Jora Girjar Nirmal Kumar
Those who are addicted to the collection of antique books will remember Nirmal Chandra Kumar, popularly known as Kumar. In the 50s the bookshop Cambray & Sons who used to provide rare books to Sir Ashutosh Mukherjee had long changed its course to trading in Law Books. Thacker & Spink was also on its way out. It is Kumar who held the fort to provide rare and antique books to the intelligentsia of the town. But the problem was that it was not a bookshop in the true sense of the term. Kumar housed his books in his library which was in his living room and catered to only a handful of people who formed a close circle. And that too if he wished, otherwise books were lend for reading or you could spend your time at his residence going through different volumes of rare books from his collection. His residence was in Lower Circular Road opposite to St. James Church. Here in his living room was his collection much like a well-appointed library, with books lined in shelves on all sides. In the centre of the room was a large divan and on the sides chairs and tables. In one of these chairs Kumar sat, mostly wearing a half shirt with lungi smoking a pipe or a cigar, like Lord Shiva overlooking Mount Kailash, calm and serene. I cannot describe all the books here. It was like acres and acres of Vellum and Morocco bound books of all sized from Duodecimo to Elephantine. Books on all subjects from 16th to 17th. Century lined in the wall. All in Good Condition, bound immaculately with the names embossed in gold. It is here that I first laid my eye on an original set of elephantine folio of Thomas and William Daniel’s Oriental Scenery. Bound in Blue leather with gold embossing and the inside pages while as milk. Soon thereafter few books started to arrive from abroad. One day I asked Kumar for the reason. He told me that the primary reason is the rise of study of Indology in American Universities. Most universities started building their collection on India and they grabbed books from foreign auction and Indian bookstores. Take for example Texas University buying the 3 Volumes, printed in 1828 of Narrative of a Journey through the Upper Provinces of India by Reginald Heber.. The other is the Library of Britishers who had an interest in India and their collection being put up for sale. Catalogues used to be prepared and send to us moths in advance for us to buy direct or bid in auction through agents. These are dwindling. Kumar never made profit out of the books that he gave us and always encouraged me to collect books. If I would have listened, even a little I would have had a huge collection of books on Anglo Indian much or maybe slightly smaller than that of Ashutosh Mukherjee. Kumar was a blueblood lineage from Zamindar family. He offered delicacies whenever we visited, fit to be served to a king, and I am reminded of Bankim Chatterjee’s Eshwar Gupta. When Kumar died I felt the loss of my own family member.