Please switch off your cellular phones at least when you are inside this shop. Let us talk to each other. Pretend it’s 1890 — reads a sticky note at the entrance of the Old Curiosity Shop in Chennai’s Anna Salai area.
It’s a humid afternoon and I’m working my way through the tourist spots in the city when a brick-red building catches my attention. It seems willed into existence by JK Rowling herself, its Harry Potter-esque vibe a stark contrast against the bustling metropolitan. I decide to enter.
Before I tell you about my afternoon tête-à-tête with Lateef Mohammed, owner of this marvel in the heart of Chennai, I must let you in on a secret: Lateef makes trips to the past every day.
He does this through the antiques he collects, catching up with bygone eras as one would do with old friends.
Having dedicated the majority of his life-span to this, Lateef’s world has come to revolve around the heirlooms, antiquated objects and one-of-a-kind historical artefacts that deck the shelves and walls of the shop. No price tag can justify their worth. I am stunned. I have just stumbled upon Chennai’s very own Pandora’s Box of history.
“Do you remember the story behind every object here?” I ask Lateef, scanning the room that is bursting at the seams with thousands of artefacts, ranging in size and shape, value and age. These include antique cameras, giant gramophones, a Blickensderfer typewriter, a wall filled with clocks that have ceased to tick — considering their age, they can be forgiven; vinyl records and vintage photographs. These vestiges of the past have a life of their own. If you keep quiet enough you can hear them breathe. Lateef, meanwhile, lets me look around. Once I am done, he looks me in the eye, touches the table wood almost as if taking an oath, and responds to my question, “Yes, I remember the story behind everything in this room.”
And that is where our tale begins.
Bringing a Kashmiri ethos into Chennai
Lateef’s reverence while speaking about the collectables that adorn his shop is remarkable. As I learn, it is genetic. His grandfather Ghulam Mohammed was a trader. In the 1940s he came to Chennai from Kashmir, intent on exploring the world beyond Jammu. The family never returned, finding Chennai a conducive bet.
Lateef explains, “At the time the north of India was in great turmoil because of the British rule. Tamil Nadu was a sort of golden place to be.” Motioning his head toward the next building, he says, “It’s a 300-year-old structure in which my grandfather started a gift shop where foreigners could come to buy Kashmiri handicrafts and other souvenirs from across India. It was one of the only of its kind in Tamil Nadu.” The collections sold by Ghulam Mohammed echoed the artistry of master craftsmen, amassing love among the foreign clientele. But the products were not the only draw, Lateef smiles. “They [the foreigners] loved my grandfather because he could speak English fluently,” a rarity in Chennai in those days.
Fast forward to when Lateef was ten years old and would spend all his free time at the shop. The incoming visitors made small talk with him; sometimes asking about his hobbies. “I like stamps,” he would declare. “Well then, why don’t you go to the bank?” they would suggest. “You’ll find lots of stamps there.”
Thus began Lateef’s rendezvous with the banks of Chennai. “I would go in the evenings, around the time when the sweeper would be emptying the dustbins. In there was treasure — envelopes that had been discarded with their stamps still in place. I would pick them out, take them home, put them in water and peel the stamps off. These would go into my collection.”
In time, Lateef moved on to coins. The foreigners who visited the shop were gracious enough to lend him a pence or two for his collection. Often, he’d offer them Indian money in exchange. Recalling these vignettes of the past fascinates him, making his eyes twinkle. And to think that at the heart of his efforts was an innocent desire to collect, to preserve, and to cherish. Today, too, he is driven by the same motives.
The Old Curiosity Shop: The past’s official residence
Every time the door of the Old Curiosity Shop opens, it brings with it three things: a gust of wind, the noise of the outside traffic, and a reminder that I am in Chennai. With all these remnants of the past around me, it’s easy to forget. Considering it is a weekday afternoon, Lateef gets quite a crowd. “This isn’t an ordinary shop,” he points out. “The people who come here are the curious ones, the ones who want more than just looking at an antique; the ones who want to touch it and feel it and hear the story behind it.” The visitor list includes the likes of the Nehru family, Ustad Zakir Hussain, World Cup cricket teams, Supreme Court and High Court justices, actors and actresses of Indian cinema.
Lateef loves having visitors. Appreciating the past is a lost art, one that he is keen to revive. The shop — the namesake of a novel by Charles Dickens — lies at the interface of two realms, the past and the present.
“So, how did you collect all of this?” I ask Lateef.
“Back in the day, we used to have pen friends around the world. It’s how I expanded my stamp collection.” The art aficionado’s interest soon transcended stamps and coins. Not before long, his eye was on records, cameras, tape recorders, clocks and the more-dated treasures. At this point in the conversation, he encourages me to take a walk through the shop and feast my eyes on its treasures. It’s a rare indulgence, one that I do not take for granted.
I see and touch antiques that have lived longer than most generations. Later, Lateef introduces me to the quarter of the shop that he reserves “only for some” — If I thought the antiques were priceless, the collectables in this part of the shop pale everything else in comparison. I touch a 100-year-old book written about Indian poet Mirza Ghalib, “the only possible remaining copy on earth”; a yellowing identity card that once belonged to an Indian who served in the British Army as Officer, maps of undivided India backed on cloth; royal attire once worn by princesses and queens embroidered with real gold filigree work; books from the age of the Gutenberg Press; handwritten literature that dates back 400 years; the first edition of Harry Potter series and the first edition of MK Gandhi’s book ‘Delhi Diary’ (1948). This last one has its price printed on the back: nine rupees! The collection is a richly woven tapestry of artefacts whose nodes stem from diverse cultures that once lived on Earth.
Every object is evocative, and it is only when the door opens again that I remember I’ve spent hours here. I leave the shop, thanking Lateef for his time. As I later recount the story to my editor, she says, “How cool! You visited an antique shop?”
“No,” I reply. “I made friends with the past.”
Edited by Megha Chowdhury; Pictures clicked by Krystelle Dsouza
