Vintage clock to chime on New Year's Eve after being stuck in time for ages

Vintage clock expert Mohammed Ibrahim Damani has been struggling to design a "badam". That's his casual name for an almond-shaped cog, which controls the number of times a clock chimes every hour. About a year ago, the Mumbai Port Trust appointed the 68-year-old to repair Sassoon Dock's 140-year-old timepiece. As soon as he inserts this almond-shaped wheel - he's had to discard a few earlier versions - the mechanism will work like clockwork.

The plan is for the repaired timepiece to ring in the New Year with twelve chimes. However, the deadline for it to start working round the clock is January 26, 2015 after the tower's restoration is complete.

This will be the first time Colaba residents will hear it chime in at least two decades. No one can recall exactly when the clock stopped though rumours abound - some say it died the day Mahatma Gandhi was assassinated, others on the day India became a republic and still others say it was vandalized during the 1973 Arab-Israeli War because the dock was built by Albert Sassoon, a Baghdadi Jew in 1875.

"The decision to restore and repair the clock and the heritage tower was taken in late 2013 and supported by the chairman Ravi Parmar," says Dilip Vishwanathan, convenor of the Port Trust's Heritage Committee. It cost approximately Rs 1.5 lakh to repair the clock, while the restoration of the tower will come to around Rs 25 lakh. "The roof tiles and much of the wooden floor had to be replaced, and the balcony had to be reinforced after it caved in," explained the project's contractor Sunil Bhatia. Once the work is complete, the Port Trust is contemplating leasing out the tower and its neighbouring four structures. "A night restaurant can be run on the top floor of the tower, a museum on the ground floor and a fish retail outlet in the rest of the complex," said Vishwanathan.

Dilip Vishwanathan spearheaded the project. (TOI photo by Rizwan Mithawala)
Its new avatar will be in keeping with the dock's grand legacy .Though small by today's standards, Sassoon Dock was the city's first wet dock. Messrs David Sassoon and Company excavated it out of solid rock and designed it to accommodate five 1,000-ton ships. In 1879, it was purchased by the government on behalf of the Bombay Port Trust and was often used as a landing place for troops.

Damani, whose father also repaired clocks, has fixed heritage timepieces for Fort's St Thomas Cathedral and Byculla's Magen David Synagogue. While repairing this one, he had to replace 43 missing parts. This ate into his profit but he persevered partly because of his history with the timepiece. As a teenager, he worked for the Eastern Watch Company and was in charge of servicing this very mechanism. So when the Port Trust approached him, it was like winding back the clock.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/followceleb.cms?alias=Vintage clock,Sassoon Dock's 140-year-old timepiece,Mohammed Ibrahim Damani

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