One of the one percent in 13 million.

[Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi]

Clocks cram the shop. They cover the walls, hang from hooks and stand on shelves. There are grandfather clocks, round clocks, square clocks, big clocks and small clocks. Their wooden cases, glass fronts and faded faces make the room feel out of step with the present. A few pendulums hang motionless behind the glass. Not one of the clocks is showing the correct time. None seems to be moving. The clock repair shop in Old Delhi’s Urdu Bazar feels timeless, though it has existed only since 1970.

At the far end sits Saddam. His father, Suhail Akhtar, was a repairer and collector of old clocks who died late last year. The soft-spoken young man spends a few hours here every evening, sitting idle among the things his father left behind.

One of the shop’s striking features is its teakwood door. Through the doorway, the market is busy this evening. Traffic moves past the shop as people, goats, cats and dogs make their way through the street. The bazar was known for its bookstores. Most have been replaced by kebab eateries.

Saddam says he is not a clock repairer, not even a clock enthusiast, but feels that what his father left behind cannot simply be packed away or sold off. He and his siblings know that the collection is unusual and wish to preserve it to eternity. He walks to a shelf displaying a framed painting of his father, given by a grateful patron. In the painting, the clock repairer is holding a clock upto his chest. Saddam says his father was very handsome as a young man.

Saddam has inherited something else from his family: the practice of being a hakeem. The family was once in the book trade in Urdu Bazar, but his grandfather became a hakeem who treated sexual ailments, through Unani medicine, a system rooted in the Greek tradition. The shop in fact was originally his grandfather’s dawakhana, a traditional pharmacy.

The late grandfather, whose actual name was Aizazuddin, is still known in the Walled City as Hakeemji Ghantewale. Saddam learnt the practice from his grandfather and now treats patients through WhatsApp, where they are more comfortable discussing their problems. The young man says he is considering turning the clock shop back into a dawakhana. The clocks will stay, though he might install a screen around this old desk for patients’ privacy, he says.

A black rotary telephone sits on the desk.

“This place is precious. Our family feels responsible for keeping it alive,” Saddam says, gazing at the painting of his father. The bottom of the painting bears these lines by poet Fayyaz Hashmi:

Waqt ki qaid mein zindagi hai magar,
Chand ghariya wahi hain jo azad hain.
(Life lies imprisoned behind the bars of time, yet,
A few clocks, a few fleeting moments, remain beyond the time’s reach.)

[This is the 637th portrait of Mission Delhi project]