Mapping an obsession

You'd expect him to be poring over architectural drawings and blueprints and drafts of building foundations - he is, after all, chairman of Select Citywalk, the sassy retail address that opened in New Delhi's Saket on Friday night. In his previous avatar, as chairman of Sita Travels (later acquired by Kuoni Travels), you'd expect him to be checking out flight routes and destination maps. But old maps?

For Inder Sharma, those maps have been an obsession of sorts, the kind where, if you're having dinner at his house, he'll suddenly whip out a magnifying glass and march you off to a corridor, to give you a quaint history lesson in quick bites. That also includes a review of his collection of lithographs where he'll point out a particularly abject one depicting the surrender of Bahadur Shah Zafar, the last Mughal emperor, when he capitulated to the British.

Bahadur Shah Zafar, of course, is another obsession. He insists he once talked to his ghost, and even went to the government about the emperor's wish to have his remains brought back to Delhi, to be interred here (no, don't laugh, he's serious). Enough, even, to choose Burma as his honeymoon destination, so he could pay him homage at his humble grave there - perhaps not very romantic for his wife, but romantic nevertheless.

Sharma may have several such quirks, but the reason we're visiting him on a cool autumn morning in his house facing the zoo is to talk to him about his collection of maps. Naturally, he has his magnifying glass handy, and soon he's engrossed in the details. See this one here, he says, pointing to a Dutch map of the continent of the East Indies (that's us, in case you're wondering) engraved by H Moll, "geographer". As a map it's interesting because it marks the "territories, settlements and factories of the Europeans" in India - of the French, the English, the Portuguese and the Dutch. More interestingly, Indonesia is labeled "Indian Is" - "Is", in map-speak, is short for "Island" - and what we now take for granted as the Indian Ocean was then known as "Eastern or Indian Ocean".

Two English maps hang side by side, one of "Hindoostan" by Sidney Hall dating back to 1827, the other, significantly, of "British India", recording the "dates of the principal massacres" of the 1857 mutiny complete with the dates it struck different cities, and the distances of these cities from Calcutta, which was then capital.

There are other maps, lots of engravings and lithos completing the collection, though some of Inder Sharma's haul has now been inherited by his son, Arjun Sharma, a major collector of contemporary art. Sharma points out spellings he's fascinated by "Jeypore", of course, but also "Chah Jehan" and "Rauchenara Begum", this last bringing along with it a lament for the lost beauties of Roshanara (how ordinary that spelling now looks) Bagh.

Because he was always partial "sentimental", he prefers -  towards Bahadur Shah Zafar, Sharma's first acquisition was the mutiny map of British India that he picked up at the Sunday bazaar from London's Portobello Road. That was 1961 and he paid £10 for his purchase. Those very maps, he says now, would cost him £400-500 each. Having acquired his early English maps, Sharma then deliberately began to collect maps on India from different countries of origin. "I then acquired a Dutch map, then a French one." he meanders off. He didn't keep all the maps, presenting some to his friends. "I got the Dutch map from Holland, but the French one was also found in Amsterdam," he struggles to remember. (Many of the lithos, should you care, were bought in Cambridge.) Because he cared enough but not too much, he did not go out to buy everything that was available in the market, instead choosing his maps almost deliberately. "What I'm interested in now," he says, "is a German map of India."

Not that there haven't been regrets. "I once missed the opportunity of acquiring a Spanish collection of five maps on India that was being sold in Malaga," he reminisces, "because I did not have the money to pay for it." More recently, he missed Maneka Gandhi's exhibition of maps and lithos in the capital because he was in the States. "I must check with her to see if she has any unsold works," he says. You can't help wondering what spelling lessons he'll draw from those new acquisitions.