Armistice Journals - III - The blue Swatch I never wore

I have always had a watch for special occasions or times in my life. The first ever watch, the one that shared my time in highschool, the first 'slightly higher pricy' watch i bought after i joined engineering etc.. In all these different wonderful pieces that counts the minutes that pass us by, there was one particular piece that I've never really worn for too long. Back in '99, i was visiting my folks in Dubai and ended up helping out a friend of my dad's with some computer issue. The gentlemen were nice enough to gift me a blue Swatch Irony series piece. It was a very heavy piece and I loved it! After wearing it for the first day, I realized that my wrist actually began to ache.

I took with me back to my college. the first person who saw it was MT. he couldn't stop talking about it. Come to think of it, he just summarized everything into one word.. 'Awesome' I remember walking up the stairs to his little room on the upper floor and first disaster occurred; I scratch the pristine face on the concrete wall. Dammit! I didn't wear it around the dorm or college since it would become the prime target for theft, In fact I believe I left the unit in Mahesh's room till he moved into the dorm with us. After a few months, an insult to injury, the unit stopped working altogether. Now since I wasn't willing to take this watch to be repaired locally, I shelved it deep inside one of my suitcases and made a mental note to get it fixed once I go back to Dubai or wherever.

As fate would have it we eventually moved out of India and the Middle East and landed in Canada in '01. The watch remained safe and partially forgotten in an old suitcase. Over the next couple of years and with us moving around the country, it was frequently 'rediscovered' and boxed away. Eventually one day, I dug it up and decided to get that battery replaced. The local store was pretty good with these things and they had the watch running in no time. I was happy and decided to wear it for this party that i had planned to go. On the night of, I get ready, check the time to find that I was quite early and decided to wait till a more appropriate time. I settled in living room with a book, and spent the next half hour or so reading. When i noted the time again, i realized that the hands were not moving. The watch had stopped again! After this second attempt at resurrecting the watch, I gave up and put it back into deep storage where it stayed until I moved back to my condo in the city.

Some of the deep storage boxes followed me and with it, the blue Swatch. During my purge exercise, I came across a few watches I owned over the years, including the Swatch. My lovely wife knew of a place that could replace the batteries and it was very close to where she worked. She took two of them, my brushed metal CK, a watch i bought with my first pay-cheque, and the blue swatch. The next day, she brought them both back, each ticking away and in perfect working condition. I was still a little wary of the blue fellow, so I wore it for the next few days, just to keep an eye on things. It seemed fine! It was ticking along, didn't seem to slow down. That's great! The watch can be finally worn! It had been close to 10 years since I had seen this guy work for more than a day!

I was visiting the folks last weekend and figured I should show them the watch that hadn't been functional for 10 years and if they remembered this specific one. As I was closing the door to my balcony, I felt a great weight slip off my hand, and crash on the floor. F!!

I pick up my poor blue Swatch from the floor, One of the metal links on the watch had sheared right off. I stood there in bewilderment, broken watch in hand, half-in and half-out of the condo with time still ticking on by.