‘A stitch in time saves nine’.
‘Time heal everything’.
‘Time is a great teacher’.

Right from childhood, we (are trained to) learn the importance of time.

Buddha

Created with discarded dials, cells of more than 600 different wrist watches. Comprising more than 80 different brands like HMT, Casio, Timex etc; collected over months from different watch makers stretching across Bangalore.

Concept

Buddha under the tree of enlightenment. The tree depicts a complete life, amalgam of different moments. Whereas Buddha – created with cells, represents a human-body composed of (trillions) cells.

Making

Almost two years ago, I visited a small watch store in my neighbourhood to get the strap and cell of my wrist watch replaced. As a regular practise I requested for both (the torn strap and the tiny cell) in return, which surprised him. Only to realise what I do with the collected junk materials. Impressed after flipping few pictures, he started questioning about the artefacts. And later handed over a small zip pouch filled with 20/30 tiny used cells.Delighted by this gesture I wanted to pay him back with some cash, but he refused.

(Abdul, One of the watch makers who contributed in the making)
(Mr Devaiah, a retired policeman, who helped me in creating Buddha)

It was a profound experience interacting with these modest watch-makers, mostly over 50 Years of age and still managing to run their business in small booths / stores in this digital age.

Falling short by more than 60% this lead me to visit all the watch-makers nearby. Alvin, who runs his shop for more than 20 years, had a box full of dials and other watch parts in his store. Narrated me how his business has shrunk in last couple of years. This paid off, as my junk repository started getting bigger and bigger. I felt like taking a dive in this pile of junk dials, just like Uncle Scrooge from Duck Tales diving in his money.

A month ago (22 months later)I visited his shop again to get my wrist watch serviced. This time he handed me a bigger pouch of discarded cells along with some old watch dials. Asking me – if I were able to make use of the discarded cell. I showed him this image below, explaining what I could create so far with the cells.

Wrapping it up – there are more than 600 watch parts used in the making of the artefact. Comprising more than 100 odd brands, some genuine some duplicate. All these junk collected from six watch repairing stores, all falling within the radius of 5 KM.

While creating Buddha, one such night a song from movie Golmaal played on TV. “Ek Baar waqt se lamha gira kaheen, wahan daastaan mili, lamaha kahin nahi” (lyrics – the legendary Gulzar). It was so apt with the artefact, in the making.

Not being too hypothetical but what are the odds, that 600 people have known or met each other and where are they now ? Did these people ever shake hands ?

Who knows if those watches belonged to them, what are the odds?