True Time

Our shop, True Time, is tucked away in Arif Mansion on Society Road. Vile Parle West is a busy area, but this particular spot feels a little different once you step inside. We’ve been at this 0.1666 address—whatever that really means on the official map—for a long time now. It’s just a simple room with a lot of clocks ticking on the walls. Sometimes they don’t all chime at once, which is a bit of a joke between us and the neighbors. The building is one of those older ones that has seen a lot of changes in the street outside. We have a heavy metal shutter that’s a bit of a pain to lift in the morning. Inside, it smells like old oil and maybe a bit of the incense we light near the door. My cousin helps out sometimes, though he mostly just drinks tea and talks to the people who walk in. We don't really have a big display, just some shelves and the workbench where I sit. The fans overhead make a lot of noise, but they keep us cool when the Mumbai heat gets to be too much. It’s a quiet kind of life, mostly spent focusing on the gears and the tiny movements of the hands. We don't hurry much. If a watch takes a week to fix properly, then it takes a week. People around here know that's just how we work. It’s a simple life.