I am a retired engineer who has had a great passion for collecting articles since a very young age. It began with the collection of birds’ feathers, match box pictures, and letter stamps. This was merely a way to pass time for me in the early 1960s. In 1968, my uncle gifted me an impressive Strait Settlement note of King George V, which was used as a common colonial currency in five countries at that time. That grew my interest in the early 1970s when I started with the collection of foreign stamps. I researched more about the history behind each and every item that I collected. The realization that they had the potential to be repositories of history encouraged me to jot down short notes on them. Till date I have collected about four hundred thematic items in the form of currency notes, along with 65 items of stamps.
I was an attendee of the Chicago Bank Note Expo in 2011 and I was also fortunate enough to be a part of Queen Elizabeth’s 90th birthday celebrations at the Abu Dhabi British Embassy. During the celebration, I received the rare opportunity to exhibit the banknotes of all 33 countries that had Queen Elizabeth’s image inlaid on them. I consider the ‘Thank you’ letter that I later received from Buckingham Palace to be one of my most cherished possessions.
With my growing passion in the collection of stamps, I started a specialized collection of Gandhi theme stamps in 1985. Reading Gandhiji’s books and books written about him, I became fascinated with his social ideologies. Gandhian philosophy is rooted in ancient Indian culture harnessing universal moral & religious principles of truth & non – violence. I referred the catalogues of Scott, Michael and Stanley Gibbons to find the countries which issued Gandhiji’s stamps, simultaneously I was in constant contact with a number of stamp dealers, visited numerous stamp exhibitions, and regularly corresponded with stamp collectors from different countries to make my own list. Until then there was no collector who had ever attempted to build such a complete list.
I have been collecting Gandhi stamps for the last 4 decades, and most of them are yet to find their way into the hands of collectors, which I consider as a unique achievement in my life. To be honest, I could make this possible only because of the tireless and consistent work.
The most important and rare stamps in this collection are:
