India’s billion-dollar joke. Who’s laughing?
Indians’ lack of punctuality is so infamous that the acronym IST, which stands for Indian Standard Time, is often jokingly expanded as Indian Stretchable Time.
I experienced this version of IST for the first time in 2003. I had trekked the 50-kilometre distance from central Delhi to Noida for an interview at 10 am. I arrived 15 minutes early and started to compose myself for the meeting. I needn’t have bothered. My interviewer showed up five hours later.
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