Timestoppers

Karachi, April 8 - The Pakistan government, realizing that Pakistani scientists were light-years away from developing a wristwatch that could stop time, decided instead to adopt Daylight Savings Time throughout the nation. This meant that clocks would be moved forward by one hour on the night between April 6 and April 7, 2002, in stark contrast to the Benazir Bhutto-PPP Government's decision back in the early 90s to move the clocks forward by one hour in October.

The public was so delighted by the government's rare show of common sense that crowds across the nation erupted in spontaneous celebration the night of the time change. City buildings were decorated with festive lights, citizens fired Kalashnikovs into the air at midnight (technically one a.m), and Jimmy Engineer held a walk from the Alliance Francaise to Teen Talwar in support of the move. "Thank God they were able to figure out the meaning of the phrase 'Spring Forward, Fall Back'," said Ahmed, a shopkeeper in Zainab Market. "Otherwise it would have been more shameful for us than if India had won the Oscar for 'Lagaan'."

The concept of DST is already widely in use in the Western countries, which suffer from a lack of daylight during the winter and have used this method to avail of longer daylight hours. It is also accepted that pushing the clocks back in the autumn and setting them forward again in the spring saves energy. Government insiders tell us that WAPDA and KESC both vied to be corporate sponsors of the DST scheme in the hopes that the revenue saved on one hour's worth of electricity throughout the nation would be passed on to their coffers. "A high up in the KESC has a son graduating from Brown this June and he wanted to take fifteen members of his extended family with him for the ceremony. At the same time, someone important in WAPDA is getting his daughter married in May, so it was quite a battle between the two of them for the contract," says one source who wishes to remain anonymous. At the time of going to press, no word was available on which of the two warring institutions had actually won the contract.

Ever considerate about public opinion, the common folk were polled by the press about their feelings on Daylight Savings Time and its usefulness. Many people said they had heard that it was meant to be the second question on the referendum poll; after the question "Do you think Pervez Musharraf is necessary for the country, Yes or No?" would have come "Do you think one extra hour of daylight is necessary for the country, Yes or No?" It is reported that this plan was scrapped after twenty people died of heatstroke in a freak Karachi heatwave that sent temperatures soaring above 40 in the first week of April. Officials feared that since the referendum was to be held in the first week of May, too many people would have written on their ballots: "I'm boiling to death and I don't want any more @#$\\*%& sun, you $%)(\\*# morons."

Office goers and mothers were somewhat panicked about the plan. "I heard that the government is thinking of increasing the day from 24 to 25 hours long," said Shama, an office worker in Progressive Center. "This means that my children will have to get up at dawn and say their Fajr prayers in the car on the way to school, I'm not sure I can handle that while I'm driving," said Huma, a young mother of two.

Religious leaders were also reported to be concerned about the effect that the time change would have on prayer timings. Since no one who has been to a madressa seems to have ever studied science, it took the government officials a record five weeks to convince the ulema that prayer timings would remain dependent on the sun, rather than on clocks. After a meeting with one of the highest bureaucrats of the country, the ulema agreed to the time change, saying "God knows best." "Yes, I do," the bureaucrat was rumored to have said in reply, though this could not be confirmed at the time of going to press.

But there are some advantages to adopting DST, the government assured the public. "Adopting DST will be a way of aligning us with the developed nations of the world, who all follow this process, especially the US and the UK," said a MoST official. An official from the Ministry of Information said, "We may in fact call it Democracy Savings Time and convince the Commonwealth to reinstate our membership."

NGO workers were of the opinion that Pakistan's being +6 GMT instead of +5 GMT would bring more unity to the subcontinent. A prominent sportsman turned politician opined, "At least Pakistan will be in the same time zone as India, who will no longer be able to accuse us of being stuck in the Middle Ages while they are moving on towards the 20th century."

A top government official assures us, on condition that his name is not published, that if the plan is a success, the government is almost certain to consider advancing the clocks by two hours instead of one the same time next year, following the old adage of "More is Better" (no reference to Benazir Bhutto or Nawaz Sharif intended).

Despite their misgivings, the people of Pakistan are willing to give this experiment a shot. They are heralding it as the first time anyone has tried anything new in Pakistan since someone in the early 70s introduced the scandalous concept that a democracy might actually be a better form of governance than a military rule. But do Pakistanis really think the concept of DST will actually save them some time and energy? In the wise words of Kamran, a 7 year old student, "Only time will tell."