If you’ve ever collected stamps as a child, you would identify with this. Or perhaps your shelves were filled with bus tickets, neatly arranged by price and route? Maybe you were more a coins person, or even a pebble connoisseur? And then you grew up. The collections, painstakingly put together and neatly preserved, were probably forgotten in some inconspicuous corner of your house. You probably didn’t even miss them when you shifted homes. This is the story of a few men (and a woman) who never ‘grew up’. From antiques to old curiosities, and from display boards to dolls, they have it all. The most important thing they have, however, is passion.

A Kolkata Xtra! collection of the

collectors

...

Sushil Kumar Chatterjee with his collections

Sushil Kumar Chatterjee

Parimal Ray

Parimal Ray shows off his collection of movie posters

Sunil Kumar Biswas

Suvobrata Ganguly

Suvobrata Ganguly with his tie collection

Souvik Roy and Eeshita Basu Roy

Eeshita Basu Roy with a catalogue of her stamp collection

When Naku da, as he is fondly called, sits in his room, it’s very easy to miss his frail figure. For, in the world of collectors, this 95-year-old is a genre-breaking figure, a collector’s collector, lovingly keeping everything he finds interesting... to the point that there is hardly any space left in the room to even stand.From one of the oldest cameras to a bioscope and rare photographs to lanterns of all shapes and sizes, you name it and it’s there in his room.“Everything you see in this room talks to me,” he says, straining to reach a bundle of rare war photographs. “They talk of their times, the tragedies they have been through and their journey to this day.”The grandfatherly figure, dressed in a crisp dhoti and a yellow kurta, is a charmer, just like the articles in the room. “I started collected pebbles and leaves when I was around 10,” he says, by way of explaining how his collecting habit formed.Entering the room, among the first things that strike you are a set of lanterns. The smallest one, Chatterjee says, were used as bicycycle lights at least a hundred years ago, while the bigger ones were used as train signals.The room is a complete time warp. There are things as big as a bioscope and as tiny as a vintage button, and a proper look-through would take days, if not months.Chatterjee — who has shown no sign of slowing down with age — had never thought his passion would make him one of the biggest collectors of Kolkata. “I had started collecting to understand the passage of time,” he says, matter-of-factly.Do not be fooled by the stern “No admittance for unauthorised persons” board at the entrance to Parimal Ray’s house in south Kolkata. It’s just a part of his huge collection of enamel boards.From a board on new coins of 1957 to boards of general signage, he has a formidable collection of enamel boards, thought those aren’t the only things the 83-year-old has collected since around 1950.Starting out with stamps and coins, Ray sold off his collection of around 18,000 coins after there was an attempted dacoity at his home. But he did not let this dampen his passion for collecting.He sprang back and started collecting movie posters. Browsing through his huge collection of posters from the golden age of Indian cinema, it is not a huge stretch to call him the city’s ‘poster boy’.“When I started out, collecting was not easy,” Ray says, a smile playing on his lips. “The primary resistance used to come from elders, who would often scold us for collecting jonjaal (rubbish).”From painted ones to kantha stitches, Ray’s collection of tapestry is almost as extensive as that of his enamel boards and posters.Ray, however, laments that his rich collection of collectibles has made him poor. “The main challenge is money,” he says. “When I was a boy, I would save a penny here and a penny there, but with a family to look after, it is really hard to keep pace with my dreams.”Biswas’s poison is porcelain dolls, of which he has culled an extraordinary large number from all around the world.From German, to Japanese and even Chinese, Biswas has one of the biggest collections of porcelain dolls. He, however, has not stuck to only dolls. In his rooms of curiosities, Biswas has a horde of aftershave bottles, ink pots, books, paintings, metal figurines, an old Mikky Phone and around 2,500 vinyl records, just to name a few.Why does he collect? “Because I like collecting,” is his simple answer. “The importance of collections is to understand a particular time or a period,” he adds, carefully showing his collection of lighters.Holding out an iron, which otherwise seems to be a showpiece, Biswas shows how his favourite collection works with fuel to light a flame that heats it up. Like the iron, his room has several collectibles. He, however, doesn’t remember how each item came into his possession.“When I started collecting, I never thought it would be important to keep an account of each and every item. Though I remember how I got a few special collectibles, I hardly have any memory in many cases.”But he explains that he has had to pick up items by travelling the world and sifting through scrap dealers’ daily collections.Unlike the others on this list, Ganguly has his sights set on only two types of collectibles: fountain pens and ties. Boasting a collection of more than 6,000 pens, Ganguly has international brands like Parker, Sheaffer, Mont Blanc, Soennecken, Waterman and Indian ones like Luxor, Wilson and Lotus.“In our days, writing with fountain pens was a craze and Pilot pens were to die for,” Ganguly says. “My passion for collecting, however, started when I went around the world later.”Like Mr Ollivander and his wands in the Harry Potter stories, Ganguly can almost talk to the pens. Picking up a pen, he first speaks about the material used to make the body and then carefully opens the cap and feels the tip to identify the make. A final stroke on the pen, and he can tell you how its insides are shaped.“Each pen is like a family member and talks about the evolution of communication through writing,” he says.Ganguly’s tie collection is also interesting. From funny figures to ones with portraits of famous personalities, his collection has at least 3,000 ties.“Ties were a must when I entered the corporate world and I always wanted to stand out. I used to wear funny ties and when I saw people have shifted from criticism to a gradual acceptance, I started building my collection,” says Ganguly.This couple really illustrates the saying “birds of a feather flock together”. Both crazy about collecting after their own niche interests, Souvik’s and Eeshita’s coffers have specialized stamps, rare matchbox labels, dolls and jewellery that are at least a few centuries old.“I was around three-and-a-half when an illness restricted me to the bed. It was then that my father used to feed me by showing interesting stamps from his collection,” Souvik says, adding that his passion for collecting started with bus tickets.Souvik has a huge collection of matchbox labels from around the world, some of which are more than a hundred year old. He, however, is also known for his collection of pencils. From the famous swadeshi pencils of F N Gooptu to the fancy modern-day ones, Souvik has ’em all.For Eeshita, it all started during a visit to Puri when she was young, when she started collecting seashells. Little did she know that her passion would later turn her into a collector of a rare niche. Eeshita is fond of jewellery, but not for her to wear. Her eyes, rather, search for stamps with jewellery in them. And it is this that has made her a specialist in the world of philately.“I always believed in collecting as a means to preserve history,” she says. “Precious stones and gems always attracted me and this led me to collect jewellery in various forms. Alongside jewellery in stamps, I started collecting physical ones, too,” she adds, showing a bracelet found from the Narmada Valley excavation.Like Parimal Ray, this couple believe that collectors, thanks to their passion, often have to live a life of the bare minimum necessities, as all the money is routed towards satiating their thirst for more collectibles.