HMT - Soon to be history - I grabbed a tiny slice of that history

Hindustan Machine Tools, aka HMT is a state owned manufacturing company that primarily manufactures industrial machines and tools, tractors and watches. The millenial generation, i.e the generation of people born after 1996, may not associate much with this name, but for everyone who belongs to the generations before that, just the mention of the name HMT will bring back nostalgia as this was one of the first indigineous watch making company in India. Not only that, they went on to make India's first Day date watch, including models with the day mentioned in Hindi, India's first braille watch, among others.

The central government recently has decided to close down five sick public sector companies, of which three are HMT units - HMT Bearing, HMT Watches and HMT Chinar watches. As per this news report, this is based on the 14th Finance Commission's recommendation that government-owned loss making companies in non-strategic sectors can be considered for closure.

So what about it you may ask. Well being a part of the pre-millenial generation, I really did not want to miss the chance to snatch a tiny slice of this piece of history. So I went ahead and got myself an HMT watch! I have never had one, so that was one more argument in favour of the decision to go ahead and buy the watch.

I was surprised to find that HMT Watches has reasonably good website and has an online ordering system as well! Yes the website does not look as snazzy as some other e-commerce websites are, but nevertheless, I was able to browse through the product catalog smoothly, and the payment process went through fine. Being a government enterprise, I was sceptical about order fulfillment, and was mentally bracing for cold response regarding order updates. But much to my surprise, my very own HMT watch is in my hands today 3 days post placing my order!!

Very happy to own this piece of history!!
Here are some pictures:-

Chennai Geetham

The recent rains and consequent flooding in Chennai last week drew out the citizens of this city in large numbers. Volunteers descended on the streets braving rains and knee to neck deep water to help each other out with large scale co-ordinations happening through social media websites like twitter and facebook.

Now that the flood waters have receded, people are still soaking in the camaraderie and brotherhood that came to the fore when disaster struck. People have done some very amazing  work, with some media celebrities leading the relief and rescue efforts.  This very nostalgic write up by Girish Mathrubootham, the Founder and  CEO of Freshdesk took me down my own memory lane. Those first days of discovering the new language while settling in PS Senior Secondary School, the days of cycling around in Mandaveli in the hot dusty afternoons, the long wait in the queue to get the monthly 'Paal card' in the aavin counter, the brisk walk down to school from Devanathan street, the sudden isolation and tranquility in the initial years in Pallikaranai, dealing with a bunch of over playful class mates in Sankara school, the drive down the state highway to college, and the sleek manoeuvres to overtake lorries and trucks on the same highway on the lowly Scooty Pep -- It was like my whole life was flashing in front of me.

I also was reminded of this odd song that my first boss had shared with me - There was this upcoming band called Prana(back in 2008) that had launched a new album called 'Mazhaithuli' and this one song from that album somehow was available for free. It is called the Chennai Geetham - an anthem of sorts for this city.

Fast forward to 2016, and that band is nowhere to be found on the interwebs, so sharing this song from my archives. All copyright belongs to the original creators of this song. I have posted this on Soundcloud because the band is nowhere to be found now, and Soundcloud just makes it convenient to share audio around.
--------------------------------------------------------
Update - 12 December 2015
One of the members of the band Naushad Ali [@nashlib on twitter] reached out to me and shared the official youtube link - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SxpWNODu9E8

They also mentioned that the album 'Mazhaithuli' is available on iTunes - so do make sure to check out their music if you are on an Apple Device.

--------------------------------------------------------
Enjoy -