Living as I do in a city where time seems to have no meaning, I was stunned to read about a rail company in Japan apologising after one of its trains departed 20 seconds early. The management on the Tsukuba Express line between Tokyo and the city of Tsukuba apologised sincerely for the inconvenience caused! It is rare for trains in Japan to depart at a different time to the one scheduled.
Imagine if the railways or passenger transport companies in India started apologising for running late. The question of trains or buses leaving early is out of the question. Their running on time is what we look forward to.
The Comptroller and Auditor General in India, in a recent report, has criticised the railways for failing to run superfast trains as per their schedules. It says that some superfast trains have been unable to attain an average speed of 55km/hr. They ran between 16 minutes to three hours late in a period of three months. However, officials from the South Central Railway say that these trains were delayed due to ongoing track repair works.
But this casual attitude towards punctuality has pervaded every sphere of life in India. If you are given a time to meet an official at a government department, you can be sure of a long wait. A visit to the municipality to pay my property tax left me frustrated and fuming. The person dealing with this had asked me to be at the office at 11am. Needless to say, there was no sign of him even an hour later. When I called to ask him if he was going to turn up, I was told he was held up somewhere and would not be able to make it. Months later, I decided to try my luck again. This time I was able to meet the official and casually mentioned that nowadays ministers were responding to citizens’ tweets and that I was thinking of resorting to social media if my work was delayed any further. My work was completed in a matter of minutes! But why should we have to resort to veiled threats to get work done?
Arriving late is a way of saying that your time is more valuable than that of others. It is discourteous and yet latecomers rarely apologise. They are adept at making excuses for being late, whether it is the traffic or something else. As far as I am concerned, if you have said you will be at a certain place at a certain time, you have to make allowances for something such as traffic and start suitably early. It’s not going to kill you if you actually turn up before time. Unless of course the person you have to meet is time-challenged and you know that the time given is flexible.
Housewives complain of the tardy ways of maids who have no concept of time. My house help turns up at a different time every day, which means that I cannot plan any outing until she arrives. If I tell her off, she says that I am making a fuss over nothing. I have tried to explain the ricochet effect of her erratic timings on my schedule for the day, but to no avail. So, I take each day as it comes.
In light of my experiences, imagine my surprise when I requested the service of a plumber from a company that provides a slew of services. Not only was I given a time-frame, but the person in question turned up at the given time. I am still recovering from the shock.
Perhaps things are going to change and, who knows, the next time someone is late, they might even think of apologising. Or is that too much to ask?
Vanaja Rao is a freelance writer based in Hyderabad, India.
