Time does not stand still in Chirodeep Chaudhuri’s long running photo series on Mumbai’s public clocks. The photographs present the illusion of moving back and forth in time, and serve as portals to study an ever-changing city.
The former editor of photography for international titles has documented over 110 public clocks in Mumbai over three decades. When he first exhibited the series at Mumbai’s David Sassoon Library as part of the Kala Ghoda Festival in 1999, there were 24. At the last outing of this documentation at Mumbai’s Project 88 in 2021, there were more than 80. Today, as Chaudhuri seeks to consolidate them into a gargantuan photo book, he’s browsing through an archive of 110. Each photo carries with it a story; the oldest clock Chaudhuri has documented is a 16th-century Portuguese-era sundial inside the naval dockyard in Colaba.
Why does Mumbai have all these clocks? Chaudhuri leads me to sources that explain. Until time was standardised in India in 1905, three different times were simultaneously followed in Mumbai—while the British favoured Madras Time and Indian Standard Time (IST), the city’s residents held on fiercely to Bombay Time, a local solar time that reflected the rhythms of the city more accurately. Bombay Time, 39 minutes behind IST, was in effect till as late as 1955. In fact, the city’s Parsi fire temples still resolutely follow Bombay Time.
The series runs parallel to 53-year-old Chaudhuri’s career as a photographer. It started partly by chance. In 1996, Chaudhuri was on assignment in Kolkata, and chanced upon the Metropolitan Building, which had a clock on it that wasn’t working. That was the first time he learned of a public clock as an architectural detail. On returning to Mumbai, he began noticing clocks on iconic buildings such as the Rajabai Tower and Victoria Terminus.
As a photographer, it isn’t uncommon to develop an instinct for a 180-degree vision of happenings on the ground. Quite regularly, in the middle of a conversation, Chaudhuri says his eyes would involuntarily travel up the facade to the pediments of buildings. “Over the years, I started identifying certain features of buildings—Victorian, Neo-Gothic, Art Deco, or even Bombay’s vernacular—which seemed to be likely locations to spot a clock,” he says. “I often felt as though Bombay’s clocks were following me, teasing me, just as I was hot in pursuit of them.”
A significant percentage of his subjects are in Mumbai’s Fort area, the city’s original business district; the rest are scattered and exist in clusters throughout the city’s residential and mercantile localities. The reasons for their existence, says Chaudhuri, range from desiring a landmark to serving the neighbourhood or simply to know when to pray to one’s gods.
By the time Chaudhuri began photographing Mumbai’s public clocks, most of them were in a state of disrepair, already redundant. “I’d say about 90 per cent of them aren’t functional anymore,” says Chaudhuri.
Chaudhuri’s photographs, which gallery Project 88 presented in Hahnemuhle Photo Matt paper in 2021, aren’t flat architectural images. Along with historical detail, they capture life in the city, commuters, cars, churchgoers, and fruit sellers. Referred to as “the chronicler of Bombay,” Chaudhuri’s work has broadly focussed on documenting the urban landscape, straddling a range of genres from documentary and architecture to portraiture. His other projects centred on the city, including The Commuters, In the City, a Library, and The One-Rupee Entrepreneur, have been exhibited in India and abroad His work is part of the collections of the Museum of Photographic Arts (USA), the Kiyosato Museum of Photographic Arts (Japan), and the Peabody Essex Museum (USA) among other private collections in India.
Over time, friends and colleagues have flagged the existence and location of clocks, which may be hidden by trees or new constructions, to Chaudhuri. Now alert to their existence, which are the ones he looks out for, I ask. “When I’m moving around the city, I know the location of these clocks. It’s become almost ritualistic for me to roll down my window and seek them out,” he says. The ones at Victoria Terminus (now Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Terminus), Rajabai Clock Tower, the naval dockyard, David Sassoon Library, Mumbai Central railway station, and the Industrial Assurance Building are some of his touchstones.
Ironically the one public clock that’s been the most tricky to shoot is the most-photographed Rajabai Clock Tower. It was the first one he consciously photographed for this series, too. “It’s a peculiar challenge. Everybody photographs it…,” he shares. “I’m still looking for an unexpected vantage point.”