For old times’ sake

Susheela Nair

Located amid the sprawling expanse of greenery of the HMT Township in Bengaluru, the HMT Heritage Centre and Museum keeps the watchmaking legacy alive by showcasing its journey from a company manufacturing basic machines to defence equipment.

“From its humble beginnings in 1953, the HMT climbed a great height, and its story is also the story of India’s industrial revolution. The museum seeks to tell HMT’s tale to the public, especially to the younger generation,” says Santosh Deshpande, joint general manager (Administration & PR).

Housed in a 4,246 sq ft bungalow constructed across 4.73 acres of land in 1953, the museum tracks the evolution of Hindustan Machine Tools organisation and its products through its five-decade history: wrist watches, tractors, bulbs, machine parts, printing units and more. One can get a glimpse of its various divisions — machine tools, watches, bearings, lamps, etc. or watch the legendary brand with over 2,160 watch models on display. What fascinated me were the wooden blocks these exhibits have been mounted on. They are actually recycled benches, windows and doors from the school and employee quarters that HMT once used to run in the vicinity.

Since its inception in 1961, HMT has pioneered watch-making in India. An ode to this is a huge cut out of Janata, HMT’s first mechanical wristwatch, which was launched by independent India’s first Prime Minister, late Jawaharlal Nehru, adorning the wall. Watches with a vast range of models and designs are on display.

HMT has many firsts to its credit, the tag of being the first manufacturer in the country to introduce a line of indigenously produced mechanical watches being one among them. This tryst with ‘firsts’ led to the launch of India’s first Day-Date quartz and Ana-Digi watches. HMT came out with an exclusive range of Quartz watch as a fashion accessory. It was also the first to manufacture Braille watches for the visually impaired. Since 1985, HMT has translated its experience into larger than life clocks like Floral Clocks, Solar Clocks, International Clocks, Master Slave Clocks and Tower Clocks.

Other remarkable items include 1996 models of wrist watches, including the 100 millionth watch manufactured and gifted in 2000 to the then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee. Equally interesting are the watch components from the 1962 watch factory post shutdown in 2016 and some rare timepieces, including a gold biscuit crusted watch. Janata, as the name conveys, was the aam aadmi’s watch. It was a big hit among the common populace and legend has it that people would wait in queues to buy the watch, which is when HMT decided to increase its production. This proved what a public sector could do and how efficient the Indian manufacturer could be.

Another prized possession is the Skeleton pocket watch, which expresses the mechanism at the back, also the Rajat, the first automatic watch. Chandana from the 1990s has a sandalwood ring on its case, and some of the watches boast belts from golden to silver, semi-precious, leather and plastic. Pilot watches were synonymous with the men in uniform and a mainstay at military canteens; Sona, the dress watch, known for its gold plating and sleek design, was the thinnest offering by HMT; Kanchan earned the nickname as the dowry watch because weddings were delayed to accommodate its delivery.

One walks from one room to another to have a peek at the display boxes to see the over 100 tiny parts that make the hand-wound watches go ‘tick-tick’. Or peer into the minute parts through the magnifying glasses as well as microscopes provided at the museum. Did you know that the hair spring used in the mechanical watches is ¼th the thickness of our hair strand? Several such nuggets enrich you here. An interesting one tells that assembling of watches was done by women as it required meticulous care and patience!

If you look beyond the iconic watches and timepieces, you’ll find that the Centre is also home to tractor parts, lamps, ball bearings and other machine parts. Some of the highlights include a dismantled tractor that was the first piece from the HMT’s Pinjore factory in Haryana and an offset press model used as a prototype by HMT at its Kalamassery unit in Ernakulam. The employee punching machine for factory attendance is on display and visitors to the museum can use this punch machine to record the time they arrived and left, just like the workers would log in their attendance. 

A children’s park, tractor joy ride as well as technical information Centre are part of the museum. Plans are afoot to install the famous Flower Clock at the Centre, which you might have seen at Lalbagh Botanical Garden. Don’t miss the audio visual presentation of this Public Sector Undertaking which features the 1990s’ ads and jingles. You can culminate your tour with a visit to the souvenir shop to pick up your favourite watch.