The phone trilled at a Calcutta home last Saturday evening. It was no ordinary call. It was from Siddhartha Basu's office, asking for a "lifeline".
Last week, The Bachchan had asked for the name of the oldest stock exchange of the country, and the winning answer was "Mumbai". But the answer had raised some questions with calls coming through to both the Big B and Siddhartha Basu confirming that the correct answer was Calcutta. There was a flurry of activity at the KBC corridors and Basu, with his Calcutta contacts, zeroed in on Aloke Kumar, a renowned collector of old books, documents, maps and antiquities. Apparently, only Kumar had the book which held the answer to the question.
“I am to receive a call this Saturday evening and give them the correct answer. And the right answer is Calcutta where the stock exchange was set up in 1836," Kumar told Calcutta Times. He read up from the Calcutta, Past and Present by K. Blechynden for the answer.
Kumar has a collection of more than 10,000 rare books on India in general and the city in particular, maps, Sketches, steel engravings and artefacts dating from Akbar's days. "I have inherited the collection from my father and added to it". His father, Nirmal Chandra Kumar, a renowned antiquarian, not only collected from all over the country but also bought regularly from Sotheby's in London. He was also a member of the Antiquarian Booksellers' Association again in London. This collection brought to the Kumars even Satyajit Ray who poured over books, files and photographs for months before starting work on Shatranj Ke Khiladi. "The film was about the Mutiny and Ray wanted to find out how the British positioned its troops in the city and all over the country, and only a book by Trevelyan which is in our collection could give him the answer. Even the map of Bengal which you see behind Lord Outram in the film was borrowed from us." This again is a very rare map as it is the first recorded map of Bengal, drawn by James Rennell.
In Kumar's collection you have original Daniels, Hogarth and Solvyns sketches. He is the only owner of pencil sketches of the "characters of India" in the world, "and even the British Museum had contacted me for these." Recently, the BBC decided to set up a link on Calcutta and got in touch with Kumar for information from his books and documents. So have the Calcutta Municipal Corporation when it set up its new site, Calmanac. But beyond this the CMC is hardly taking any interest.
Kumar, whose profession otherwise is to develop heritage sites, now wants to donate these books to the museum which is being built at the Town Hall. It is too much to maintain these books, and once in a public place like that, people can make better use of them," Kumar says. But unfortunately, despite having made several visits to the Director of Town Hall, Sadhan Thakurta, "I have failed to impress him. He says, he already has too much on his hands and cannot accept any more." The Mayor was shocked. "How could anyone refuse to accept such treasure? I will apologise to Kumar myself! It’s our duty to preserve such heritage", Subrata Mukherjee said. And so is the Municipal Commissioner, Asim Barman, "Of course we will preserve this collection at the Town Hall if Kumar' gives us a chance. The CMC will only be too proud to.
Note : Though Stock Broking was practiced in Calcutta as early as 1836, the members of the broking profession had neither any code of conduct for their guidance, nor any permanent place for congregation. The centre of their activity was near a neem tree.