The time at the time of the chime

As far back as the 4th century CE the Surya Siddhanta proposed India’s own Prime Meridian, or 0° longitude, as passing through Avanti, the ancient name for Ujjain. India had its own sophisticated chronological system. Illustration by C Y Gopinath using AI

The time is precisely 12:01:36 pm in Mumbai. That is to say, when I typed ‘36', it was 12:01:36 pm. If I'm honest, I couldn't nail it exactly even if I tried. My dilemma is that I can either watch what I'm typing or look at the clock. Unlike some quantum particles, my eyes cannot be in two places at the same. I typed ‘36' and immediately looked up - but the clock was already at ‘38'.

How does my Mac computer know the time? A quick check reveals that there's an Apple time server in Cupertino, time.apple.com, which keeps all trillions of Apple devices on the planet perfectly synchronised.

Where does the Apple time server get the time? You can see where this leads. Everyone gets their time from somewhere else, so it's not crazy to wonder where the buck stops. Is there some divinely appointed arbiter who decides the time for our planet?

This is not a new question. In my 20s, when the Internet was not a thing, we would set our watches to the Akashvani news, which broadcast five pips followed by a long beep at the top of the hour.

Never one to leave well alone, I wanted to know at exactly which point along the pips-and-beep it was precisely, say, 9 pm. A little digging revealed that the hour fell exactly at the leading edge of the long chime. A talented writer called Sonia Rajadhyaksha wrote a clever story on this in the 1980s, called The time at the time of the chime.

Let's talk about Bombai: Click the QR code above to join my WhatsApp group to share your Bombai stories for my book - and perhaps answer some of my Bombai questions.

Several distressing facts become clear right away. By the time you get to your watch and twiddle the crown to set it to, say, 9 pm, minutes will have passed. If you were at All India Radio, where clocks are wall-mounted, you'd have to factor in the time it takes the duty clerk to finish his tea, drag a chair to the wall, mount it, flip the clock face open and manually rotate the hand to more or less 9.

Back then, it was an ordained fact of life: you could ever know the exact, precise time down to the second.

In 1884, a motley group of 26 countries met at the International Meridian Conference in Washington DC to figure out this time business. It did not include China or Australia but featured Paraguay, San Domingo, Russia and Salvador, apart from the USA, UK, most of Europe and Canada. From India, the British sent one Lt Gen Richard Strachey.

Resolution 2 fixed Greenwich in England as o° longitude, also known as the Prime Meridian. San Domingo, for reasons only it will know, voted against this colonial appropriation of longitude, and France abstained on principle because, you know, how dare the British colonise the Prime Meridian?

India could have objected but they weren't India yet. As far back as the 4th century CE the Surya Siddhanta proposed India's own Prime Meridian, or 0° longitude, as passing through Avanti, the ancient name for Ujjain. India had its own sophisticated chronological system, with the smallest unit a prana, or four seconds, the time it takes to draw a breath.

Nevertheless, GMT became the world's benchmark. Seeing India's size, the Conference set Calcutta time at 5 hours 30 minutes 21 seconds ahead of GMT, and Bombay time at 4 hours 51 minutes ahead.

It wasn't till 1905 that that Indian Standard Time became the standard.

No one cares about Greenwich Mean Time any more; even the observatory there has moved to Sussex. Today's absolute time is the International Atomic Time (TAI), a weighted average of the time from 450 atomic clocks in over 80 participating national laboratories worldwide, including India's National Physical Laboratory. This forms the basis for Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), which is adjusted by a few seconds periodically to compensate for the irregular wobbling of our planet around the Earth. Despite the change, the Prime Meridian continues in Greenwich.

Midnight in England would be 5.30 am in India, according to UTC. Naturally, I have a question. India is 2,933 km wide west to east, and spans the longitudes from 68.7°E to 97.25°E, or about 29.3° edge to edge. That's a lot of longitudes, enough for the stars to be out in Kolkata while the sun is still slowly setting in Mumbai. Since each degree of longitude represents 4 minutes of solar time, that's a roughly 117-minute difference across the breadth of the subcontinent.

My question: when it's 5.30 am IST, in exactly which part of India is it 5.30 am?

Turns out that IST refers to the time at 82.5°E longitude, which divides India roughly into two areas. Towns that lie on or near this line include Mirzapur, Uttar Pradesh; Darbhanga and Madhubani, Bihar; and Kharagpur and Asansol, West Bengal.

When it's 5.30 am IST, it's already 5.53 am in Kolkata, while Mumbai is at 3.51 am, still waiting for sunrise. That's a coast-to-coast difference of 1:02 hours.

As the man didn't say, east is east and west is west, and never their times shall meet.

You can reach C Y Gopinath at cygopi@gmail.com
Send your feedback to mailbag@mid-day.com
The views expressed in this column are the individual's and don't represent those of the paper.