The time at the time of the chime

The time is precisely 120136 pm in Mumbai That is to say when I typed lsquo36rsquo it was 120136 pm If Irsquom honest I couldnrsquot nail it exactly even if I tried My dilemma is that I can either watch what Irsquom typing or look at the clock Unlike some quantum particles my eyes cannot be in two places at the same I typed lsquo36rsquo and immediately looked upmdashbut the clock was already at lsquo38rsquoHow does my Mac computer know the time A quick check reveals that therersquos an Apple time server in Cupertino timeapplecom which keeps all trillions of Apple devices on the planet perfectly synchronisedWhere does the Apple time server get the time You can see where this leads Everyone gets their time from somewhere else so itrsquos not crazy to wonder where the buck stops Is there some divinely appointed arbiter who decides the time for our planetThis 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 hourNever one to leave well alone I wanted to know at exactly which point along the pipsandbeep 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 chimeLetrsquos talk about Bombai Click the QR code above to join my WhatsApp group to share your Bombai stories for my bookmdashand perhaps answer some of my Bombai questionsSeveral 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 wallmounted yoursquod 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 9Back then it was an ordained fact of life you could ever know the exact precise time down to the secondIn 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 StracheyResolution 2 fixed Greenwich in England as odeg 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 MeridianIndia could have objected but they werenrsquot India yet As far back as the 4th century CE the Surya Siddhanta proposed Indiarsquos own Prime Meridian or 0deg 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 breathNevertheless GMT became the worldrsquos benchmark Seeing Indiarsquos size the Conference set Calcutta time at 5 hours 30 minutes 21 seconds ahead of GMT and Bombay time at 4 hours 51 minutes aheadIt wasnrsquot till 1905 that that Indian Standard Time became the standardNo one cares about Greenwich Mean Time any more even the observatory there has moved to Sussex Todayrsquos 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 Indiarsquos 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 GreenwichMidnight in England would be 530 am in India according to UTC Naturally I have a question India is 2933 km wide west to east and spans the longitudes from 687degE to 9725degE or about 293deg edge to edge Thatrsquos 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 thatrsquos a roughly 117minute difference across the breadth of the subcontinentMy question when itrsquos 530 am IST in exactly which part of India is it 530 amTurns out that IST refers to the time at 825degE 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 BengalWhen itrsquos 530 am IST itrsquos already 553 am in Kolkata while Mumbai is at 351 am still waiting for sunrise Thatrsquos a coasttocoast difference of 102 hoursAs the man didnrsquot say east is east and west is west and never their times shall meetYou can reach C Y Gopinath at cygopigmailcomSend your feedback to mailbagmiddaycomThe views expressed in this column are the individualrsquos and donrsquot represent those of the paper