Madras Day 2026: ticking on behind Metro Rail barricades

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Watch repair technicians at Zenith Watch Co at Kutchery Road in Mylapore.

Somewhere between the ticking of a century-old pendulum clock and a modern, sleek wrist watch, Zenith Watch Co. on Kutchery Road has ensured two distinct eras of time live side by side. A sweep of the eye taking in the walls of this shop that stares at Metro Rail barricades presents this sumptuous display of the past and the present. The walls are decorated with old, ornate timepieces, repaired and ready for delivery; and these walls also display shelves holding modern wristwatches out of factories and packed ready for sale.

Since 1954, this shop at Kutchery Road, near Luz signal in Mylapore, has been serving customers seeking to preserve timepieces of the past, hallowed by their personal memories, as well as watches and clocks just out of the blocks and dew-fresh in the market.

Old clocks displayed on a wall at Zenith Watch Co, which sells and repairs watches and clocks.

Founded by Mallick Pasha, the shop has never had a change of address. And even in these difficult times, when Metro Rail work has redrawn pathways, both for pedestrians and motorists, the shop resiliently stays put at this address. Mahaboob Pasha, who runs this family business, points out that even old customers accustomed to walking through the doors of this shop struggle to find their way to those familiar doors, as Metro Rail work has engineered a maze of new pathways through route diversions and blockages. By virtue of the diversity of its services, Zenith depends on revisits by old customers as well as walk-ins by new ones. The “barricades” across Luz Corner, on Kutchery Road and Luz Church Road hinder both processes.

“New customers find it difficult to notice the shop, while the old ones find it difficult to reach the shop,” he says.

But Mahaboob sounds like someone who has taken these challenges in his stride. At 58, this man has spent more than three decades amidst the “chimes of time”, having taken over the reins of the shop when he was in his twenties. Back then for this M.Com graduate, there was no dearth of career options. “This is a family business and I cannot leave it; hence I chose this,” he says. There was a time when he worked alongside the technicians at the shop, as a repairer of timepieces. Today, he sticks to the management side of the business, leaving the repair of broken and malfunctioning timepieces to the technicians on the rolls. Mahaboob notes spare parts are sourced from Mumbai and Delhi when they are unavailable locally.

On whether a plethora of other devices marking time such as the mobile phone, the laptop and so on have made a dent in the attraction of the wristwatch, his answer is an emphatic ‘no’. Mahaboob observes that it remains firmly where it belongs: on the wrist.