Tick

I miss that old table clock. While spending many rainy months with my grandmother, the round steel clock used to be kept near the verandah. It was the first sound I heard in the morning – its harsh, metallic alarm bell. With a big round dial and a hand-wound mechanism, the Favre-Leuba name struck me as funny to my seven-year-old self – mainly because I could not pronounce it.
My day started and ended with the clock. The luminescent radium numbers set against the midnight black dial was often the last thing I remember seeing through the tall windows after the lights went out. “You had to wind it once a week, or else it would not work,” I was told. Often, someone would fetch an eye dropper and oil the innnards of the time keeper.
On quiet monsoon evenings after the rains swept away all traces of dirt in the veranda, you could hear the old Favre-Leuba ticking away in its corner.