Meet the Man Who's Repaired the Same Clock Tower for 30 Years
Three decades, one tower, and a toolkit older than most of the city's traffic signals.
Devika Rastogi
24 August 2026 · 5 min read
Bashir Ahmed was twenty-two when he first climbed the Hussainabad Clock Tower to fix a jammed gear. He's sixty-two now, and still the first call whenever the bell goes quiet.
He learned the mechanism from his father, who learned it from the British engineer who installed it. No manual exists — just three generations of memory.
He has no apprentice yet. When we asked what happens to the tower after him, he just shrugged and said someone always shows up when it matters.
Devika Rastogi
Profiles the people who make Lucknow feel like Lucknow — shopkeepers, artists, old-timers.