Imagine if like Hugo Cabret, you lived in a clock, hung your towel on a moving gear, did pull-ups on the long hand, were rocked to sleep by the tick-tocking of it all night long. Clocks would make lovely homes, or at least great companions: they’re extremely useful, good company, and best of all, don’t talk back.

Long Hand

At least, regular clocks don’t. In the small, very crowded Lifestyle Marketeers, a clock shop and repair house under the Defence Colony flyover, the clocks are bred to have a voice of their own. At 2 pm every afternoon, little men begin to chop a log of wood while painted figures move in a circle around them to the tune of Edelweiss. It’s charming and silly and we wait like children for the little bird to pop out from the window of another clock and say, “Cuckoo!”.

The Sardar who runs the shop is less gleeful. “That’s a clock for children,” he says, as we exclaim over the bright red roof of another, a woman swinging from its pendulum, and steers us towards “adult” versions: no naughty figures doing it to the ticks of the clock, but wood carved intricately with leaves and pine cones, boring compared to ones that sport barnyard scenes and tiny people. Ask for their extensive catalog (or look on their website) for more options. Along with selling clocks, Lifestyle Marketeers can also fix the one you inherited.

Clock Blocking

No, if we were going for grown up things, we’d pick a grandfather clock, one of the many standing on the floor. Dignified and hewn from dark, heavy wood with brass pendulums, these can be engraved and made to order. Would a grandfather clock for our grandfather be a very cliché present?

We’re also drawn to a table clock under a glass dome, very steam punk with its exposed workings; a mantel clock with a built in bookshelf; and a cuckoo clock modeled after an alpine villa, with a tiny pony nosing a fence.

Winding You Up

We walk out thinking of a new wall installation, just cuckoo clocks, like a little orchestra for our home. It would be the next best thing to living inside one.

Getting there: Shop 286-288, Defence Colony Flyover Market, call 43596241 or visit the website here, Rs 10,000 for a carved wooden cuckoo clock.