What바카라™s half-an-hour, you aks. A nanoblip in the life of this ageless nation. People might not even notice...isn바카라™t Indian Standard Time another name for an elastic band? And in an absolute sense, you don바카라™t gain anything바카라”it바카라™s all purely notional. The politics too could be tricky. ("Distributing 30 minutes free to everyone by decree? It바카라™s a poll sop, worthy of Tughlak!" Or, "It바카라™s a UPA ploy to buy time. Like Mugabe바카라™s economics바카라”if the treasury be empty, print more notes.") Also, what if the next regime, more alive to the allure of the longue duree, takes cue and secedes altogether from the International Dateline, pitchforking us all to 2064 Vikram Samvat! ("If they don바카라™t sell us uranium, we바카라™ll explode a time-bomb. And if the world is really round, who바카라™s to say the sun first rose over Nauru and not Nagpur?")
Be not churlish. Think it through. Whether you see time as empty duration or bristling calendar, measure it with coffee spoons or prefer prosaic horology, whether you바카라™re poet, corporate exec, late latif... this concerns us all. But the timing of the shift will be crucial. What if you were stuck in an elevator with Kenny G playing바카라”could you be stuck forever? What if Vajpayee has just paused after the first words of a speech...and we shift...right into infinitude. (Now, that바카라™ll be one helluva hung parliament.)
If you바카라™re old enough, think a Ramesh Krishnan-Mcnroe match. Ramesh serves. Since this usually takes about an hour to reach, Mac has gone over to finish his breakfast. The new time kicks in precisely half-way into this, just as the yellow orb is poised, quivering, over the net. An extra half-hour here means, applying Zeno바카라™s paradox, the ball never reaches! The world stops, Mac holds an eternally unfinished burger in his hands. A journo, slipping out of this time-warp, writes the ultimate sports report: 바카라˜A tennis match on the edge of time. Indian maestro, with magic-light touch, sends Slazenger spinning into abyss바카라™.
