Along a narrow, congested, traffic-choked street off Sarojini Naidu Road in suburban Mumbai stands Ganesh Laundry. A neat little affair that you could miss while you are trying your best not to get your clothes nicked by the jagged edges of the innumerable two-wheelers parked on either side of the street. Behind the laundry is tucked a nondescript one-room-kitchen apartment that houses the Joshi family, their eight cats and close to 8,000 comic books.
Twenty-two-year-old Aalok could pass for Clark Kent in the Metropolis he was born to occupy. By day, this son of a Bombay High Court advocate studies to be a dentist at Nair Medical College. At home, cats weave around his feet, assured of warmth and security. His alter ego is one of the best known comic book collectors and traders in India, owning 7,000 singles and 920 graphic novels.
It was his mother, Kirti, who had introduced a three-year-old Aalok to a world where a masked man in a purple suit lived in the jungle, rode a white horse named Hero, had a wolf — Devil — for a pet and a falcon — Fraka — to carry his messages. The love of comic books — Phantom and Mandrake for many beginners — is something that most children leave behind as they step into their teens. But Aalok didn’t leave that world behind even after his childhood innocence left him. Her son is not the only collector Kirti lives with; her husband Madhusudan collects DVDs.
The room that has been the Joshi home for 30 years has an old, battered computer, which sits next to a television, which sits next to an almirah, which sits next to yet another almirah. You will not be blamed if you failed to see what colour the walls are — there’s hardly enough of it even for a glimpse. And there are comics everywhere: In the cupboards, on the furniture, under the furniture, on the floors, on the lone metal chair, on any edge and gap available. And amid them are twisting furry tails and curious, gleaming green eyes.
And, behind the door, away from prying eyes, is where Aalok stashes the real loot. “Actually, that’s the place I would like to raid. It’s where he keeps his ultimate treasure: The old issues from DC Comics and Indrajal,” says Anniset Pareira, a comic book collector who has known Aalok for a few years and believes he has one of the best collections in the country.
The cats may be a coincidence. Or maybe not. The love for felines — and their mysterious, somewhat sinister and nocturnal lives — is common among collectors and writers of comic books. They even inhabit the lives of superheroes (Mandrake, for instance, had a cat called Nefertiti). Neil Gaiman and Grant Morrison, two of the best known comic book writers, are known to have several cats purring around them as well. But Aalok would not claim the cats as entirely his own. “My cats are basically my mother’s pets. But it is true that people who are into comics have a strange affection to them.” It is altogether a very common sight to find a row of upturned tails following Kirti around the two rooms as she goes about her housework.
But behind Aalok’s amiable appearance sits a trader who is as wily as a stock trader. He haggles, he negotiates, he drives a hard bargain and will not settle for a price he thinks is higher than what he has in mind (selling books that he bought from different places is, after all, his only source of income to feed his collection). On the other end of a phone conversation is someone in Bandra who wants to sell him his entire Spiderman collection. Aalok thinks he is being overcharged.
A graphic novel typically would cost between Rs. 600 and Rs. 900. A single issue of a comic book with 25 pages costs around Rs. 30. The big deals are the graphic novels or trade paperbacks and the challenge is to get them at half the price at which the retail books sell.
(This story appears in the 25 February, 2011 issue of Forbes India. To visit our Archives, click here.)