In the enclave of buildings that immediately surround the Sree Poornathrayeesa Temple in Tripunithura, one structure towers above the other clay tile-roofed ones: the Manimalika.
The 50-foot clock tower was built with the help of Dutch engineers in the early 1870s, during the reign of Rama Varma XIV, and houses a clock made by J Cooke and Sons, a British company.
“The 1870s period was a time of several such public works in the kingdom, all steered by the Maharaja and the Cochin diwan, Thottakattu Sankunni Menon. In Tripunithura, several projects were underway — the Oottupura, the Manimalika,” says Balagopal Varma, a local historian.
Of these, the Manimalika stood out. At each hour mark, a mechanical toy soldier sprang out of the tower to offer a salute, its mouth open in an ‘unheard’ warcry. “Manimalika was the ‘Lulu Mall’ of the time. And people from all over the kingdom flocked here to see it,” Balagopal adds.
Historians say Manimalika is the third oldest clock tower in Kerala, after Mattancherry clock tower (1760) and Methan Mani (1833) in Thiruvananthapuram.
Also, clock towers were a dominant feature of colonial architecture. “You see that across several princely states in India during the latter half of the 19th century,” Balagopal adds. The establishment of a clock tower meant, among other things, that administration took precedence. “With the standardisation of time, the governance of a city/kingdom was greatly augmented,” Balagopal explains.
In Tripunithura’s own time
Interestingly, Tripunithura kept its own time, even as late as the 1960s. “Though the IST was set up in 1906, there were several in Tripunithura who also followed the local time,” Balagopal points out. “Even as late as the 1960s, wedding cards carried the local time for ceremonies held in Tripunithura,” he adds.
There’s a mention of this in writer N S Madhavan’s Litanies of Dutch Battery, and the time variance is described as being about 20 minutes earlier than IST.
Tripunithura had several innovative ways to mark time before watches and timepieces became a norm, historians say. “There were big bells rung on the streets at regular intervals; then there were ritualistic fireworks, especially at sunrise; also, a beating of nagara drum at the present Statue Junction,” Balagopal recalls.
These traditions continued even after the clock tower was set up. The common denominator was the sun. Time was set observing the sun.
Inner workings
“For the clock tower, the time had to be set manually at noon. Also, it was likely a pendulum-powered clock, which meant that every two weeks, the loads, i.e. the weights have to be balanced,” says Sohan Balachandran, who runs a popular watch enthusiasts’ group, TimeGraphers.
What also sets the clock apart is its unique lettering, he points out. “Instead of four (IV), the lettering used is IIII — to be symmetric with eight (VII). This design style wasn’t followed until the 1930s. So that’s something peculiar to Tripunithura clock tower,” Sohan says.
According to him, such clocks have a higher tolerance and can last for hundreds of years. “Just that its mechanical parts need to be lubricated every once in a while,” he adds.
Present-day locals in Tripunithura remember fondly of a long-bearded ‘Sami’ who tended to the clock for decades. “Sadly, he passed away a few years ago. And without him, the nearly 150-year-old clock remains out-of-date,” Balagopals says.
Winding the clock
As to the tower’s exterior, a renovation was done in the early 1990s under the patronage of S Anujan of Kochi Refineries Limited — also a Tripunithura resident.
A notable addition was a nameplate and a short description of the Manimalika. Save for this and the occasional ‘heritage walk’ conducted by passionate individuals, few efforts have been taken to exhort the legacy of Manimalika.
Time has, it seems, stilled the hand that once defined an age. But it doesn’t have to be this way. “If the Methan Mani — 50 years older than Manimalika — could work, so can the Tripunithura clock tower,” points out Sohan.