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Bengal

Premier artifact collectors to travel to B'desh for showcasing rare collections on Bengal's history

Kolkata: Five artifact collectors from Kolkata will be travelling to Bangladesh, to display their rare collections for a showcase exhibition.

It is for the first time that artifact collectors from Kolkata have been invited in Bangladesh to showcase their collection. The programme titled "Chinhamela" will be held at the Shahidullah Kalabhavan of Rajsahi University, one of the premier academic institutions in Bangladesh. The team will leave for Bangladesh on March 9.

Gopal Biswas, a well known picture post card collector in India, is going to Bangladesh with his collection. Picture post cards used to play an important role in the social life of people in the non-digital era. People travelling to other states or countries used to send picture post cards to their near and dear ones, narrating their experience.

Many receivers of the picture post cards used to preserve them. Biswas has in his possession a few thousand picture post cards and he will be taking some of the rarest and best ones to Bangladesh.

Souvik Mukherjee will display his collection on the development of transport system in Bengal. Some of the tickets of trams and buses will be displayed, along with photographs of horse-driven carriages.

People from East Bengal on reaching Sealdah station used to go to the houses of their relatives in horse-driven carriages in the 1930s and 1940s. There were very few taxis and American car brands like Chevrolet, Hudson and Pontiac were used for the purpose.

Ujjal Sardar, collector of manuscripts will display some of the rare manuscripts in his collection. Falguni Dutta Roy will display some of the newspapers which carried interesting news items during the freedom movement in Bangladesh in 1971.

Chandranath Chattopadhyay, editor of Kinjal magazine and a well known collector, is also travelling with the group. Many rare stamps used before the Partition in 1947 will be displayed, along with letters including those written by the Governor General, matchboxes used during the Swadeshi movement in 1905, letters written by Nawab Salimullah of Dhaka, advertisement designs made by important personalities and booklets of Bengali cinema and theatre.

Till the late 1970s, the audience visiting cinema halls could collect the booklets and lobby cards free of cost, containing the storyline of the movie, along with details of the songs. Satyajit Roy had designed the lobby cards of some of his famous films like Nayak and Parash Pathar. "It will be a wonderful exhibition and will strengthen the cultural ties between India and Bangladesh," Chattopadhyay said.

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