Waking up to the potential of the past

All my life, I have been called a kabadiwallah!” rues Om Prakash Jain, founder-president of the Sanskriti Kendra Museums at Anandagram, Mehrauli-Gurgaon Road.

 “Born and brought up in Old Delhi, I would see aristocratic neighbours sell off their ancestral furniture, gold and silver zari sarees and beautifully carved utensils, and wonder how western utility items, which lacked any sense of aesthetics, would replace them? That’s when I started going door to door gathering these objects, oddly, earning me the tag of a scrap dealer.”

But had this octogenarian not taken to this peculiar hobby as a young man, the city would have probably lost several samples of fine Indian craftsmanship, found in ‘Purani Dilli’ specifically, to time and evolving tastes. Today these – over 5,000 objects of yore designed by Indian artisans, terracotta and textile – form the three magnificent Sanskriti Museums on the outskirts of the city. They stand in competitive solidarity with the several Government-run museums in Delhi and are a testimony to the fact that even an individual can help conserve history and heritage if they are passionate enough about the subject.

Fortunately for the city, it is not just Jain but a host of zealous foreign-educated youngsters, entrepreneurs and wealthy individuals are following their love for ‘all things old’ and setting up their own ‘private museums’. Even if many dismiss them as ‘kabadiwallahs’ today, history is sure to return the favour and acknowledge them as pioneers who conserved the past of the city for its residents in the distant future.

Gurgaon recently saw the establishment of a ‘Heritage Transport Museum’ – a facility in Taoru, some distance from the cyber-hub – housing no less than 125 vintage cars, bikes, and aircrafts to even old palanquins and bullock carts. Its founder-director Tarun Thakral says, surprisingly, this love for the antique ‘evolved out of his brief stay abroad.’ 

“I was doing MBA in France when I realised that all my class fellows, who came from 22 different countries, had one or the other kind of collection. Only the three of us, Indians, had none.”

“I think it was subconsciously, that once I came back to India, I started looking at vintage cars and then other vehicles. It is the incomparable experience of acquiring something old and broken and then infusing life in it through care and restoration that thrills me the most.” Once Thakral’s farmhouse, where he parked these, was acquired by the Government of Haryana for a development project, he approached the Ministry of Culture and got a grant of Rs six crore to set up the museum under a scheme. Now, he runs this impressive ticketed facility. Ashish Anand, a young entrepreneur, on the other hand, has set up an expansive art museum called the Delhi Art Gallery (DAG) with shows in both Delhi and Mumbai. If you thought that only a National Gallery of Modern Art could hold thousands of art pieces, you need to know how many DAG has: 34,000. The art connoisseur and businessman rolled into one says, “We don’t realise the value of our past. Last year, Christie’s held its first auction in India featuring only Indian art. It brought in a record $15.4 million. Among the works featured were the nine earlier masters of modern art known as National Art Treasures.”

“I inherited this love for art from my mother and now eat, sleep and dream acquiring artwork. I am positive that as we wake up to the potential of our cultural assets, more and more such private museums will come up in the years to come.”