The art of horology: An automatic watch is dismantled for a repair. (Courtesy of Iwan)

“We all have our time machines. Some take us back, they’re called memories. Some take us forward, they’re called dreams,” so the saying goes.

For Toha, his time machines are tangible and can be worn around the wrist, and they have fueled his life for nearly five decades as a watch repairer.

The 66-year-old stops at his small kiosk, located on a roadside in Depok, West Java, which receives orders to fix watches from morning to late afternoon every day.

It was a busy day on Wednesday morning, with customers coming in one after another. A man was having his automatic watch inspected when a girl, accompanied by her mother, arrived. She handed a quartz watch to the watch master, who apologetically switched his attention from his work in progress.

He replaced the timepiece’s battery but its hands remained stalled.

“It the IC [integrated circuit]. It’s already weak. I do not have any in-store. I’ll get a new one from Senen [Central Jakarta]. You can come back in a few days,” he told the girl while handing back the watch.

Senen is one of the wholesale markets in Jakarta where he usually goes to buy spare parts for watches.

Two more customers came and left with their watches fixed with new batteries, while another was also told to come back to have the new leather strap he wanted.

“I usually sell five or six batteries every day,” Toha told The Jakarta Post.

He has repaired watches that were stalled by various problems, with IC and hairsprings being the most common causes of the breakdown.

Toha said he might need up to a week to identify the most complicated form of damage while replacing a battery was the quickest task.

Apart from the repair job, he has also been a reseller of luxury watches for the past two months. He is promoting the new feature of his core business with a flyer posted on the window of his kiosk.

The fact that he has received no orders yet does not worry him as the work carries no financial risks.

“I will just receive a commission from a transaction,” he said.

While his side job has yet to bear fruit, Toha appears confident about his main job, which he said was built on trust to ensure repeat orders.

What makes customers trust him is his honesty.

“Someone once complained he was charged Rp 20,000 [US$1.44] to fix the bracelet of his watch. For me, Rp 4,000 is enough,” he said.

Toha’s engagement with horology came at the backdrop of his rebellion against continuing elementary school. He was then sent to Bandung in West Java to help his father’s brother at his watch shop.

“It was around 1975. I learned a lot about repairing watches from my uncle,” he said.

When he had equipped himself with the needed skills, he embarked on his own professional journey in Jakarta before moving to Depok, where he has been offering his services for the past 30 years.

_________

We all have our time machines. Some take us back, they’re called memories. Some take us forward, they’re called dreams

_________

Iwan, who has a repair shop in Matraman, East Jakarta, gained his skills through an internship, which he received with the help of his foster brother. Before that, he was a factory worker,

“I began to make contact with people in the watch businesses in 1997. I learned about watch repair. It happened that [...] my foster brother was willing to teach me,” he said.

“I studied all types of watches — quartz, automatic, kinetic. After a year, I decided to open my own store offering repair services and selling used watches and accessories,” he added.

His reputation grew and he is now routinely contacted for orders from official watch outlets, which he attends to after working hours.

Like Toha, Iwan will keep looking after these precious time machines to ensure life and the art behind horology ticks on.

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