Death of a timekeeper: Remembering Ghari Babu, who made a clock tick backwards

Too young to comprehend the narrative set amid decaying feudalism and emerging modernity, I grasped a few stratums of multiple tales because it was partly my heritage — Ma was born into a family of zamindars and owned a crumbling haveli, much like the one in the film. Memories of dark, dank corridors, dimly lit rooms and a central patio where residents of the mansion, all related to one another, whiled away their time — often taking potshots at one another — were fresh in the mind; only the scale of the cine mansion was enormous.

The time-keeper of the haveli

Among the characters and situations in the film, I, as a child, giggled at Guru Dutt or Bhootnath’s mortification when his rural clumsiness met the adroit and graceful Waheeda Rahman’s character, Jaba. Meena Kumari’s Chhoti Bahu came across as an overwhelmingly despondent character. Despite the gloom that enveloped its principal location, the haveli, I could have watched the film a few more times, if only for Harindranath Chattopadhyay’s cameo as Ghari Babu, the eternal time-keeper of the crumbling feudal castle.

As an adult, I ended up watching the film several times more and am game for more viewings, but, not just to hear Chattopadhyay’s character chatter away in his falsetto tone and tell the character portrayed by Guru Dutt, to “run away” from the haveli because, as he prophecies, nothing there will survive the vicissitudes of time, all of this will fall prey to time; the entire wealth will no longer remain and the manor will fall apart.

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As years passed, the symbolic significance of Ghari Babu crossing the young man’s path, just as he is coming face-to-face with misery within the Chaudhary Zamindari, became comprehensible to me. Yet, the portrayal of the character as a bedraggled yet nimble timekeeper remained highly appealing. Chattopadhyay’s character almost appeared on occasions as a menacing otherworldly being, yet portrayed with a comic touch; he was the only one to foresee what would become reality.

“Waqt ki awaz sunn!” (Listen to the voice of time) became his 24x7 command. The idea of a man with the power to change and manage time, albeit on the wall-clocks, carved a permanent niche within the mind; soon, watches became a regular part of my being from when I was gifted my first HMT wristwatch.

A fixation across time

Years passed, and a variety of watches in my life ticked away ceaselessly. One evening, at an impromptu party at a friend-cum-colleague’s place, I found myself staring at a wall clock. I wondered if the booze had already gotten to me. The host must have sensed my confusion and quietly sidled up, smiling as he said, “There’s nothing wrong with what you’re seeing; you’re not drunk yet — ghadi ulti ghoomti hai (the clock moves in the reverse direction!).” He explained that the wall clock caught his eyes in Europe some years ago.

Over the next several years, the idea of an anti-clockwise wall clock became a fixation and I considered ways to get hold of one. Blank looks were staple responses whenever I asked for such a clock in antique shops in towns and cities, where work took me.

Other watches ticked away, those that required winding every day made way for those that didn’t require such attention. My profession made me busier with the passage of time, but my fascination with watches remained, especially the desire to lay hands on one that reversed time, so to speak.

Technology changed and search engines became ‘figure anything out’ tools. One day, impulsively, I got down to searching for a ‘how to’ guide for converting a ‘normal’ clock into an anti-clockwise one and eventually got hold of the process to make the electronic oscillator in the quartz clock move in the opposite direction.

By then, we had changed homes and in the new locality, I had found a ‘watch-man’ in the nearby market, the young and enthusiastic owner of a small shop, who repaired most electronic items. I began calling W, ‘Ghari Babu’, for the zest and passion with which he took up long-dead watches of various sizes and makes, and brought them back to life, making hands move again. He remained clueless that the moniker I bestowed on him was also that of one of the most cynical and prophetical characters of Indian cinema. For him, it was a title that recognised and respected his self-attained skills.

Anti-clockwise clock: An experiment

Once, after he restored a pocket-watch, the type that the late President, Pranab Mukherjee wore on his bandhgalas, I broached the subject of ulti ghadi (anti-clockwise clock). Initially, he looked incredulously at me. But, the moment he fathomed what I was explaining and how this could be done, he said with a smile, “chaliye try karte hain uncle ji (let’s try to do it, uncle)”.

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For the next few days I had no other passion; a ‘dial’ was designed at the local composer-cum-computer-repair and printing shop. Eventually, armed with a print of my anti-clockwise ‘dial’ on glossy photo paper, W and I spent a couple of hours where he laboriously followed my instructions noted from the website.

W was least unconcerned that I promised to pay for the spoilt clock if we failed and could not convert the new clock to stop moving in the ‘normal’ direction and become our anti-clockwise clock.

W wouldn’t stop staring at ‘his’ creation when he finally turned the last screw and watched while the three hands on our ‘creation’ began moving anti-clockwise.

W became my go-to repair-man for every item that kept time. But every conversation began with his inquiry about the well-being of the ulti-ghadi. He introduced me to other shopkeepers in the market as the “Uncle Ji” who got him to make that odd clock. The clock adorned our walls but he considered himself its partial owner.

One day, when I went to get a repair job done, his shop was shut. I merely looked inquisitively at the lady who ran the adjacent odd-items shop. “He is ill, had a stroke,” she filled in. Immediately, I called the number that we exchanged a long time ago. Ominously, it went unanswered.

The number flashed on my phone later that day; I heard his voice, albeit with a slight slur. W explained that his was a providential escape and that he would reopen the shop in a few weeks but his wife would now have to bring him to the shop as he wouldn’t be able to drive his two-wheeler initially. His last query, after asking about our well-being, was about, what else but ‘his’ ulti-ghadi — if it was ticking along finely.

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When the tragedy struck

That became the pattern of our exchanges, spread over two decades. Only rarely would any of our watches be repaired, or even have batteries changed, at any other shop, although we moved to another locality. Over the years, the story of W, I, and the wall clock, was shared with numerous friends and visitors, especially when they looked quizzically at the clock.

Some days ago, I accompanied my wife for a chore to her ‘trusted’ shop and its owner, in the same old market. Guided by habit, I crossed over to the next row of shops for a little chit-chat. But at W’s shop, there was a different man peering into an open wristwatch and a woman sat at the tiny counter.

Before I could ask her anything, the lady at the next shop beckoned me, “You are looking for W?” she asked in a hushed tone. At my nod, she informed me that he had died.

As I put my hand on my chest and silently asked, When did this happen? she mentioned a date from a few months ago. “She is his wife and now runs the shop with hired help,” the woman said, gesturing towards the lady at the counter, who was now looking at me.

Grossly unprepared for this tragedy that struck the family several months ago, but which I learned just then, I folded my hands to the widowed lady and said, “W did all my repair work…” Stoically, she replied that the entire family knew about me and the ulti ghadi.

Late that night, when all sound ceased and only the clock ticked along on the wall, I looked at the ‘joint’ creation hanging across my table. The hands ticked away, like always, in reverse gear, and I painfully became aware that the clock of W’s life cannot ever be turned backwards.