My love for magazines came from my father. He read a lot of them, and as a kid I’d flip through his for the pictures, glossy pages full of things I never saw on TV or in the newspaper. Years later, living alone in Jamshedpur, I was buying my own every month without fail from a bookstall run by an old Bengali couple, always GQ and Maxim. GQ was where I first read about mechanical watches, long before I could afford one, and if I’m honest, it’s the reason I care about them at all. That part didn’t come from my father. He never wore a watch while we were growing up and only started after he retired. These days it’s a Titan or a Timex, black dial on a brown leather strap.
After a gap of many years I subscribed to GQ again in 2022, and that’s where I first saw the Longines Avigation BigEye. It’s a pilot’s chronograph based on a Longines from the 1930s, and the version I want is the steel one, 41mm, with a black dial on a brown leather strap. The name comes from the one thing on the dial you can’t miss. The 30-minute counter at 3 o’clock is much bigger than the other two sub-dials, and once you’ve noticed it, you can’t look at anything else.
I’ve always been a sucker for chronographs. I like a dial with a bit going on, and nothing has more going on than a chronograph. My first proper Swiss watch was a Tissot Couturier chronograph, a quartz. My grail is a chronograph too, the Omega Speedmaster, the first watch worn on the moon. In price the BigEye sits between the two, and it’s been sitting on my list for four years.
I still haven’t seen one in person. A few weeks ago I went to the Ethos boutique in Phoenix Mall, but not for the Longines. I went for the Hamilton Khaki Field Murph, the 38mm one from Interstellar, which was the watch I’d originally asked a friend to bring back from Dubai. It was sold out then, so he brought the Mido instead. Now Ethos sells Hamilton, and I wanted to see how the Murph looked on my wrist. They didn’t stock it in the store, only online, and the salesman suggested that if I was looking for a watch, I should try what they had. That’s how I ended up with an Oris Pro Pilot and a Big Crown on my wrist, one after the other. Both felt light, and I didn’t like that.
That’s when I realised how much I care about weight. I love the Mido at 40.5mm and how it sits on my wrist, but I like the weight of the chunkier Tissot Seastar more, because I can feel it there. The BigEye is 41mm, maybe a touch big for me, and on paper it has the kind of heft I like. But Ethos didn’t have one to try, and I’ve learnt not to trust a watch on paper.
The closest I’ve come to buying a new watch wasn’t the Longines at all. A couple of years ago I fell for the Doxa Sub 600T, the design and all the colours it came in. Ethos didn’t have one, so they arranged it and called me the next week. By then I’d decided. I’d even told my girlfriend I was buying it. Then I held it, and I just didn’t feel it. It was thick and didn’t sit well on my wrist, and I left without it. It cost ₹1.2 lakh then, and the same watch is listed at ₹1.6 lakh now. With more people in India earning more and spending it on watches, I don’t see prices coming down.
With the BigEye, what stops me isn’t the watch. Somewhere in the last few years, the way I spend money changed, and I’ve become more pessimistic and more careful than I ever used to be. A few years ago I’d see something, want it, and buy it. Now every big purchase comes with questions. How long will I actually use this? What happens to it when I’m gone? I live alone in Pune, with my parents in Bhilai and my brother in Bangalore, and that second question sits heavier than it used to. The one I come back to most is the Speedmaster. The BigEye in steel costs around ₹3.3 lakh. The Speedmaster is ₹8 to 9 lakh, and it’s gone up by more than a lakh since I started keeping an eye on it. At Ethos, the salesman also brought out a few Omegas. I didn’t try them on, but he told me that, unlike Oris, Omegas hold their value. A bronze Speedmaster that used to cost ₹9 or 10 lakh now retails at around ₹12.5 lakh. It feels like every smaller watch I buy is a step back from it, while its price keeps going the other way. If I bought the BigEye now, I know exactly what would happen. I’d enjoy it for a while, and in a year I’d be looking at the Speedmaster again, a little further away than before.
It’s the same with motorcycles. I have the money for an adventure bike I want, the KTM 390 Adventure or the upcoming Norton Atlas, and I keep not buying one, because it would push back the red Ducati Panigale V4 I want to own in the next four years.
I turn forty on Saturday. A birthday like that is about as good an excuse as I’m ever going to get, and the BigEye would be a fine way to mark it. CT Pundole in Camp might have one, and I still haven’t decided whether I’m going.
Images: Longines
