The past is bad business

Vikram Bachhawat made a business out of his collecting habit, but today collectibles don't sell

Kolkata is a city full of curiosities, and none as curious as Konark Collectibles. Few Kolkatans know about this curious shop "" actually a "curios" shop "" that's just off Lindsay Street in the heart of bustling New Market.

But Konark Collectibles is not simply a shop, it is a veritable cornucopia of interesting odds and ends. Every square inch of the place, around a 1,000 square feet in area and split into two floors, and even the floor and the walls, are stuffed with all kinds of stuff "" ornate wrought iron art deco lamps; exquisite little dolls made of ceramic, porcelain and china; tin toys in various shapes and sizes; beautiful glass jugs, tumblers, vases, mugs, tureens and plates of every kind; whisky and perfume bottles; wall clocks and paintings; advertisement boards; some period furniture, and so on and on.

Konark Collectibles reflects the passion of Vikram Bachhawat, who opened it in 1982 when he was only 16, for collecting. "You have shops dealing in curios, handicrafts, antiques. But this is the only place in Kolkata, and perhaps the only one in India, that deals in collectibles."

The distinction is important, for, as Bachhawat says, only those objects "" they could be anything from key-chains and magazines to furniture and cars "" which are not being produced any longer qualify as collectibles.

"For example, advertising signs are no longer hand-made,with an enamel finish, and so they are collectibles. Porcelain dolls are common, but a particular variety of dolls manufactured in Japan and Germany for the Indian market would be a collectible."

Bachhawat remembers visiting the local fairs held during rath yatra and buying terracotta dolls when he was only in class six. By the time he was in class 10 he'd graduated to buying cameras. It helped that his father, an art collector himself, did not dissuade him.

Bachhawat still has a brass-bodied Leica in reasonably good condition that he got for a steal. "Such treasures were readily and cheaply available in those days," he says, "because they were dismissed as secondhand." No wonder he was making as much as Rs 3,000-4,000 within a few months of opening shop. "It was big money at the time."

Soon Bachhawat had built his network of contacts among dealers and brokers, the eyes and ears of any collector, who'd come to him with interesting items "" of which there were plenty going around. "During the British Raj almost everything was imported, or visitors brought in a lot of things when they came here. For example, picture postcards. I have around 1,000 pre-independence postcards, including a very interesting one from America, depicting a baseball game. Much of that was coming into the market when I started collecting. I have picked up a few pieces of Baccalite, a 1930s British board game, in Kolkata, which has in recent years become a collectible in the US."

More famous, of course, is Bachhawat's collection of carnival glass "" probably the world's largest. Carnival glass is a particular variety of iridised glass that was made by a few factories in India from the 1920s to the 1940s. Bachhawat has a page all to himself in the Standard Encyclopaedia of Carnival Glass (ninth edition), and has even got to name a few of the designs: "Calcutta diamonds", "Id ka chand", "Haveli", et cetera.

Over time the 250 sq ft shop expanded to its present size, with some of the leftovers packed away in a nearby warehouse. That was the heyday of Bachhawat's enterprise, when, especially with Mother Teresa around, Kolkata was on the itinerary of most visitors from the West "" some of whom would gravitate into his store and pick up an item or two.

The foreigners sustained the store, since "Indians," Bachhawat has found in general, "have no understanding of collectibles. They still think of it as junk."

In recent times, however, Bachhawat has found it difficult to continue. "For the past four-five years, footfalls have been few and far between. Earlier we'd do two-three sales in a day. Now barely two-three people come in, and weeks pass without anything sold." It has helped that Bachhawat has since moved on to other things. There's Aakriti Art Gallery, which specialises in Bengal art and which Bachhawat set up two years ago.

Aakriti will now be collaborating with the Kolkata-based Emami Group to set up an art auction house that will conduct both online and live auctions. Chisel Crafts, the company which runs Bachhawat's various businesses, is also into furniture reproduction "" with the flying stools it supplied to the producers of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.

But it is the end of the road for Konark. "We're looking to close down as soon as I find somebody who'll take over," says Bachhawat. "Obviously, I'll keep some of the collection, but we've been trying to sell off the rest for sometime now. But where are the buyers? Even at cost price, people are reluctant to buy. I've even thought about donating it all to a museum, but there aren't any museums for collectibles in India. Foreigners would be interested, but then there'd be the problem of taking it out of India." Bachhawat is indeed stuck. But it's a rather sad end to the passion of a lifetime.