The other day when I was segregating the good, bad and the ugly in my collection, I chanced upon a BTS ticket and two perforated pieces of two different theatres Plaza and New Chitra in Bangalore and Mangalore. Next moment I rolled back to my younger days. It all began nearly forty-eight years ago. On an evening, while walking back home from school in Chikmagalur.
I found a counterfoil on the road. Without any hesitation I picked it. It was a perforated piece of Milan, a theatre. An idea came to my mind that I should excel my friends in the art of collection. They collected marbles, tops, empty matchboxes and other curios. I decided to collect cinema tickets. Thus began my journey in this endeavour. I made this my hobby after we moved to Mangalore.
My interest in watching movies particularly on weekends and twice a week during my vacation stay in Bangalore and Mysore added more to my ticket collection. During the 70s and early 80s, I had a good collection of tickets from many prominent movie houses in Mangalore. Suggestions poured in when I displayed my talent. A senior in our compound came out with a brilliant idea. He suggested writing the name of the movie on the back of the perforated piece legibly since I was known for my handwriting. With this began a process of my valuable collection.
"Collect movie tickets from outside'' was another suggestion. The one who suggested helped me in procuring tickets from Bombay, Poona, Satara and even from Kasaragod and Calicut. I was the proud owner of such counterfoils from Madras, Hyderabad and Sambalpur sent by my pen friends in exchange for foreign stamps. A girl, senior to me, said that to collect more counterfoils, I should watch more movies. Another came with a brute suggestion that I should seek employment during summer holidays either in New Chitra or Central, which we frequented. A friend from another college suggested that I should go to Jyothi and meet the authorities and join the work immediately. Meanwhile responding to my request positively, an overseas pen friend sent me one from Accra, Ghana. As a token of courtesy, I sent him used Indian postage stamps.
As time passed, I added more to my kitty. I preserved the collection in a cloth bag which I carried to school. One day it rained cats and dogs. The bag and valuable contents inside were drenched and my years of labour destroyed. All these came to my mind while I watched mild showers recently. On that day I had become a child.