Just like the clock’s hands, people are leading a restless life.
| Photo Credit: desifoto
The wall clock above the main door of my house, bought some 40 years ago, has been ticking non-stop and displaying the accurate time. Whenever I happen to visit my house in the village, my eyes invariably fall on the clock. It evokes in me a flood of memories.
In the 1960s and 1970s, only a privileged few had wrist watches and a few houses wall clocks. Common people were guided by the movement of the sun. In fact, nobody bothered about time, in those halcyon days.
During my school days, our government-run school had a wall clock. No teacher was seen sporting a wrist watch. If for some reason, the clock dysfunctions, the headmaster used to decide the time by looking at the position of the sun and shadows. Then he would order the peon to strike the bell.
In those days of low literacy, a majority of the people did not know how to read the wall clock and tell time. Adding to the difficulty, wall clocks used Roman numerals, instead of Indo-Arabic ones. Numerical literacy was very poor.
If any person was found wearing a watch, others used to ask him or her the time. Even strangers obliged willingly. In crowded places, some used to watch the time stealthily, and a few would even go to the extent of literally arm-twisting the person’s hand to know the time. But no one took offence to it.
When I was in Class 7, during the maths class, the teacher asked a boy, “Go and take a look at the wall clock in the hall and tell the time.” The boy rushed out and returned in no time. “Sir, It is 12.15.” The teacher was shocked. “You are way off the mark. We are already one hour or so into the second session,” he said. “It seems you don’t know how to calculate time.”
Immediately, he summoned the peon and told him to bring the clock into the classroom. Explaining where the boy erred in differentiating between the hours and minutes hands, he gave a demo class.
Till then, I too did not know how to tell the time and had my own share of unpleasant experiences with it. The concepts of clockwise and anti-clockwise directions made me jittery. I always had it wrong.
On the a.m. and p.m. abbreviations, the less said the better. It took me years to understand the difference between them.
Even when preparing for competitive exams, clock-related problems such as calculation of angles between hands troubled me no end. Despite all these, the ticking sound of wall clocks still tickles me, especially during night time.
Now that 50 years have rolled by, wall clocks have mushroomed and every house boasts more than one.
Times have changed. The concept of time too has undergone a change. The modern life has pushed all of us into a rat race and every one is vying to outpace the other to be on the elusive top.
Just like the clock’s hands, people are leading a restless life, and longing for spare time to stop and stare.
Will those laid-back days when nobody bothered about time and when everything moved at its own natural pace come again?
kalakuntlasrilatha123@gmail.com
Published – November 02, 2025 04:58 am IST
