Opinion Out of time

Had the stroke of the midnight hour been missed, India might not have kept its tryst with destiny. Patriotism and punctuality were closely entwined in the Nehruvian worldview. And in an optimistic attempt to make Indians keep time, the government instructed Hindustan Machine Tools (HMT) to start making watches. So in 1961, the public sector leviathan rolled out the first indigenously manufactured mechanical watches. Needless to say, no one went off Indian standard time and along with the Ambassador, HMT watches came to stand for a new nippiness in government and society, especially the middle classes. Now, after five decades of being “timekeeper to the nation” and “desh ki dhadkan”, HMT Watches is winding down.

Set up in collaboration with the Japanese company, Citizen Watch, HMT used micro parts and precision manufacturing technology for mass production. The earliest models were hand wound and assembled manually rather than by machines. Then in the 1970s, the first automatic and quartz watches were introduced. With models sporting names such as “Janata”, “Sona” and “Vijay”, HMT was very much the desi brand. At the same time, in production-starved, licence-permit-raj India, these watches represented the bold and the new. But as the rules changed and private watchmakers flooded the market post-1991, the old HMT was unable to keep up. What was cutting edge became quaint and in the last few years, HMTs have lived on largely as heirlooms or collector’s pieces, available at absurdly low prices.

Advertisement

Finally, the HMT watch joins the Ambassador car and the Bajaj scooter in the museum. But objects consigned to oblivion often have a vibrant afterlife, sought after as antiques, romanticised in art in a way they never were in life. The timekeeper to the nation could now become the keeper of our memory.