My little friend Dhanu used to jump with joy – sitting on his mother’s lap - whenever our bike crosses the Amara stores while going to the nearby park. Even now whenever we visit a park with slide, see-saw, zig-zag, he jumps with the same joy. Today morning, I also wanted to jump with the same joy when I parked our bike in front of the hmt showroom(?!?!?) in nungambakkam. I was literally not on the floor and was almost flying since once of my longtime wish is going to come to true in the next couple of minutes – buying a new mechanical automatic wrist watch. My other wish to have a high end digital watch was satisfied last year, when my sister got me a CASIO databank from US.
While I was studying in school, one of my uncle used to wear a watch which used to run all the time, without any need to key in. It doesn’t have a battery too. I came to know that it was an automatic watch. The words ’21 Jewels’ was written on the dial, while most of the wrist watches during that time used to have ’19 Jewels’. But it has to be worn atleast a couple of hours a day so that it keeps running. While at college, while going with my dad to the nearby weekly market, we found a guy who was selling used winding watches from different brands for a price tag of around Rs. 150. There I found an automatic watch in which the back case was open. For the first time I found that there was something like a pendulum on the rear side of the watch, behing the back cover, which was oscillating/revolving inside when the watch was shaken, from which I understood that this motion is used to wind a spring and this makes the watch automatic. I wanted to get this piece and my dad also went ahead to purchase that. But on knowing that we will buy that watch for sure, the seller immediately rose its price to Rs. 250. Father still went ahead to negotiate the amount. But the salesman’s act made me angry and I immediately dropped the idea and we moved away from that place, though the seller was ready to negotiate the price once he came to know that we are dropping the idea to buy it.
During my stay at US, I came across a Citizen automatic watch, ladies type, in a jewellery shop. I at once bought it for my mom and with utmost happiness I presented it to her. I still remember the extent to which my colleague - who accompanied me to the shop - got surprised when I purchased that watch which was priced around $150. About a year back, when my friend came to know about the existence of watches whose cost might be as high as 8 to 10 K. I even surprised here by showing rado watches which costed around Rs. 2,35,000 by taking her to the rado showroom in the nearby shopping mall. Upon knowing it, she at once resolved to get a costly watch for me, knowing my passion for wrist watches. She fixed the budget at Rs. 10 k.
Yesterday we went to P. Orr & Sons and saw a couple of models, especially Seiko. Upon entering the shop I felt odd, and uncomfortable, since I appeared to be odd man out there. Though she insisted on buying an automated Seiko, I didn’t go for it. I told I don’t want any of those high cost models. They did charm me, but I was not comfortable buying it.
When I browsed the net a couple of days back, I came to know that hmt watches are still in production and sold (only) through their factory outlets and one such outlet near our home was at nungambakkam. After some preliminary investigation on phone, we decided to visit the showroom today morning. Upon entering the showroom, I couldn’t find any watch displayed there and it didn’t look like a watch showroom at all. It looked like a government office with two people sitting behind the tables and doing something. I told the person at the front desk that I need winding watches, including automatic ones. He said he will show them and then only got confidence that its indeed a watch showroom. He opened a cupboard behind him and took a couple of medium sized box from it and took out the watches one by one from it. I just asked him that whether these watches are still in production, in order to confirm that these are not old stocks. He said they are still being manufactured and the company is taking measures(???) to revive the brand again. What I had in mind was to buy a traditional looking simple watch for a reasonable cost. I was surprised to see the HMT-Vijay(which my dad has, but not using now) was still available. I wanted to buy that one, but my friend said, since we already have it, let’s go for another model. Janata, Akash, Kanjan, Aishwarya were some of the models we saw. We also saw HMT Kohinoor, which my grandfather had. But in these watches, the back cover now is push type, instead of the screw type that we find in their vintage counterparts. Among them, when I saw the NASL 11 automatic, I immediately liked and selected it, which was a blend of the traditional and modern ones. The salesman said that this watch had a modern improvised machine in it. Finally I have an automatic watch with me. And the happy news is that my friend assured that the automatic watch for 10K offer is still open.
Here are a few pics of my new watch:
