What can we learn from this example of multi-layered calendars? That for many Indians, even absolute time is not so absolute after all? That Indians are chaotic? Or are they just very accommodating…. flexible?
What else does the multi-layered calendar tell us? That in India, we know how to convey, ‘yes, we will do it’. Yes, the ‘English’ idea of time is bold and prominent right up front for all to see. But other more local versions of time are there somewhere in the corners and they didn’t get erased from the calendar all together.
Is there anything else we can learn from this calendar? That 26th February 2012 was a Sunday and probably a holiday for those who follow the English calendar (only)?
Many goals, one life. Increasingly Indians are moving to the Netherlands for work. These ‘knowledge migrants’ have more to get used to than the adjusting their clocks to summer and wintertime and following the Gregorian calendar. They have to meet goals, to understand egalitarianism (until it doesn’t work any more), what is means to be nuchter, to work with values that are much closer to absolutes than they are used to.
Nandini Bedi 