KOCHI: Jithinam Radhakrishnan’s antique collection is quite Freudian. Sigmund Freud was also a great collector of antiques — rings, neolithic tools, Sumerian seals, precious stones, Pompeiian amulets and pagan idols. The collection was smuggled into London away from the Nazi hands when they came to get Freud. It now rests undisturbed at a London museum space, as a testimony to what Freud himself said: “I love reading about archaeology more than psychoanalysis.”
Radhakrishnan too wants such a space to show the 48 years of his work, travelling from place to place, meeting people and collecting whatever had a hint of the past. He was a banker, and that gave him some time to get around after work hours. The frequent transfers that are part of this job were an excuse for him to get to places and find history asleep.
“I love travelling. And the job gave me that chance. So, I visited old illams, which are storehouses of antiquity. And libraries, where information lies stacked. I also had a good network of people who collected similar items,” Radhakrishnan, now retired and 66, says.
A lot was collected from his surroundings too; his family being traders who worked with weights. “The weights of those days were different. I have a collection of the different kinds of weights used for weighing objects as well as liquids. These used to vary from places, indicating the diversity of daily life.”
In this midst, a place of pride goes to the objects that are throwbacks to the election periods in the state’s history. The different pamphlets that form election literature were collected by him over decades, throwing a glimpse into how propaganda was done before. Voter slips were unheard of and instead were letters that bore the symbol of the candidate and a plea to the voters.
Announcements were made through a megaphone, which is a conical-shaped metal sheet that doubles up as a loudspeaker. “I got the piece from a scrap dealer in Malappuram. It seems a veteran, with many years of election-time announcement as its claim to fame,” Radhakrishnan says.
There was also a model ballot, which had an array of symbols under which the elections were fought. “Most of them are not to be seen now like a farmer with a yoke, wheel, coconut tree, ladder, two leaves, weighing machine, etc. Everything was printed and displayed in black and white; there was no colour. Yet the variety and the art were striking. Now, we have popular symbols that have evolved after several churns within the party or the Front now in the fray,” he says.
Voting too has seen a sea of change, not just with ballot papers being replaced by EVMs. “Each of the candidates had their own ballot boxes unlike now. I have a set of seals with which the ballot paper had to be sealed,” Radhakrishnan says.
The former banker, now settled in Kozhikode, is forging deeper friendships with fellow collectors and forming antique clubs where the members would get together from time to time to exchange collectables as well as to team up for activities.
Now with the 2024 elections too over, he has added more to his collection, all of which will form the history that he plans to hand over to posterity. “Now, all the objects I have collected are kept in 13 different homes of relatives. I plan to make a museum space where I can display all these,” Radhakrishnan says.