Time Traveller: My HMT Jawahar

The Jawahar, with its hand-winding mechanical movement, dates back to the early-1970s

I just bought a new watch. Only, this ‘new’ watch is around 55 years old, which makes it just a bit older than I am. It’s an HMT Jawahar, which is powered by a 17-jewel mechanical hand-winding movement. I bought it from a seller in Calcutta, whom I came across on a Facebook group for HMT watch enthusiasts. The deal was surprisingly hassle-free. I got in touch with the seller and asked him to send some photos of the watch, which he did. The watch looked clean and I liked it. Made the payment. He sent the watch via India Post which, as one may expect, did get the watch all the way from Calcutta to Greater Noida but did not deliver it to my house, making up some excuse about the door being locked at the time of attempted delivery. Yeah, right. In any case, the post office is not too far from my house and I went there, spoke to some guy who was sitting in a corner sorting mail and assorted packages, and he in turn spoke to another guy who found my package sitting in a random cupboard and handed it over to me after making me sign a piece of paper. And with that, I became the proud owner of a really, really old mechanical watch, one that I’ve been wanting to get my hands on for the last many months.

The Jawahar was one of the first watches to be manufactured by HMT Watches, which was set up in Bangalore in 1961. This was in collaboration with one of the biggest watch companies in Japan, Citizen. The Jawahar is powered by the HMT 0231 hand-winding movement, which I’m told is essentially an adaptation of Citizen's 0201 movement that incorporates the latter’s ‘Parashock’ shock protection system. And indeed, ‘Parashock 17 Jewels’ is imprinted on the Jawahar’s dial – a nice little touch for people like me, who love to wallow in horological nostalgia.

So, why get a mechanical watch that’s more than half a century old, one which only tells the time (no day-date complication here), which is not terribly accurate, requires manual winding every day in order to keep running and which needs to be handled very carefully? Well, I didn’t get the Jawahar for its range of capabilities and for what it can do. I got it for what it can’t. It can’t send or receive messages or notifications of any kind, can’t monitor my daily physical activity (of which there isn’t a great deal anyway), has no heartbeat sensor or fitness tracker, can’t sync with or control any smart devices and can’t play music. It is, instead, a simple old watch – a physical, tangible connection with the days gone by, with simpler, happier times and a life that was nowhere near as complex as it has now become.    

 

 
Love that tonneau-shaped case and the size, at 36mm, is just right for me

You might say the Jawahar is merely an ordinary old HMT and what am I getting so worked up about? After all, it’s not like it’s a Vacheron Constantin, Jaeger-LeCoultre, Patek Philippe, F.P. Journe or Parmigiani Fleurier, right? Yes, of course, that’s correct. It’s ‘only’ an HMT, and a really old one at that. But to my eyes, it’s just incredibly beautiful – I love its slim, tonneau-shaped case, its metal case that has a patina that only decades of service can bring about, its slightly faded silver dial, and its mechanical heart that’s been beating for more than 50 years and is still going strong. For me, my HMT Jawahar isn’t a mere ‘device,’ it’s a living, breathing organism, one that has a life of its own, even if it does need a human hand to gently twirl its crown a few times once every 24 hours to keep it going. 

As I get older, I find myself yearning for things from the past, things that can help me reconnect with the days gone by, reconnect with my childhood. Hence, perhaps, my longing for two-stroke motorcycles and vintage Fiat 1100s (the ones on which the front doors open backwards), my love for small, single-storey houses with a small lawn at the front and a small kitchen-garden at the back, my penchant for eating at old Chinese restaurants that are usually tucked away in some forgotten corner of the city, and the propensity to endlessly watch and rewatch 500cc motorcycle GP roadracing on YouTube. The old days – those happier times – are gone forever and won’t ever come back. But I try desperately hard to find ways by which I can keep at least a semblance of connection with the past, and among other things, my newly acquired HMT Jawahar is one of those ways. I honestly don’t want or need an Apple Watch or a Samsung Galaxy smartwatch – the Jawahar makes me smile when I look at it, it makes me happy. What more can one ask for? 

As per this old HMT advertisement, the Jawahar was once priced at Rs 140 plus taxes, which was a bit expensive compared to other HMT watches like the Tarun and Janata (Rs 112 plus taxes), Pilot (Rs 118 plus taxes) and Sona (Rs 120 plus taxes). I do think the Jawahar is by far the coolest of the lot!