Perfect Timing

Perfect Timing

Punctuality has never been the strong point in India. My experience has been that majority of people in India neglect the importance of time & being punctual. In fact not being punctual is credited to the importance of the person or event & it varies proportionally with the significance of the person. We see it in daily life, for example, for a meeting in office 5 -10 min delay is expected and followed, For a dinner party at 8, arriving at 9 pm adds to your persona and importance. The chief guest at a function is expected to arrive at least 2 hrs late and the participants are never disappointed. Larger public image the chief guest has, the later he should arrive.

            This attitude eventually reflects on a larger scale in Govt projects, policies, judiciary, Railways too. I found most of the times that the information on Trains is hardly accurate. Trains are delayed for various reasons, there are several variables which influence the running time of trains. Particularly in India which is one of the largest railways in the world, up to 30 min delay is considered no delay, 1 hr is normal for many trains, exceptions could be the Rajdhani & Shatabdi expresses which are 90 % on time. Of course this is improving very rapidly.              

           Germany is known for their engineering, precision & being on time. I had a first hand experience during one of my visits.

            Germans are very fond of their trains Deutsche Bahn (DB), & it is the largest railway in Europe. During my visit to Germany I happened to travel from Frankfurt to Munich by DB’s fastest &  most prestigious train, Inter City Express (ICE). The journey took 3 hrs 47 min. I boarded the 05:23 train and on my seat I had a booklet giving information on ICE & this train’s timings. It went as below.....

Station/ Stop		Arr	Dep	Platform
Frankfurt (Main) Hbf			05:23	19
Frankfurt Flughafen (airport)		05:37	05:39	6
Mannheim Hbf		06:11	06:13	4
Stuttgart		06:53	06:56	16
Ulm		07:53	07:56	2
Ausburg		08:36	08:39	4
Munchen (Munich)		09:10		12

I thought it to be very funny as they could have rounded off the timings.

Train started at exactly 05:23, it accelerated rapidly, Stopped at Frankfurt Airport at 05:37 & started at 05:39.
” It was Lucky, lets see when out of the city”, I thought & took it up as a challenge to prove it wrong. I was looking at my watch open mouthed at 06:09 hrs the city of Mannheim came up, 06:10 train was entering the station, halted at 06:11 & stated at 06:13 exactly. I said to myself “I cant give up that easy, lets see at Stuttgart”.

        Train was speeding through the beautiful country side at more than 300Km/h, little villages & farms were going past before I could register them. There was a LED speed indicator at the end of the coach above the door easily visible from every seat. Soon a Staff member came from the adjacent coach pushing a huge can with some projections & compartments on the side on a trolley. This reminded me of the Coffee machine in the movie Polar Express.
      "Kaffee, Frühstück?", he said & handed me a menu, I scrolled down to the cheapest available item, then mentally calculated its price in Indian rupees, made a silent exclamation & ordered Coffee which was 5 Euro (350Rs), Its taste was terrific.

       Time was 06:48(see how unconsciously I started keeping precise timing), there was no sign of any city, may be I was going to win this time. 06:50 still no sign of Stuttgart, a smile started to spread over my face. ICE took a wide turn to the left and my smile vanished, there was Stuttgart. 06:52 ICE was in the city still moving rapidly at more than 120km/h, the streets, houses were just a blur. 06:53 it entered the station at 80km/h and halted.

      And it followed the time table precisely to the minute at each station, halting at Munich station at exactly 09:10. It was amazing how can a train be so accurate on a long journey. But this was nothing out of the way in Germany, its expected to do this every day even through rain or snow. I had lost my challenge & the time table was correct, no need to round off the minutes. I had a wonderful, precise journey & completely enjoyed it.

I was aware of the perfect timing of Local trains “S-Bahn”  in Munich, which is expected & controllable as they are for short distance, within and around the city.  But for long distance how would they control the variables. SBahns arrive precisely on the minute and leave, a count down of minutes show the time for next train. This is replicated in Delhi Metro but I found that the count down to 0 minutes is not exactly correct & is tampered with. More than one instance I found that countdown from 4 to 3 minutes took almost 2 minutes. The count down is synchronized with the arrival of the train.

If I was surprised on the perfection of long distance trains, I was in for another surprise. I was in Munich around November end, it was cold & cloudy. Casually I asked my colleagues in office when is it expected to snow in Munich.

 I got a quick precise reply “we are going to get first snow of the season tonight at 1:00am” 

 It seemed to me they were referring to timing of some TV show, So I asked them again, “tonight? At 1:00 am exactly its going to snow? Are you sure? ”.

 “ Weather dept predicted that it would snow at 1 am. And its going to snow 3 inches more in the outskirts of the city than in the city center where it would be 4 inches”. They said a bit sternly this time, annoyed at doubting the prediction, but they didn't know how its like in India,  its either + or – few days or it does not happen at all. 
 It took some time to register that they actually mean & believe it, I still didn't.

I asked couple of colleagues and got the same answer. Well how can any one predict weather phenomena exactly by time?

        
         I thought of challenging it again and I put an alarm for 00:55am. By evening there was a slight drizzle and it became very cold. By dinner time the drizzle had stopped & it was damp & cold. I slept early, woke up at 5 min to 01:00am and opened the window, it was chillingly cold and there was no breeze, it was very silent & nothing was moving,  not even a leaf.

I went to the balcony of my room pulling my thick double blanket over myself for the cold. I looked at my watch, as the digits turned from 00:59 to 01:00, I saw the first single snow flake falling to the floor near me as if to crush my challenge. Immediately more followed with increasing rapidity. I was astounded, this was crazy. They were right & I was lucky that I did not bet with anyone on this. By 01:15 it was snowing considerably thick & Munich had its first snow of the season.

I came back into the warm room completely chilled & amazed, even the weather is on time in Germany. And in the morning I learned that it had indeed snowed 3 inches more in the outskirts of the city than in the city center where it had snowed 4 inches.

In India weather prediction is always taken on a lighter side and is made part of many jokes. Mostly it happens the other way around or the weather system happens before they can predict. This can be attributed to probably lack of sophisticated equipment on the ground to make accurate prediction as we have excellent satellites & certainly there is no lack of talent.

Ravindra

Bangalore
31-10-12 2015 TUE