The Charisma of a Childhood Hobby
Walking down the memory lane of collecting shiny fortunes
An onomatope I frequently hymn was a poem from my Kannada language textbook. It went like Thun thun thuna, jebu tumba hana… [translation: the many coins in my pocket jingle thun thun thuna]. In that world, resided an epoch of valid emotional immaturity aka my childhood. It was the best of times and the worst of times. One collects many a thing during the phase– rocks, leaves, matchboxes, allergies from those rocks and leaves, chocolate wrappers, followed by the trauma of your parents discarding them as junk. My hobby of collecting coins began around that time.
Picture it. A bunch of fourth graders huddling during a recess break. An uncle has flown in from America.
“Oh, how much is this penny worth in our Indian rupees?”
“Is that King George Washington?”
“I thought America had Osama Bin Laden?”
“No dude, that’s Australia. America is a democracy…I think”
The awareness of fourth graders might be abysmal, but the coins spiked a fresh curiosity. My friend gave me two American pennies for keepsakes. I keep them in a camera-film canister, with Kuwaiti coins. Thus began my going-to-grow coin collection.
The Cultural Context
In many Southeast Asian cultures, accepting cash gifts involves a staged yet obligatory stunt. On being offered money, you are to deny and exhibit a gross disinterest in money. For larger amounts, you conceal your joyous greed and refuse to financially burden the giver. The giver must persistently cosplay a familial intimacy until you accept their offering. This is a regional expression of the universal language called money. Enthusiastic acceptance of usable currency is deemed crassly rude. However, requesting and taking coins from non-usable international shores is perfectly acceptable. The inconsistency in social norms permitted a free flow of fortunes into my coin collection.
Collecting coins was not a hobby you could cultivate in secrecy. It involved the active transacting of social credits. Oftentimes, the narratives of your efforts carried more weight than the low-denominational coins. Coin collection is unlike journalism, bestowing me the liberty to share my sources.
Remember the times you hurriedly slid coins into your shirt or pant pockets?
Sometimes they’d fall out into the washing machine. This frequently occurred at the laundry centre of an international tourist hotel where my uncle worked. The coins were untraceable in the large laundry volumes. The staff would collect these coins into a jar, most of which were foreign by origin. That jar was my proverbial pot of gold — the kind found at the edge of a rainbow.
“Sure, I absent-mindedly accepted whatever the vendor gave. But later thought you’d like it” said my aunt, while handing me a European coin once passed as an Indian 5-rupee coin. Was the vendor nonchalantly ridding himself of the locationally useless coin? It was actions like his, intentions I do not know of, that expanded my coin collection.
The Indian government would release a special coin or two, every few occasions. It’d carry a special image, and be minted in limited numbers. I happened to receive them from bus conductors, shopkeepers or anyone transacting with coins.
“Ooh, my lucky day!” I’d say ever so frequently.
Gradually I forayed into collecting coins from the yesteryears. My grandma, who lived through Indian Independence, gave me a bunch of coins from her childhood days. These include coins of princely states and countries that no longer exist today. Owning coins of unheard places is a powerful feeling. You carry the evidence of their then-legitimate existence. It felt like practising archaeology, but just the rich parts without any muddy digging.
Have you heard of Cabon Verde? To me, it sounds like a pasta sauce. Except it is an island nation to the north-west of the African continent. If you won’t believe me, I can show you the coins from there!
Collecting coins from across the world, without crossing any international border was a feat. In hindsight, my coin collection appears to be a social project done well. At the time, travelling abroad carried a higher prestige. Airplane journeys, often the only right to passage for international travel, were also a luxury meant for a select few. Today, the economy and the demographics in my world have undergone a tectonic shift. Going abroad, particularly for education, is far more accessible and mainstream. And by extension, international coins are easier to request and collect. Except that’s not happening.
The thrill of sourcing coins has drastically dwindled. Today, I seldom encounter hobby coin collectors. Was the hobby pivoted on artefactual collectability? Did I adult into the wrong social circles?
The tactile experience of transacting coins may reignite hobby spirits. But they’re too few to count. “Just pay online” is the mantra wherever I go. In this connected era, my coin collection lustres an obsolete charisma.
