HYDERABAD: Timekeeping in Hyderabad still has a small corner where hands and patience do the work. In counters under glass, and with trays that hold screws that can disappear if you breathe too hard. Repairs take as long as they need to, nothing hurried.
Conversations with people around these old manual watch shops show why they continue. Akash Upadhyay, who runs a boutique beside a repair stall in the Old City, keeps a manual watch on his wrist by choice. “Digital watches aren’t bought for telling time anymore. They’re for extra activities, such as tracking steps. A manual watch is purely for time,” he said. His daily watch was a gift from his brother. He never stopped wearing it. “There’s nostalgia to it. My father’s generation only had these, so for me it’s carrying something forward,” he said.
Workbenches look similar across these neighbourhoods, customers are mainly the “shaukeens” (collectors) as they say, but stories are slightly different. Dilsukhnagar’s Tirumala Watch & Gifts runs on the practice learnt early. Owner Punnam Chandra picked up the craft while still in school and never left it. “I was in Class 7 when I learnt that art. I love watches and making them. Automatic watches are rare now and everyone is into quartz and digital. But I still keep some old wind-up pieces for servicing,” he said.
Spares arrive from Chandni Chowk when needed and he also experiments when time allows, putting together reverse-running clocks and odd, playful builds. “It’s not about putting in a battery and taking the money. The customer’s satisfaction should bring them back.” He remembers making a wooden clock in just two days for a regular who wanted something different. “It’s an art to me,” he said, showing his clocks made from coloured pencils, miniature guitars and wheels, each one assembled to a brief given by the buyer. There is no mass production here. Every piece is made for one person.
Nampally’s Bombay Watch Co. carries the mood of a place that has stayed put while the city kept moving. Opposite the Yousufain Dargah lane, technician Md Arshad Khan has worked here for over 15 years. “Smart watches, we don’t repair those,” he said, nudging a drawer filled with scavenged gears and mainsprings. “Service a good manual watch and it lasts longer.” He calls many customers “shaukeen” again, the sort who enjoy winding a watch every morning, he adds.
“Some come in just to see what’s on the shelf and talk about watches they had in their younger days,” he said. The lane’s anchor, he adds, is the dargah nearby, which says something about why regulars return. The shop is over five and a half decades old and the counters still hold Favre Leuba and Seiko pieces, and the back shelves have rows of labelled jars holding screws, straps, crystals and winding stems collected over years of salvaging.
Bombay Watch Co. is widely described as a service shop that can take on almost anything in horology and also sells vintage pieces. The owner, Mohd Abdul Kareem Khan, has kept it ticking for decades.
The clocks on Charminar still rely on human hands as well. Wahid Watch Company winds them every two days and has done so across generations, a routine that keeps one of Hyderabad’s oldest public timekeepers working. Owners of these stores say that the work is steady rather than glamorous. People bring heirlooms that survived over the years moving around from places and individuals. “Some pieces are 50 years old or more and people still care enough to repair them,” Punnam Chandra said.
These shops still attract certain customers returning with a piece they bought in their youth, younger collectors seeking an HMT Pilot or Janata, and those who want a gifted watch to keep working. Repairs are often done at the same desk where similar work was done thirty or forty years ago, under the same tube light.
They will never compete with smart devices that count steps and measure sleep. They don’t try. Their value sits elsewhere. A repaired watch lasts when looked after and a hand-built clock on a home wall becomes part of the room. Hyderabad has many fast things. This is one small, slow one that continues to make sense.
