OLD FLAMES

In conversation with author, archivist, historian, and collector Aashdin Billimoria about his new book, A Comprehensive Guide to Vintage Swiss Watches, which features his personal collection

- Preetika Mathew

When the 341-page coffee table book A Comprehensive Guide to Vintage Swiss Watches by Aashdin Billimoria lands on my desk one morning, I go through the Preface and Index—there are 19 chapters or categories of watches—and skip to, by force of habit, the Epilogue. Here the author writes, “With every beat, your vintage watches whisper tales of the past, inviting you to partake in the beauty of bygone moments.... let the resonance of the ticking watches linger, for it is a reminder that time, much like these vintage treasures, is to be cherished, celebrated and savoured with every passing second.” A few days later, when I ask the author about the way he rounded off the book, which belies its functional name, he says simply, “I am very emotional about watches, it’s to another league. Watches are prime [for me], then comes everything else. And mostly vintage, because a vintage watch has a soul, which a new watch doesn’t.”

For Billimoria, it’s a learning that has come from 40 years of watch collecting. Born into a family of collectors—his grandfather, father, and uncle were all watch lovers—the Mumbai-based author, historian, and archivist received his first watches when he was six; a Titoni Airmaster and a Favre Leuba Twin Power. “One of my earliest memories with watches is when my uncle and father put them on my wrists, on my [Parsi] initiation ceremony. Watches are given to you then, and usually it is a single watch, but I distinctly remember both of them making me wear a watch on my right and left hand. So, I have been doublewristing since then,” he says with a laugh.