Time and Again..

Hickery dickery dock,

The mouse ran up the clock,

The clock strikes one,

But I still ain't done.

Hickery dickery dock.

          I've many vices. I may claim a few virtues too. But punctuality, certainly is not one of them. Time and me have been at loggerheads with each other for as far as I can remember. It goes back to my school days when I would turn up 15 minutes late every day with remarkable consistency. As my school leaders and teachers were creative enough to think of a different punishment for every day of the week, the consequences, though physically exhausting, were never dull. The routine was fixed and the punishments had more or less become a part of my timetable. Squats on Monday, murga on Tuesdays, rounds on Wednesdays, one-legged stand on Thursdays and my-pick-from-the-four on Fridays. On rare occasions, I would manage to avoid doing rounds, for Wednesday being assembly day, would have the entire morning section of students assembled on the school ground and I would quietly slip in the crowd, usually unnoticed. I was caught in the act a few times, on which occasions the rounds doubled in number and would also become the mandatory punishment for that particular Friday as well. I believe, that was how I was introduced to the concept of taking risks. The exercise kept me physically fit as well. To sum it up, my lack of punctuality in school did me more good than not.

As I grew, so did the gap between me and the clock. By the time I was halfway through graduation, 15 minute delays had expanded into half hour and 1 hour delays. The punishments too had "matured" by becoming less physical. Being late ,now, would mean missing the lecture which would, otherwise, have been spent fighting a losing battle with my eyelids in the first half and celebrating the defeat in the next. The resulting free time, now, had to be spent in the gymkhana playing carom and table tennis. Something I never really minded.

Let me declare at this point that I do not always do this on purpose. I've nothing personal against adopting punctuality in spite of all the good things that have happened to me for the want of it. In fact, it is the one virtue (yes, a virtue) I've constantly striven to achieve throughout my life. Every trick in the book has been tried. Setting alarms, speeding up the clock, all forms of motivation (internal and external) have all failed miserably. Time simply seems to deflate its importance when presenting itself to me. 5 minutes appear "more-than-enough" to cover distances as large as 5 km, on foot, until I actually discover that they are not, by which time I would already be half an hour behind schedule. Once the after effects, if any, of the lag, are dealt with, a resolution is made and the discovery is forgotten, only to be rediscovered another day. Examinations, somehow, have remained untouched by this predicament so far, which leads me to believe that, as always, it's all in the head. Apparently, this one's pretty deep in it.

Having almost given up, quite understandably, on my efforts at being punctual, I decided to use my hyperactive imagination constructively for a change and have come up with a couple of convenient reasons that would explain this stubborn vice of mine. Convenient because, they have been edited in a manner which would project me as the helpless victim and not the culprit, so that I would feel a little less bad about missing the last train or having to skip lunch on the not-so-infrequent occasions that I arrive late in the office. One of them, is that, I was a celebrity in my previous life and I was, by virtue of my social status, entitled and expected to be late and, apparently, my habit somehow seems to have outlived my physical death. Another one, and my personal favorite, blames the only instance in my whole life when I had arrived before time for my failure to keep up with it. My birth. I came into the world just 8 minutes shy of the 10th of October, which, I like to believe, was scheduled by the Gods to be my actual date of birth. My eagerness to be born disrupted their schedule and they decided to punish me by always keeping time one step ahead of me. Now how can a mere mortal like me go against the will of the Gods??

They say you can't teach an old dog new tricks. Never truer than with me. As the clock strikes 4, I go to bed, at peace with the foresight that I am going to be late for office tomorrow.Again. After all, its entirely His prerogative to get me on time.