A wrist watch was a prized possession once upon a time. Many teenagers like me in the 1970s always wanted to flaunt one but never had the money to buy one. I started working in 1970 in Bombay (Mumbai now) and in spite of earning for five years, I could not raise enough money to buy a watch. I was happy to find my time in others’ watches! “ Time kya huwa ,” was a usual question one heard on the streets of Bombay those days.
I don’t remember how I managed my time during university examinations but now I came through all that without a watch.
While attending an interview in 1975, the interviewer handed me a set of question papers and said that I had exactly one hour to answer them. Seating me all alone in a spacious cabin, he was about to leave when he noticed that I did not have a watch. With a friendly smile on his face, he parted the heavy curtains of that office room and put me face to face with the University Rajabai Tower Clock, a landmark in South Mumbai, which stood staring at me at the face level as I was on a top floor. While leaving the room he said, “Don’t worry, you have the biggest clock in India in front of you!”
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Those days, Indian watches were rare and everybody wanted to have a foreign watch. HMT was in a nascent stage and buying a Swiss-made watch was a risky affair as there were not many reliable shops.
I had a friend working in Bombay Customs and he promised me that he would get me a good watch. The Bombay Customs used to auction off confiscated smuggled stuff and he said he would try and get me one at the next auction. A few weeks later, he came to me with an automatic watch but I was disappointed as it came without strap. I strapped it and wore it with great aplomb till the day I left for Saudi Arabia in 1980.
In the desert kingdom, I soon realised watches were the cheapest commodity and were available in plenty. Each time I visited India I would gift watches to my friends and relatives.
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In the late 1990s, with the arrival of cellphones, the whole scenario changed. Cellphones equipped with clock and camera displaced wrist watches; today I rarely find a person consulting his watch. Even I don’t wear one now!
Time is indeed changing and we keep pace with it!