Patit Paban ventured into the manufacture of tower clocks in 1956 once he became proficient in their maintenance. I felt at the time that unless we started making the clocks on our own, the skills necessary to maintain them would die out. Those were the good old days. The Duttas monopolised the tower-clock business in the '60s when the huge time pieces weren't looked upon as the expensive encumbrances they are today. Ironically, over the years time seems to have passed the clocks by.
Fashions have changed, so has society.
The Dutta family too has fallen victims to change. Subir's brother Swapan had differences with the rest of the family and set up a separate agency that does the same work. His agency maintains the clocks at north Calcutta's Manicktala market, New Market and Bandel Church among others. This, of course, hasn't prevented the Duttas from loving their clocks and passing the tradition on to the next generation. That is fortunate because modernity seems to be tolling the death knell for these symbols of a more leisurely era.