KARACHI, Oct 19: After a supposedly 15-minute tea break which extended to 45 minutes at an academic conference on post-colonial education on Saturday, the host, while urging the guests to return to their seats for the next segment humorously pointed out, “Please take your seats, ladies and gentleman, we are over half-an-hour behind schedule but don’t worry, we are right on post-colonial time.”

The British are known for valuing time. The many clock towers left behind by them here are reminiscent of this fact. Still none of the clocks in those towers could help make the local people of this country become more punctual. The state of the old clocks or what’s left of them also points towards this fact.

There are only four such clocks around Karachi that actually give the correct time. For the out-of-order watches or clocks it is said that even they give the correct time at least twice in 24 hours but what do you say about the ones which don’t even have the needles or the hands to tell you the time?

At the Empress Market that was built during 1984-89, all the faces of the clock on its four-sided 140-foot-high tower are missing the hands which tell the time. The glass on the clocks is also broken here and there creating little window-like openings and right at the centre of the clocks is a stick on which hangs the flag of some political party.

On the 1937 Sugan Mansion on M.A. Jinnah Road even the face is gone. There is only a gaping hole where the clock had been. At this point it came as a pleasant surprise to find all the four faces of the clock in the 1935 Karachi Municipal Corporation building also on M.A. Jinnah Road actually working and giving the correct time. Meanwhile, the one at the 1886 Denso Hall showed 11.45 at 5.35pm. Lakhshi Building had a different time on each side. One side showed 4.30, another 4.45 and the third one 5.05. After that one simply felt less enthusiastic to walk a few blocks to check the fourth. The 1884-92 Merewether Tower, a popular landmark that has simply come to be known as ‘Tower’ situated between M.A. Jinnah and I.I. Chundrigar Roads, has the same time on all its sides but it is still incorrect.

The four sides of the clock at the tall fortress-like design 1855 Trinity Church 150-foot-high tower again had a separate story to tell from each angle and again none of them turned out to be correct.

At the clock tower at Lea Market the situation is no different as no side matched the other and all gave the wrong time. There was a big tug-of-war to save the 1904 Jaffer Fuddoo Dispensary tower at Kharadar during the 1990s when it was feared that the new building being raised next to it might damage the tower’s foundation. The tower was saved, thankfully, but what of its clock? The timing was all wrong there as well.

Thankfully there is another big clock that is working in the same vicinity. One just has to turn towards the Ismaili Jamatkhana to tell the time of day. This is one of the newer clocks in the city. The two other newer additions such as the Rado clock brick wall on the triangular island near Hotel Metropole and the A.O. Clock Tower that welcomes one to North Nazimabad are also right on time.