‘Watch Whisperer’ of Nizamuddin: ‘To repair is to bring the dead back to life’

5 min readNew DelhiJul 28, 2026 09:46 AM IST Javed Khan at his shop in Hazrat Nizamuddin Basti. Express Photo by Tashi Tobgyal. In a hole-in-the-wall shop in Markazi Market in Hazrat Nizamuddin Basti, Javed Khan bent over his workbench, his nose almost touching his palm. Through the watchmaker’s eye loupe pressed to his left eye, he peered into the innards of a watch. His brow was furrowed and his lips were curled into an ‘O’. With thin, frail fingers, he applied a wooden brush to the balance wheel of an old Zenith watch.Sixty-nine-year-old Javed is one of Delhi’s oldest watch repairers. He has been repairing and reselling vintage watches including Swiss mechanical watches and HMTs for more than 55 years now, he said. Javed came to Delhi as a young boy after his father Riyasat Khan moved h