: He was just 12 years old when the bug bit him. And ever since, he had been collecting currency notes — from those issued in the erstwhile State of Bengal to the ones in China.
A trader in garments, Musham Damodar Rao, boasts of a collection of over 15,000 currency notes from 200 countries, starting from the first note of Rs. 2 issued by the Bank of Bengal in 1809.
He also has notes with ‘Rupaiye’ inscribed on them.
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“As a young boy, I saw notes of different denominations in our family shop, and I guess that was when the urge to start collecting notes began,” he says.
It is not as if he is just a collector of currency notes. Mr. Rao is a repository of information. Do we know that it was Warren Hastings, the British Governor, who introduced currency notes for the first time? Or it was the British Queen who, in 1609, permitted trade with India from Trincomalee? Indian money then was called ‘Kasu’, a term that later became ‘cash’, he says.
There was in the past a Bond of Indemnity costing Rs. 2! And there was a time when even half-torn notes were accepted. This ardent collector of currency notes takes much pains to maintain his collection.
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That’s not all. Mr. Rao also has a whopping 12,000 books, mostly on ancient science, including The Seige of London , considered an important work of fiction in English. “I am now writing a couple of books on the history of Telangana,” he says.