Own a piece of Bollywood

Original tickets of Mughal-e-azam, famous film props and posters - the author finds all these and more as she goes on the trail of Indian cinema's memorabilia

Madam yeh poochiye humaare paas kaun sa film memorabilia nahi hai," Wahid Mansoori's voice cackles over the phone. Mansoori tends to Mini Market, one of the two shops started by his father, Shahid Mansoori, in Mumbai's bustling Mutton Street. His father's collection is famous across the world. In fact, a short documentary film about him was screened in 2011 at Canada's Royal Ontario Museum as part of the exhibition, "Bollywood Show Cards". "We have been around for 75 years and have 4,000 original posters of different Bollywood titles that are priced between Rs 50 and Rs 5,000," says Mansoori.

Original tickets of Mughal-e-azam, old chocolate tin boxes that carried pictures and trivia about cine-gods, beedi boxes with pictures of Rekha, old film advertisements, pamphlets that were sold outside movie halls - Mansoori offers all this and more. "There was something called the 78 RPM record, which was used between 1920s and 50s, before the LPs. I have those records for films like Pyaasa and Chaudvin Ka Chaand," he says. Also, one can find in his shop, synopses of 10,000 films and a complete set of Filmfare issues, starting from the first issue that came out in 1952. However, there is one priceless item in his father's personal collection that the family won't part with even for a crore: the original synopsis of India's first talkie, Alam Ara. The shop also has Bollywood props featuring a leading actor from that era. "There was a famous cosmetics brand called Afghan Snow which had the picture of Geeta Bali on it. Then there was a picture of Hema Malini on the pack of Netranjan Kajal," he says. He doesn't share the price of these items as "they are priceless and not to be discussed like vegetable and fruit".

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The Cinefan Cinema Memorabilia Auction, to be held by Osian in July, is a good place to start for those looking to own a piece of Bollywood. Osian's first memorabilia auction was held last year and brought rare Bollywood artefacts into spotlight, with sales of over Rs 69.5 lakh and 86 per cent of the merchandise sold. Buyers included members of the film fraternity, art collectors such as Kamal Morarka, professionals from the legal fraternity, bankers, auditors and die-hard collectors. Aamir Khan and wife Kiran Rao bid for six collectors' items valued at Rs 238,000, including Shammi Kapoor's jacket; the rights to the last recorded song by Kishore Kumar was bought by Kingdom of Dreams for Rs 15.6 lakh. Also on offer were 45 signed black and white photographic stills by Dev Anand, rare film posters designed by Satyajit Ray, a turquoise ring set in silver worn by Farooque Sheikh in Umrao Jaan and a cricket bat signed by Aamir Khan and the Lagaan team.

The auction is one of the few efforts that showcases Bollywood artefacts in an organised manner. "It is sad that over 95 per cent of everything is lost forever," rues The Osianama Film Club spokesperson Supriya Chawla. India's poor financial infrastructure for arts and culture, with limited access to credible public knowledge bases along with the habit of buying with black money were some of the challenges faced earlier. Credible one-stop-shops where you can buy authentic memorabilia are almost non-existent, with Mansoori being one of the few players in the field.

"Till recently, memorabilia were sold for as low as Rs 50," says Siddhartha Tagore, director of art gallery and auction house Art Bull and an avid collector. He has bought some posters for as little as Rs 5 and Rs 10. "Back in the '80s, when I used to stay in Kolkata, there were these poster-sellers in Nirmali galibehind Jyoti Cinema. I bought a framed black and white original poster of Charulatha from them," recalls Tagore. Since then, he has been buying posters, lobby cards, show cards, song booklets and film synopses from them as well. The price of the memorabilia usually depends on the film, the director or the hero. So the posters of Deewar and Sholay tend to be expensive. "An original Sholay picture would cost Rs 1,000," he says. The lobby cards at Nirmali galicost between Rs 50 and Rs 500.

Apart from these sellers, offices of film distributors are also a great place to hunt for memorabilia. A broker took Tagore to the office of Aurora Film Corporation in Kolkata where he picked up posters of Pather Panchali, Charulatha and Jalsaghar. "These vintage items were gathering dust in distributors' warehouses and old railway warehouses, the official storage space for decades. These were publicly auctioned during the 1990s and early 2000 as raddi," says Chawla. This raddi was either discarded or picked up by sellers such as those outside Nirmali Gali, without an idea about the value of such artefacts. It is no wonder then that till recently this was available at such low prices.

However, some members of the film fraternity understood the historical significance of film props and hung on to them; some even wished for the artworks to be archived. For instance, for the Osian auction, Gandhi's associate producer, Suresh Jindal, members of the Kapoor family, MS Sathyu, Muzaffar Ali, Roy Wadia and Rakesh Kumar contributed artefacts.

Jindal, who has also produced Rajnigandha, Katha and Shatranj Ke Khiladi, rues the lack of conservation efforts in cinema history. "Perhaps because I had studied in the West where I saw efforts underway to preserve such history, I was more aware. I kept all the main costumes of Shatranj Ke Khiladi," he says. During his stint as the vice-president of Indian Motion Picture Producers Association, he asked producers for two posters of each of their films. "I knew they (posters) would lie around forgotten, so why not preserve them myself?" Jindal contributed two costumes and a poster from Shatranj Ke Khiladi for the Osian auction.

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You can also find artefacts cropping up unexpectedly across the country. In fact, many go on a memorabilia trail, visit distributors' offices, shops like Mansoori's, families of producers and actors. In Kolkata, you can get your hands on Ray memorabilia - his films sourced a lot of material from eminent families. These families have still preserved those items.

Jindal has a very interesting story to narrate. "Usually, when sets are dismantled, they are discarded. So, once the shooting was over, the descendant of Wajid Ali Shah, who was a consultant for Shatranj Ke Khiladi, requested me if he could take parts of the sets back to the imambara in Matiaburj where Shah used to stay. He took the velvet takht with him."