The Cuckoo Clock

It is not clear who made the first Cuckoo clock but it was around 1750 the first Black Forest Cuckoo was created.

There are museums displaying the collection of Cuckoo clocks, the Cuckooland Museum in the UK and the Deutsches Uhrenmuseum inGermany.

Some of the latest ones are very savvy with some special designs.

On a personal level I would not like to own one, for the simple reason I don’t like to be reminded of the passage of time every hour. And imagine my plight when this happens in the night, with the cuckoo waking me up every hour to say “see another hour has passed away”

But this is exactly what Alex Budovsky has done. He has made a short film showing how the Cuckoo has entered our lives and controls our thoughts. It is every where, in our bed, in our bath tub….. slowly it takes over our complete life. The way he has depicted the whole process in this short movie with simple animation technique made me sit through for the 3 minute duration of the movie. It is in Black and White and the pace is very fast.

The music by Stephen Coates is apt and one can imagine how the conveyor belt effect can change our lives.

It has won the Jury Award for the Best Animation at Sundance Online Film Festival for “the perfection of music and fantastic Imaginary”

To see the movie, click here.

But the clock still works

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There is this table clock in my bed room.
Every day in the morning it tells me that it is really time to get up and get moving if I have to catch that 7.30 bus.

During its lifetime it had its share of being knocked about and survived some falls. The corners have been chipped off. It was a clock cum photo frame. Now only the hinges remain to remind us of  the frame side.  But the clock still works.

The back cover does get dislodged at times. I don’t see any screw that can fix that. Maybe it was glued in earlier. So I have tied a small thin thread that holds it together.  But the clock still works.

Then we have our Shantabai (maid) who does a thorough cleaning of the place (including the clock) and all that handling freezes the time. So when I come back from work and find that the clock has stopped at 2.23, I put on my Sherlock Holmes cap and infer that "today the maid did the cleaning of my study at 2.23 pm"

I do some readjusting with love and care … . . . . . .  and the clock still works.

Many have told me to throw away that old thing and get some thing new which will look hep and savvy. I refuse to do so because  . . . . . .  .  the clock still works.

About 20 years ago when I had been to Bombay (Mumbai) one of my aunts give me a basket of fruits and hidden in those fruits was “a little something for you”

Only when I reached back home did I realize that the little something was a clock cum photo frame.

 During the course of time the dreaded disease of cancer caught up with her, and after a brief battle, she passed away.

Whenever I look at that clock I think of her and what better way to be reminded of a person who was dear to me.

The clock still works.