It’s not about the watch
Recently during Christmas eve I had stepped into Titan showroom near my house. The sales person was very welcoming and showed my wife all the watches after the customary Covid protocols.
While my wife was browsing the watches, I was talking to the sales guy. He must’ve been in his fifties and was quite informative. I generally asked him if people are interested in wearing regular watches these days with the onslaught of Smart phones and Smart watches.
He said that is a misconception and a lot of people come there to buy. I was surprised by what he said. I stopped wearing a watch long ago and began to use my mobile phone. I thought that would be the normal case.
My wife by then had picked up a watch and as we were about to move out, I saw another lady step in and ask for watches.
While driving back, I felt very happy for some unknown reason. Later I realized the happiness in me was because of buying a well engineered product made right here.
We are so used to buying imported hi-tech products, that when I buy stuff like this once a while it felt very good.
I yearn for the day when we can engineer the best world class products right here with the kind of brain power we have.
It is not just about the pride of making here in India, but it is about the delight you get when you do great science and engineering right here.
Building stuff that requires deep science and engineering is a long journey and if this can be made to happen at scale, a huge advantage lies ahead for generations following us.
However, we need to sow the seeds today for that.
We may be able to produce a million Science and Engineering graduates. But unless we can direct them towards a purpose that is not about just being a workforce for foreign companies, and instead, a more lofty goal of bringing the next big invention or engineering the world needs right here, we wouldn’t have elevated the minds of this nation.
A watch is a piece of precision engineering. When you do that, you end up not just showing time, but the ability to make precision machinery and tools. When you have people working deep, you invent new Math and Science which propels further progress.
It is not about the watch. It is about developing a sharper eye for what we want out of something and going after it.
If you see glasses as just things to correct your sight, then making them to see things more than what you see with AR is the kind of thinking that drives tomorrow’s Engineering and Science.
Unless we are doing that today, tomorrow will always elude us.
