The Concept of Time in South Asia

Fluid Time/Creating Futures / CoVA Seminar Series 2021

Centre of Visual Arts, University of Melbourne

 

 

The best indicator of the South Asian attitude to time lies is in the Urdu/ Hindi word “kal”  

The word “kal” can be used for yesterday or tomorrow, as are its extensions, parson , tarson and narson words to describe up to three days before or after today ( aaj).  The context of the sentence in which the words are used indicate whether the past or the future is indicated. 

This suggests time is not an objective truth but in fact is relative to perception, open to interpretation, variable, and places the narrator in control.

The objective approach focuses on the “what” outside of self; while subjective focuses on the agency of the “who”.  

South Asians live simultaneously, and with great ease, in many different time frames.  For daily business and civil matters, the international Gregorian calendar and the 24-hour clock are used. Office and school times, train schedules or keeping appointments, all follow these systems.  

But then it gets complicated. In 1952, it was determined that there were 30 different calendars in use in India.  Many variations of Hindu Jain, Buddhist, Zoroastrian, Islamic calendars. Some are lunar some solar. Some follow lunar months but solar years.

The January to December calendar is used alongside a calendar based on Seasons:  spring, summer, monsoon, autumn, prewinter and winter; or religious festivals such as Holi,Diwali, Raksha Bandhan and Dusera for Hindus, and festivals such as Eid ul Fitr, Eid ul Azzha and Eid e milad un Nabi, and the mourning month of Muharram for Muslims.    

The chronology of time is equally varied: The Hindu calendar takes us back to over 300 trillion earth years, divided into cycles. The Muslim Hijri calendar begins with the migration of the Prophet Muhamad to Medina in 622 CE. For example, this year for Muslims is 1443, for Buddhists its 2563.

Ancient South Asian religious texts describe events in a timeless context. Modern historians try to place the narratives in the Ramayana, the Mahabharata, and the Vedas in a time frame, but the message is intended to be an eternal message and the memory of the narrative is what matters.

The Mughal Emperors on the other hand, seemed to be conscious of making history, and wrote extensively and in minute detail every aspect of the battles fought, impressions formed, even what was cooked in the royal kitchen.

The first Mughal Emperor, Babar, wrote a daily diary even during battles from his camp tent. This desire for accuracy may go back to the ancient Arab system of scrupulously giving the sequential lineage of each account of the Prophet Muhammad’s sayings or actions.  Muslim prayers offered five times a day also gave importance to the accurate measurement of time.

The sighting of the first sliver of the moon is an important event for Muslims to determine the start of the lunar month which can be 29 or 30 days. This is especially significant at the end of the month of fasting, Ramadhan when people gather on rooftops just after sunset hoping to catch a glimpse of the new moon.   

In Pakistan, an official committee takes the final decision after reports of sightings arrive from different parts of the country, which while a serious event, creates an opportunity for poking fun at the committee. 

Just to complicate things further, the dependence on the sighting of the moon also means the Muslim calendar varies from country to country.

 All the ascetic and Sufi traditions of South Asia believe the world is transient -Maya or Fana- and therefore of little consequence in comparison with eternal time.  

 Time in the West gradually became independent of nature. Instead devices such as hourglasses, measured candles, water clocks and finally the quartz clock that can measure milliseconds freed timekeeping from the movement of the sun

These measuring devices are universally used including in South Asia. Although in the early 19 Century, Rajah Jai Singh II built five observatories called Jantar Mantars that could measure the time of day with an accuracy of about 2 seconds, for the majority time is negotiable.

Years were once known by significant events rather than numbers such as the Year of Sorrow, or the Year of the Elephant. The smallest unit of time in the ancient texts was the time taken to blink the eye.  At the other end, one day for Brahma is equal to 4 billion human years. Muslims believe that after we die, our time on earth will seem as if it was but three or four days. 

 It is often said the people of South Asia live simultaneously in many eras. Traditional lifestyles live side by side with the latest technologies. Migrant workers bring their village lifestyle to the city and take back urban attitudes and technology back to their villages.

Within the city itself time slips easily between past and present.  Many South Asian cities have an ancient history and practice traditional rituals at festivals or Sufi shrines alongside urban modernization.

Varanasi on the banks of the holy Ganges river, has remained a major pilgrimage site throughout history, but also has new shopping malls and modern apartment buildings.  Even a modern city like Karachi has the Mahadev Temple where Shiva dwelt and the 8^th century shrine of Abdullah Ghazi with festivals and visitors throughout the year.

Time can also stand still: the pattern on the garment worn by the priest king of the 8000 year old Indus Civilization continues to be used in modern ajrak textiles of Sindh.

Time can be constantly renewed. When a newly redecorated truck writes Model no 2021 on a 1970s Bedford Truck with the phrase “ time has once again made me a bride” it suggests time is whatever the decorator wants it to be.

Time is an important component in music and dance. Classical music  and dance of South Asia is rarely either slow or fast, but incorporates all tempos.

The Alaap that a raag with begin with is slow, creating the atmosphere of the raag. It will then establish a moderate rhythm with the main verses, and end in a breathtaking speed of flourishes or Dhrut.

The same devices are used in classical dance.  Specific Ragas are to be played at specific times of the 24 hour day, usually in three hour blocks reserved for each raga.

The value of a classical musician is gauged by his skill with free improvisations, picking up the mathematical framework at the summ beat.  

Fleeting  time or  endless waiting are recurrent themes in South Asian poetry . The poet Sahir Ludhianvi’s poem became a famous Bollywood song 

Mai Pal Do Pal Kaa Shaayar Hun

Pal Do Pal Meri Kahaani Hai

Pal Do Pal Meri Hasti Hai

Pal Do Pal Meri Javaani Hai  

 

I am the poet of a few moments

My story will last only a few moments

My life is only for a few moments

My youth will last only a few moments.

 

Mughal Miniatures play with both time and space. Instead of the single perspective of Western painting, multiple events are presented in what has been called piled up perspective using separate eye levels.

Artists and Art critic Quddus Mirza writes “the perspective in miniature painting was about perceiving the tangible world not entangled in ephemeral and sensory encounters, but as a calculated cartography of eternal reality”.

One senses the intensity of the artist studiously depicting the layered reality of a space or a time in its entirety.

The Neo miniatures of Lahore, such as Shahzia Sikander and Nusra Latif Qureshi ironically reach back 700 years in the past to find an old medium, to depict contemporary subjects, and make playful reference to the compression of different time frames, and multiple perspectives.

 

Rashid Rana’s play on images embedded within images is another interpretation of piled up perspective  such as his Red Carpet 2006  and Desperately Seeking Paradise 2007-8

Bhupen Khakar and  N.S Harsha while not working in the genre of miniature painting, nod towards it, as well as the Ajanta murals and temple carving.

Many have asked the question: Does time exist? Or is it a human construct? How can time be anything but fluid? Jalauddin Rumi said you cannot put your hand in the same river twice. In the time taken to remove and re-dip the hand, the waters have changed. So to it is with time – ever flowing and ever changing.

Durriya Kazi

Karachi

September 27 2021