was asked what he did during the French Revolution and who gave a two-word reply: 8220;I survived!8221; One is also reminded of a brave precedent. Vir Savarkar was an enthusiastic reformer of Hindi vocabulary and one of the reforms he advocated was to change to a dot the present 8216;viram8217; to save time. It also saved ink!