This dynasty of watchmakers outlived an empire. Can it survive the modern world?

. Vasdev’s politics ranged far left, however, and his customers were unaware that while he fixed their timepieces, he also secretly financed Mau Mau insurgents who fought the British in a bloody conflict in the 1950s.He funded trade unionist Makhan Singh’s printing press, which churned out pro-independence leaflets. Makhan spent 11 years behind bars for his activism.

Jomo Kenyatta, the first president of postcolonial Kenya, and other independence leaders gathered at Vasdev’s shop to map out strategy.A senior Sikh policeman, putatively working for the colonial government, protected Vasdev from arrest. “We were all related,” says Ravinder.

Many Sikh men traditionally bear the surname Singh, or lion in Punjabi, while by tradition Sikh women are Kaurs, princesses.Vasdev had two wives, Harbans Kaur, known as Big Mother, and Satwant Kaur, Small Mother. The family was such a cohesive unit that Ravinder was 10 before he learned which one was his biological mother.

It was Small Mother.After independence in 1963, Vasdev grew disillusioned with Kenyatta, who proved far less socialist than Vasdev had hoped. Five years after independence, Vasdev closed up shop and emigrated to London.“He couldn’t take the nonsense,” recalls Ravinder, who had learned watchmaking at his father’s knee after school in Nairobi.When Ravinder was 24, Small Mother decided it was time for him to marry.She picked Gita Kaur, whose grandmother had kept Gita virtually cloistered in the family house in Nairobi until she was 19.

Gita’s family sent her photo to Ravinder’s family.Ravinder wasn’t impressed.So her aunt and uncle tried to salvage the matchmaking with a chaperoned Chinese dinner. Gita had never been to a restaurant and was too shy to look Ravinder in the