MALAPPURAM: Abdul Ali was 14 when his father handed him Rs 1 coin to buy ice cream. It had a man’s head on one side and a tiger on the other. Fascinated, Abdul decided to keep it.
That was how his lifelong passion to collect antiques began. Over the next three decades, his collection grew from the coin — which he later discovered was a British India-era coin bearing the head of King George V — to include around 60 vintage box gramophones dating back to the 1900s, original gramophone records carrying speeches by Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru and Subhas Chandra Bose as well as old songs, about 1,000 rare currencies and coins, historical documents, bicycle licences, cameras, telephones, bulbs and several other objects from different periods and parts of the world.
A social studies teacher at AUP School, Thrippanachi, Areekode, and recipient of this year’s State Teachers Award for Best Teacher, the 46-year-old has turned the entire upper floor of his home — four bedrooms as well as the hall — into a museum housing these rare and historic artefacts.
Among his most prized possessions are gramophone records of the speeches by national leaders, including Nehru’s midnight Independence Day speech. Textbooks used before the Independence, miniature and handwritten religious books and palm leaf manuscripts also figure in his collection. “I have collected more than 60 gramophones of different sizes, including rare box gramophones. The rarest are the gramophone records of the speeches by Gandhi, Nehru and Subhas Chandra Bose,” he said. Ali terms his habit of collecting the antiques a “craze that cannot be cured.”
“My family was against spending money on these artefacts initally. But I could not control the urge to collect them. Over the years, they realised that I won’t stop and accepted it. Today, the entire first floor of my house is filled with collectibles. For me, their value is not in their price, but the piece of history they hold,” he said.
The social studies teacher regularly uses the artefacts to make history lessons more tangible for his students. A British-era coin, for instance, becomes an aid when he teaches about colonial India, while other objects offer students a glimpse into the technology and everyday life of earlier generations. “I have used my collection to help students become more familiar with history. Like when teaching Indian history, including Mughal and British periods, I can show them coins from those eras. It makes the subject more interesting,” Ali said.
His museum is open to schoolchildren for purposes of research and historical studies. Students from different schools visit during weekends and public holidays. Students from more than 500 schools have visited Ali’s museum.