It’s easy to miss The Old Curiosity Shop, tucked away in a noisy corner on Mount Road. But it has stood silently for almost 80 years, as the city’s skyline continued to rise high. Its faded red façade, arches, and sun-kissed stained glass windows whisper tales from a bygone era. The building is a curiosity in itself, wearing its age proudly.
The Old Curiosity Shop is like a time machine. As you step inside, the tinkling of a chime instantly transports you to a world that is far beyond the traffic snarls outside. You enter a sphere where every item you see gives a sneak peek into how humankind evolved in the last million years, where every object you touch has a history, a story to tell, and every sound is steeped in nostalgia.
The only rule to get aboard this nostalgic trip is no usage of mobile phones for photography. Ironically, the aisle where cameras are positioned, a paper clipping reads: 'No photography please'. If you wish to search for any artefact, the answers are right in front of you — Mohamad Lateef, the man with all the answers.
A small rectangular-shaped paper stuck on a wooden frame advises us to pretend it is 1890. Lateef then takes us through the collections. We sit under warm yellow lights, opposite each other, separated by a wooden table.
In its own timezone
“My father came from Kashmir to the city in the 40s for graduation . After completing his studies, he settled here,” he says. “The North was in turmoil because of the independence movement. Everything and everybody were moving forward fastly. But Madras grew slowly in terms of modernity. Education was given importance. The people were simple. No arrogance. No showoff. They grew at their own pace, and when you do so, you can balance life easily.”
With his knack of spotting antiquated objects, Lateef’s father started the Corner Shop — located in the corner of Mount Road, turning towards the Pattullos Road. He sourced handicrafts, wooden furniture, and some more from across India. “It started as a gift shop to attract the British to the richness of Indian produce,” he says.
Lateef used to frequent the shop since he was a 10-year-old, talking to the visitors and expandinghis knowledge. Chief ministers, governors, sports persons, and actors visited the shop often. “Sachin Tendulkar, Anil Kumble and others from the cricket team stayed at Connemara, and they would walk here,” he recalls. Today, crossing the junction can be a task.
With the knowledge bank he acquired from customers, actors like MGR and Sivaji Ganesan who took him to movie sets, he “changed the system” — the workings of the shop — when he took over. Inspired by Charles Dickens’ novel The Old Curiosity Shop, Lateef named the shop so because the visitors would call it the ‘curiosity shop’.
Lateef is as much a part of the shop’s soul as the treasures it holds. He doesn’t just sell antiques — he shares memories. With the patience of a storyteller and the precision of a historian, he guides curious customers through shelves of telescopes, British tea kettle, fountain pens, pocket watches and knives, currency notes, wooden bangles, rugs, carpets, wall clocks with ceased time, typewriters, first edition books, vinyl records, 1940s advertisements, European jewellery, projectors, bells, compass, radios, postcards and more.
Preserving the past
When asked how he has such a humongous collection, Lateef says, “I have 200-million-year-old crystals and cassettes and CDs. All these are available everywhere and anywhere — on the roads, in the dirt. I preserved them, and they are antique or vintage today.”
Lateef is on a mission to promote postcards and to attract more customers from schools. “Curiosity leads school-going girls and boys to this shop. They come here, touch things, and think of the person who used it earlier. I want to understand their minds and increase my knowledge,” he says.
He dusts the antiques himself because for him, his shop is his ‘Aalayam’, his temple. “I will do justice to my existence by taking this shop and its stock to many. This shop is like a magnet. It calls you back,” comments Lateef, and I couldn’t agree more.
After spending three hours listening to Lateef about his collections, as I stepped out to the hum of Mount Road, the sounds of horns returned to my ears, but something had shifted. My mind remained wrapped in the musty scent of old wood, antiques, and stories in the weight of once-prized possession. The feeling of holding a piece of the past in your hand is a physical reminder of lives lived, passed time, and the beauty in preservation was incredibly grounding. As Lateef says, “History cannot be dismantled. One cannot disassociate from history. It can be momentarily taken away to join the rat race, but history cannot leave you. Because history is a treasure that opens up perspectives.” He advises his customers to create history with themselves so that they are happy tomorrow.
As I stepped out to the rhythmic chime sound, once again, I realised this wasn’t the last time I was here. The store had succeeded. It would pull me back again, like a wonderful story, a familiar perfume, a comfort place.