Time is money: Why must we waste it?

In 2015, we celebrated the 900th birth anniversary of Bhaskaracharya, one of our ancient astronomers and mathematicians. Bhaskaracharya has been credited with highly readable texts in mathematics and astronomy. The book, Leelavati, is a delightful collection of problems requiring mainly arithmetic, algebra and geometry. It is said that he wrote this book for his daughter with the same name. Astronomy texts are more extensive and the most referred one is Goladhyaya. It mainly deals with spherical astronomy. The width and depth of Bhaskara’s writings highlight the high level of these subjects in India in the 12th century.

The 900th celebrations gave us an opportunity of recalling Bhaskaracharya’s works. Similar occasions for famous rulers like Alexander, Akbar or Shivaji provide us with opportunities of recalling their military victories, their statesmanship and peacetime achievements. In the case of scientists or scholars, we likewise recall their scholastic achievements. So, for Bhaskaracharya, there were meets organised wherein his achievements were highlighted. I had the opportunity of attending one such meet organised in Chalisgaon which is believed to be near the birthplace of Bhaskaracharya.

The meet did present an opportunity of highlighting Bhaskaracharya’s work. At a less technical level, a particular speaker — let us call him Mr X — had been specially invited from Mumbai. Known for simple readable texts on varying topics in science, Mr X could be relied on to make his talk very interesting and “layman-friendly”. My own brief was to present a smaller talk on the astronomical works of Bhaskara.

The meeting was planned for a two-hour duration. However, the time planning went seriously astray! Scheduled to start at 9.30 in the morning, it began at 10 am instead. This was because, as the organisers explained, the audience is normally used to such delays. When the publicity leaflets are printed for wide distribution, the starting time mentioned therein has to be taken with a pinch of salt. A typical member of the audience knows this and accordingly turns up half-an-hour late.

Unfortunately, this is not the end of the matter. The important component of such a local gathering is the local VIP or even VVIP. The event cannot be started until these are present and are duly felicitated by the organisers. I once heard of a vice-chancellor of a local university spending half-an-hour drinking coffee in his office, so as to make his arrival at the local event “suitably late”. His argument for this action was to say that unless he made the organisers wait for him, his VIP status would not be appreciated.

There is another class of important visitors that must be cared for. If the function is held under the auspices of a school, then it is necessary for the organisers to felicitate the members of the governing board of the school. To me, it seems rather strange that the host organisation should honour itself! For isn’t the governing board part of the organisation that runs the school?

The sum total was that the scheduled duration of two hours was almost taken up by these so-called formal rituals and by this time the audience was visibly bored. So much so that Mr X, the main speaker, was requested by the organisers to cut short his speech. Having sensed the restlessness of the audience, he readily agreed.

Since my own talk was only of 15-20 minutes duration, it did not suffer such a drastic cut. But I could not resist telling the organisers that their delays in earlier items had created this situation which I likened to sending Sachin Tendulkar or Virat Kohli to bat at number 8.

For this reason, I decline participation in such functions. The incident described above shows that even such avoidances cannot always work! If one is not ultra-careful, one gets trapped in such dilatory proceedings.

A strict contrast to the above occasion, I came across when I was invited to deliver the Friday evening discourse at the Royal Institution, a venerable institution in London, started by the scientist Michael Faraday two centuries ago. The institution has a strict protocol for such an occasion. No time is spent on introductory remarks by the director nor does he introduce the speaker giving his background. (The audience can get information about the speaker from the printed details available before the lecture.) The lecture itself begins at 9 p.m. but the stricter requirement is that it must end at the stroke of 10.

Before the lecture, the speaker and his wife are hosted to a formal dinner at the institution by the director and his wife. While being led to the dining room, I was shown a solitary room, which was used to lock up the speaker just before his talk. The director explained that this precaution is taken to prevent the speaker from absconding. Apparently, one speaker was so tensed up by the rule of ending the lecture at precisely at 10 that he ran away before the talk. This happened in Faraday’s time and the host had to give the lecture in place of the speaker who had run away.

The strict time scheduling followed by the Royal Institution came out of attention to punctuality. There are other institutions that follow a punctual protocol. For example, when the founder scientist Homi Bhabha created the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, he laid down several rules and protocols. One important rule followed at a public lecture at the institute is that there is no vote of thanks at the end of the talk. For, a dry vote of thanks after the talk spoils the deep impression created by the main talk. Instead, the vote of thanks is proposed before the speaker has given his talk. This saves time and embarrassment. The latter, because in normal practice of proposing the vote of thanks after the talk, one finds the audience starting an exodus from the auditorium even as the hapless proposer of the vote of thanks is only half way through his list.