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CRANK'S CORNER

        What is time? This smple question will elicit different answers at different, er, times (and from different individuals). For some it maybe a mere ticking of clock or turning of a page in a calendar. For the scientist, (especially for the one dabbling in theories of relativity and quantum mechanics), time is not quantised, but is a continuum (whatever that is). He mulls over whether time has a future and is it infinite. (Time of the past is seen to be finite and God is believed to be 'outside' of it). For the poet it is a word that rhymes with lime. For the philosopher it is something, well, he has not decided on.

        For the journalist, however, time is simply the thing that he is never on. This is not to be confused with being late. To put it in perspective, if a journalist were a tsunami he would have barely crossed the Indonesian coast till this morning. If you invite a journalist for your wedding, he will come to the naming ceremony of your child, assuming he is of the punctual type.

        Don't ask me why we are like this. It is a bit like asking why Karunanidhi has a yellow shawl sprawled on his shoulders or why Kamal Haasan speaks Tamil (on TV) in a tone and accent impossible to impersonate unless you have stones under your tongue. You have to take these things in your stride. At least our Prime minister Dr Manmohan Singh does. Otherwise would he have accepted the award of a TV anointing him as the 'person of the year' for 2006 when in reality we have almost completed one sixth of 2007? The award should have read Manmohan Singh, person of the year in slow motion.

        But journalists' lives don't move in slow motion as much not move at all. You know why those dead are prefixed 'late'? A journalist must have coined that. And he would have known nothing better to describe a person who will be so slow that he will never make it anywhere.

        Time and tide wait for none, they say. Luckily journos are not fishermen to worry about tides. Journalism and time, as I learnt it quickly, are not nature-born allies.

        The invite would say function at 7.00 p.m., dinner at 8.00 p.m., and I would breeze in at 6.45 p.m. itself hoping to get some vantage seat at the meeting and then, more importantly, at the dinner table.

        But when I would go there would be no seats to be had at all. It was not as if everyone would be there in full attendance and there was no chair to sit on. Quite simply, at 6.45 for a 7 'o' clock function even the chair layers would not be ready. On one occasion, I was thought to be the man in charge of arranging the chairs and hence promptly asked to do the honours. When I said I was a journo come to cover the event, my interlocutor looked askance at me, raising one eyebrow, ironically said: 'Really?'

        On another occasion, I walked straight into a press conference room full of people. I was surprised and happy that at least here were people who took their time seriously. They too were surprised to see me saunter in nonchalantly. 'I guess you were delayed by the traffic and hence late', one man in a suit politely enquired. 'No, I think I calculated the traffic at this hour rightly and hence started early, and so I am on time', I protested. 'It is just you who are ahead of the schedule', added for good measure.

        'But we are coming to the end of our programme', he said weakly. 'You were supposed to start at...,' I slapped at my pockets looking for the invite. But mercifully he himself produced one, and one look at it I realised I was at the wrong function. After further inquiries, I realised that it was the previous function to the one I was supposed to attend. They were fashionably so late that their programme went into extra time. So, I waited in a corner, hiding myself besides a dark vase till they wound up and the next set of hosts came along.

        But Chennaiites are fast catching up (or is it down?) journalists in this late-coming business. At least the rest of the city has a reason to be slow. No Chennaiite can ever hope to be on time what with the traffic jams owing to many construction work now underway. These days people contract jet lag much before they reach the airport. If you have driven from Guindy to Meenambakkam you will understand that I am not trying to exaggerate. At the moment of writing, from the window of my sixth-floor building, I can see vehicles piled up in hopeless profusion.

        The situation is so bad that I will not be surprised if spiders had started to spin a sedentary web between the tyres of stationary cars and vans, which seem to be stuck where they came into being. Going by the general trend the most popular cars and bikes in Chennai would be those that come with in-vehicle catering arrangements.

        Chennai traffic has now become so notoriously slow-moving that a Bengali art movie with an unpronouciable name (but with the clause that all the vowels in it should be pronounced 'o' only. Eg: Tahader Katha is Tohodor Kotho) would in comparison seem like a never-ending adventure of James Bond. Or better still, even this column is racier than the traffic outside my window. I was able to finish this column quicker than the traffic was able to clear. My writing time is:

        Three days!