Better Late Than Sorry

It's at ten minutes that people generally feel obliged to make contact and apologise for delays, writes Dr Saumya Balsari.

A recent Telegraph report detailed the findings of a study conducted by the motorists' website GetMeThere.co.uk, and apparently, if you are late by 10 minutes and 17 seconds, then you are late.

According to the research, it's at ten minutes that people generally feel obliged to make contact and apologise for delays. This naturally involves a frank admission that they are going to be late. The study is quite heartening - more than 80 per cent of people in their 50s claim they are never late for anything.

Now, let's be honest - we all know the jokes about Indian Standard Time, and how stubbornly Indian DNA persists abroad. Surely, had any desi in this country of the Big Ben been included in the survey, the results would have been different? I ask you - which self-respecting desi rings in ten minutes? It's as I suspected, no hands flew up. Multiply ten minutes by ten of delay, and that's more like it.

Actually, the better class of desi does not ring at all. It is far more dignified to keep silent. When silence is golden, why be silver-tongued? Some desi guests are good at being silent. They simply make you wait and wait for their arrival until the tea gets cold, the pakoras lumpy, the rotis chewy, the daal rubbery and the sari crumpled from Pappu bouncing on your lap saying "When are they here?" If you only knew they were going to be late, you'd keep the lights dim and save on the electricity. Instead, the house is needlessly ablaze in welcome as if it's Diwali.

Some desis are silver-tongued. And smooth. The excuses they find are inventive, creative and highly original. They will never ring to say that it was their fault they were late. Desis living in the traffic crawl of the London area have an unfair advantage over the rest of the country. A Tube or a bus running late is far more plausible than sheep on the road.

Some desis are really quite cheeky, and pretend to their hosts that they have already left home although Pappu is still struggling to finish his 39 times tables at the kitchen table. Homework must always, always, come first.

According to the study, both men and women agree that they "wouldn't care" if they were late for their mother-in-law's birthday party. Now make that an Auntyji's party, and no desi would make her wait. Or be late.

(Saumya Balsari is the author of the comic novel 'The Cambridge Curry Club', and wrote a play for Kali Theatre Company's Futures last year. She has worked as a freelance journalist in London, and is currently writing a second novel.)