When I was first told about putting the clock back in October 1980 as a student in England I thought I had not heard them right. It was dark by 5 p.m anyway and to put it back meant it would be night at four. This was preposterous! Then I was told this was the real time and that the clock had been put forward in the last spring. I straightaway told them it would make more sense to put it forward in the winter so that one did not have to travel in perpetual fog and darkness. Now that we have the same idea in Pakistan let us see if we need it or not.
While most of us think of time as a fixed flow, Einstein pointed out that in a gravitational field time would pass slower compared to its passage outside that field. This is because space-time is curved and if you walk over a curved road, such as one which goes over a hump, you will not travel an equal distance as when you walk on a plain road. Thus time measured on the curved space-time is more than one measured outside it. But these ideas need not concern those of us who run around in cities catching planes and attending events. We live by the clock and, at least in small countries, it is the same for all of us. This makes us forget that this measurement of time has not always been there. It is made by us humans and, what is more, we humans can and do keep changing it all over the world.
For most of humanity till the eighteenth century, and that too in Europe, the sun and the moon were enough to mark the passage of time. Though the notion of the hour was there from ancient times and it came into use even in Europe in about 1600 the clock did not rule peoples’ life. Although the day was divided into 24 hours and the hour into 60 minutes and the minute into 60 seconds the countryside, however, still woke up to the singing of the birds and went to sleep when the sun set. Most human beings were in harmony with the animals till the Industrial Revolution brought the ticking clock to master us; to harry us; to terrify us and to make us neurotic with anxiety about being late. Our artificial civilization is, indeed, a product of measuring time and letting that measurement rule our lives.
In 1869 the idea of dividing the world into time zones was proposed by an American called Charles F. Dowd. In 1883 it was finally accepted in the U.S. In 1884 the world was cut up in 24 standard time zones. Greenwich (England) became the zero meridian---after all this was the nineteenth century and Britain was the superpower---and one gained time as one went westwards and lost it when one travelled eastwards. There was a Date Line too. It was made zigzag since a straight one would have made some islands live in two different days at the same time. If one goes west of this line you enter tomorrow; go east and you step back into yesterday!
Upto 1925 the 0000 hour was midday. From that time onwards it became midnight. Thus, what we instinctively feel as the middle of the night, is called the next morning. This is a purely arbitrary system but we have to begin from somewhere so it is in use. Of course, our sensible friends from the rural areas call it night (which it is) and call the rising of the sun the new day (which it actually is). All these measurements are arbitrary as there cannot be an absolute zero---we were not there to record the event of the birth of the universe! And even if someone like Stephen Hawking would give us a Brief History of Time or The Universe in a Nutshell we would not understand it. After all, most of us are not Lucasian Professors of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge as Hawking and his illustrious predecessor Newton were.
During World War-I, when the ‘civilized’ nations of the world were blowing themselves into pieces someone thought of a brilliant idea. Why not give the poor workers, who slaved away at factories producing the instruments of death, the illusion of a long day. Summer days are long in Europe anyway but they are so wonderful that everybody wants them to continue. This hour was added by putting the clock forward in 1915 in Germany; 1916 in England and then in the U.S.A and other countries. Now the workers could come home and still have another hour of light to enjoy themselves. Moreover, lights were switched on an hour late which saved electricity. This was very useful during the war. Indeed, so useful was it that in the USA all clocks were kept one hour ahead of standard time between February 1942 till September 1945 with no change in winter.
After this period many countries put the clocks forwards in April and bring then back in October. In 1967 the U.S.A passed a law to observe daylight-saving time in the summer though some states do not do so. These are very disciplined societies---and discipline is also a byproduct of being ruled by the clock---and this exercise is carried out without hitch every April and October. I do not know of any major accidents because of it but I have heard of a few inconveniences now and then on the first day.
All this is about the West. But what about us? Well, ours is an agricultural society still living away from the tyranny of the clock. So, most of us not only in the rural areas but even the cities may be confused but will not be affected much. In some Western farms, so the story goes, the cattle come to be milked at a certain hour but I do not know if our cattle or their milkmen will follow anything but the good old sun. So the huge rural area will hardly be affected.
As for the professionals and office workers in cities, the pious will have to sleep a little late now. The isha prayers will be an hour late so, if they were at past nine earlier, this summer they will be at past ten. The psychological feeling will be that one is going to bed late. As our days are hot the socializing will begin at around nine (it used to begin by 8 p.m in previous summers). This means the non-pious folks too will hit the sack later than before. Those of us who are insomniacs will really have a bad time because insomniacs feel that if the clock says it is past their sleeping hour (say 10 p.m), then they cannot sleep. And, since they think they cannot sleep; they will not sleep. So, by getting up early and sleeping late, our urban friends will probably suffer and still end up consuming as much energy as before. After all, the longer the hot day of our summer, the more we switch on the A.C and the fans. Moreover, unlike Europeans we neither eat at six in the evening nor do we stop our permanent socializing or nocturnal prayers and T.V watching. So the cooking and the hullabullo will take us well past midnight (when it will be the good old eleven of yesteryear only). And in the morning we will be up with the lark (except that the lark sensibly went to bed at sunset). In short, personally I feel that either the clock should not be tinkered with at all or, if it is, then it is in the winter that we should put it forward by an hour. I definitely feel that our long, hot, unending summer daylight is not worth saving.