I read this article in the Scroll, and for the second time, I found myself thinking about how passionate individuals who genuinely care about their culture and history are load-bearing pillars in the broader effort to preserve historical memory. In this case, Priya Paul’s multi-decade effort to collect paintings, calendars, advertisements, old textile labels, and postcards is both insane and inspiring.

t the end of the 1980s, a young woman purchased a slightly damaged print by the 19th century painter and printmaker Raja Ravi Varma for Rs 500. “I remember saying ‘this is a very beautiful image’,” she recalled later. “I’d never seen anything like it… I felt like looking out for more.” Given Ravi Varma’s status as a pioneer of mass produced imagery in India, it was a fitting introduction. In the following decades, Delhi-based Priya Paul – chairperson of Apeejay Surrendra Park Hotels – amassed one of the most significant collections of popular visual artefacts in the South Asian subcontinent.

Building on this foundation, a transnational network of collectors and scholars called Tasveer Ghar launched an equally vital endeavour in 2008: to digitise the vast collection and make it freely accessible to the public. Hosted at the Heidelberg University’s heidICON image database, the Priya Paul Collection of Popular Art “contains over 4,200 images of Indian popular culture from the late 19th and early 20th century. A large part of the collection consists of old posters, calendars, postcards, commercial advertisements, textile labels [commercial labels that were glued onto parcels of textiles imported from Britain or made in India] and cinema posters…Sometimes they reflect an interesting blend of east and west: Asian subjects illustrated in western styles and vice versa for Indian or European markets.”

Without people like Priya, who sometimes do more than most government initiatives and well-funded NGOs in preserving history, culture, and perhaps most importantly, historical memory, we’d be lost. Because without an appreciation and care for one’s past, the future will be a shabby remake of it.

The reason I’m writing this is because I’ve been trying to make my own small contribution to preserving our historical memory. Just yesterday, I wrote about a project I’ve been working on called Project Akshara, where I’ve been trying to make old Indian literary works in the public domain readable. In doing this, I’ve discovered the sheer stench of neglect surrounding our own culture—it’s insane.

Without this weird collection of people who pop up in various parts of the country and devote their entire lives to preservation—expecting nothing in return and often spending their own hard-earned money—historical artifacts would simply disappear. These are the real heroes that 99% of people are blissfully unaware even exist.