Letters that live on

KOCHI: Tracking the times - that is what Arun Kedia has been doing with his burgeoning newspaper collection. The Rajasthani business man today has a collection of over 800 different newspapers of various languages and countries. But this is no random collection of newsprints. Each of these newspapers preserves the story of an important turn in the life of the nation or society. So the collection includes everything from the sinking of the titanic in 1912 to the earthquake that rocked Sikkim this year. “When an incident happens, I try to get the paper from the place where it took place,” says Arun. The idea of collecting newspapers came to me suddenly just after the death of Princess Diana. “It was the day after Princess Diana’s accident and I had visited the newspaper stands. Standing there I thought why not buy a few of today’s newspapers. It would be a historical document for posterity,” he says. A fleeting idea soon became an obsession as the years went on. Today, he has a collection of newspapers in languages ranging from Oriya and Nepali to Chinese and Arabic. Many of the newspapers in his collection are already out of publication. “In the 90s itself many people had begun saying that the internet would make print redundant. May be in about 50 years or so there won’t be any newspapers left. For future generations, what I’ve done could serve as a piece of history,” he says. Some of the newspapers already have an old world feel to them. Sri Chithrayugam, Kerala Times, Island Times, East India News...are part of his Malayalam newspaper collection. Aacharan, Aaj Ka Anand, Adhikar, Charhdikala Business Pathfinder are others. Some of the newspaper names sound quirky. Life Dreams is for instance a weekly based in Mumbai. Similarly there is Chapte Chapte, Chamkta Aainaa, General Etikkutti  and the list goes on... Arun’s obsession for his hobby has grown to the extent that the first thing that comes to his mind is: ‘Where do I get the appropriate newspaper from?! Even when I travel, my first priority is always the newspaper stands.  At times I have traveled more than 65 kilometers to get a particular newspaper on a particular day. Even when I’m travelling by train, I get off at stations in different places to get the newspapers there,” he laughs.