NPL uses INSAT to transmit the correct time, down to the nanosecond, to high-accuracy users. For low-accuracy users who are content watching the milliseconds roll, Dr Banerjee developed a much cheaper alternative that could receive electronic signals from NPL through a phone line. The Tele Clock was launched in 2000 and is now ticking away at the Parliament, airports and railway stations across the country, and even in Nepal and Saudi Arabia. The digital clock automatically dials NPL at regular intervals—maybe once a day—for the correct time, updates itself and disconnects to run on its own quartz mechanism.

Dr Banerjee is now working on a mobile Tele Clock with an inbuilt SIM card that would not require a telephone line. As he stands at the NPL gate, he has to suppress the urge to tune his wrist watch to IST, flashed on a huge digital display overhead. Deconstructing the passage of time, he knows, is a race against time itself. And like time, he will look only in one direction—forward.