Clocks and watches, pocket watches in particular, have gripped me since I can remember. As a child, I was fascinated by a stooping ghari-saaz who used to come to our home in Connaught Circus, New Delhi, the magic chabi in his hand, to go straight to the two wall clocks we had, stand up on any chair that could be found, move the hour and minute hands about, ponder the dial, set the time and go away as wordlessly as he came.
Some years later, in Chennai, when my nana’s pocket watch, a dainty piece of British make, began to lose time, I offered to take the irregularly pulsating disc to P. Orr & Sons, the hoary horologist on Mount Road, to have it set right. I was shown into a corridor where, to my teenage eyes, several men, each looking as ancient as my nana, or almost, were stooped over some watch or other, peering into its innards through eye-glasses that fitted into the socket of each one’s good eye like a bulb into its holder. The company set the watch right and my nana regained that part of his comfort level with Time.
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A month ago, with my nana and all the men who worked on those watches in Mount Road and the ghari-saaz of Connaught Circus having moved on to a zone where hours no longer matter, I had the good luck to return to this ticking world. Sixty-five now, white of head, grappling with the collapse of a table timepiece of the ‘alarum’ type, I entered a 10x10 roadside watch-repair shop on Chennai’s Lattice Bridge Road.
I was struck by the sight of a man wizened by age bent over a watch in a corner of that tiny establishment. Repair over, I asked him how long he had been setting watches right.
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“All my working life,” he said.
“You must have known people in P. Orr & Sons,” I ventured.
“I worked there myself,” he said, “until my retirement.”
“Really? I once had my grandfather’s watch repaired there. It has given up working again, of course. Perhaps I should bring it back to you.” He just smiled at this.
A young man was waiting for me to settle my bill. “How much?” I asked him. “Oh, for this job, ten rupees.” I was disbelieving. What does one get for ten rupees these days? I took out a fifty-rupee note, thanking both of them profusely.
As the man was getting me my change, he asked me in Tamil, “You look like someone from the north but you are speaking Tamil...so where are you from?”
“Oh that...well, you see, my mother was from these parts and my father from Gujarat.”
“Say that then, true national integration! You are an asal Indian.”
“Why, we all are asal Indians.”
“No, not that way, sir! You see, we have all got divided. Take any two men in Andhra. This one, he speaks Telugu. That one, he also speaks Telugu. But one wants Telangana and will give his life for it. The other will give his life to prevent it. So where is the asal Indian?”
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“I see what you mean....”
“By the way, sir, you must be quite old?”
“Of course, as you can make out by looking at me.”
“Don’t mind, sir, but can I ask what you do for entertainment?”
This was an unexpected question. Glancing at the watch-repairer, bent again over yet another watch, I said, “Well, I like old Hindi film songs....”
“Oh, right, right,” he said, and drumming on his counter, started to hum ‘Baar baar dekho, hazaar baar dekho....’
“Well, that one is an old song, but not old enough for me....”
“Oh, right, right. Then you must be very old, sir, very old...you can pay me eight rupees. That will do for the repair.”
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“No, no, that is not necessary—ten rupees is fine.”
“What are you, sir, I mean, what do you do?”
“I am, well, a pensioner....”
“By the way, do you stay in a house or in a flat?”
“In a flat.”
“Ayyo. Pity. Open the door and you see your neighbour. Close the door and you hear him cough. If you sing your old Hindi film songs, he will say ‘Don’t Disturb!’”
“Quite.”
“Come again, sir. Even without repair work.”
The wizard-repairer looked up and gave me a wan smile, nodding. “Next time, bring your grandfather’s pocket watch,” he said. “I will see if I can do something with it.”
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Ten rupees down, a timepiece repaired, and hope held of future Time being set right on old dials, I stepped onto the street outside, humming without realising it, ‘Baar, baar...’
(The author was till recently the governor of West Bengal. He’s the grandson of C. Rajagopalachari on the maternal side and of Mahatma Gandhi on the paternal side.)
