LIFE IN THE 2000’s
In the 21st century, people traveled from one place to another sitting inside metal tubes with wings – such vehicles were known as airplanes. Something known as a “jet engine” was attached to the wings. The airplane had to be driven on a piece of land at a speed of 300 mph before it could take off. The speed at which the airplane would fly was a mere 900 miles per hour, and it would take almost a whole day to reach from US to India (these were names of 2 of 200 odd geographical divisions known as countries – the world was not unified back then!). Since the flight would take almost 24 hours, people had to eat, drink, sleep and go to the restroom in the airplane itself. Unlike the timezone-synchronized and biological-clock-friendly space warping that we take for granted, people would travel from one region in the morning, and reach the other part of the world when it was night, sometimes it would be night of the next day. This disturbed their biological clock and for a few days they would feel sleepy even in the day, as their brains would still think it was night – a phenomenon known as jet-lag. This is why when we see someone yawning in the day, we still refer to it as jetlagging.