The truth about Indian Stretchable Time

We have this joke in India. IST doesn't mean Indian Standard Time. It means Indian Stretchable Time.

If a wedding invitation says the reception starts at 7 PM, it means the venue opens at 7 PM, the family arrives at 8 PM, the food is served at 9:30 PM, and the bride and groom might actually show up around 10 PM.

It's cultural. We don't view time as this rigid weapon. It's fluid.

Westerners come here and they lose their minds. A guy tells them the taxi will be there in five minutes. Twenty-two minutes later, the taxi arrives, and the driver is completely calm because in his head, he basically just got there. Five minutes means I am in transit and will arrive eventually.

But here's the thing — we know how to code-switch. When it comes to global business, Indian devs are paranoid about being on time. If a Zoom call with London is at 4 PM, we are logged in at 3:58 PM staring at the camera.

We keep the stretchable time for ourselves. It's a luxury. It's an unspoken agreement that life is chaotic, the traffic is unpredictable, and stressing over 15 minutes isn't going to fix the potholes down the street anyway.