Tuesday, November 3, 2009

Daylight Savings Time

I never really experienced jetlag when I first came to the United States. But I did experience a very mild variation of it when they turned off Daylight Savings Time on Sunday. I woke up in the morning to see that it was daylight outside, though not yet bright and sunny. Checked the time on my phone to see that it was only six in the morning. That struck me as strange, because I distinctly remembered that on the morning of Karva Chauth, about three weeks back, it was still dark until a little more than half past six.

I got out of bed to see the clocks that were set automatically, such as the ones on our phones and the one on the cable TV set top box, showed a different time from what the wall clocks showed. Well, what do you know, we have a forty nine hour weekend, don’t we?

It was a little disturbing to see the sky turning completely dark at only a quarter past five in the evening. And it’s not even really winter yet. I remember reading the classic tale A Christmas Carol and the fact that it said that Scrooge was going home at about four in the afternoon and it was beginning to get dark. I thought that kind of thing happened only in stories, just like the leaves turning red and orange and being shed. Now I’ll get to see it with my own eyes. Around Christmas we’ll get only about eight or nine hours of daylight, and none too bright at that too. But of course, things will be nice and bright with all the red and green decorations everywhere.

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