The concept of time, time to wake up!

Yes, the concept of time, for example to know when it is time to wake up or to go to work and time to knock off. We live by the rules and regulations of time, the movements of the two hands of our clock, or the shiny blinking digits! 

These movements rule us, our life, from birth, when to be born, to even when to take our last breath!  

This morning, I was listening to a program while on my regular morning walk, about how the concept of time came into being. How people knew, before and who or what told them that it was time to wake up! 

The speaker was an academic of medieval studies and was talking about his research on the history of alarm clocks!

How religious singing played a part in announcing every morning that it was time to pray. He was talking of monasteries, and churches, but I was thinking about, the singing sounds from a church, or a mosque, a temple, or a gurudwara, waking up the community! The parbhat pheri, a customary ritual in villages in Punjab, a singing groups going around in the village, singing in praise of wahe guru, Almighty god, giving a melodious signal to people to get up, pray, go to work, or to go to school!

And then animals would know even before any human would know, that it was morning, the cows, the roosters, the chirping birds, would all start their movements with the Sun rise, and their sounds would wake up the people.

A very different way of waking up. Different from the sound of an alarm clock, for sure!

And I remember, my mother's sweet singing in the morning, "Uth jaag musafir bhor bhai, ab rain kahan jo sowat hei"! 

Oh traveller, it's time to wake up, the night is gone, those who are still sleeping are the losers!"