Rezwan Razack, a king in his counting house

Meeting Rezwan Razack can be quite a daunting task because he will probably know more than you do on most things; but the self-obsessed air that is oft apparent in corporate honchos is completely missing. He can crack you up with a really sardonic joke and narrate a story about Bangalore’s dosa joints with equal confidence. Needless to say, one and a half hours with him will feel like just about 15 minutes.

And in that time, he talked about everything we could think of — the state of the airlines industry in the country, real estate (but of course!) and his oldest passion that came into the limelight recently.

Razack is an avid collector of banknotes and has co-authored The Revised Standard Reference Guide To Indian Paper Money along with Kishore Jhunjhunwala, also a collector of rare currencies, who had written The Standard Reference Guide To Indian Paper Money that documents the history of Indian note currency.

“I was probably 12 years old when I first picked up a bank note for my collection. And I continue to have that note. But when I started I didn’t know it would become a passion; one becomes inquisitive about something and the world conspires to feed your curiosity, which is how I ended up with my first few notes. But, I never planned it or decided consciously to be come a collector or anything,” says Razack.

Numismatics is an old hobby; people from all over the world are known to have collected coins at some point in their lives. But the art of collecting bank notes is perhaps not as widespread as it could have been. “Do you know why collecting banknotes can be more interesting?” Razack asks, offering up the answer himself, “Paper money is harder to get your hands on. They get demonetised far too quickly and because it has no such intrinsic value, people don’t really care much about keeping them. In fact, I remember I was given a `500 note from 1987! Someone had left a few in a jacket pocket that hadn’t been worn in a while. By the time he realised it, the bank refused to take it back because the exchange period was over.”

Many of the bank notes Razack has, are in fact those that people forgot to exchange. The oldest note he owns today is a note issued by the Bank Of Bengal from 1812!

How does he even get his hands on the notes? “It’s a very pyramidical process,” he says, adding, “You meet someone, talk about your hobby and he might have something for you or he’ll introduce you to someone who might. One time, I met this gentleman on Eurail and we got chatting and I told him about my collection. After I came back, nearly a month or so later, I was sent an envelope with two notes in them. That’s how it happens!”

Incidentally, Razack collects only Indian banknotes and in fact, has some notes, that were never even commercially issued! “It’s amazing, the method through which you track them. I went to the British Library to read about them first; there’s a parallel file in India, too but the government won’t let you see them and the process for permission is way too complicated. Then I visited auction houses, did my detective work and got my hands on them,” he says.

Coming back to the book, he says that one of the primary agendas of this book is to quench anyone’s need for knowledge. “I have been sending out the book to various institutions and even to the British Library and the Museum. The idea is to let them have it and in case someone does want to know anything about Indian currency, they can refer to this book because it has the complete information. From stories behind the issuance of notes to its evolution — it has it all,” he says. That’s 10 to 12 years of research and 18 months of putting it together that we’re talking about.

So, one naturally would be compelled to ask if that’s all he does, when he’s not thinking real estate that is. “Not always! I love to explore Bangalore and eat at interesting places. In fact, every weekend I call my foodie friends, quite early in the morning, and get them to come with me as I set out to find some new place. It’s always these tiny hole-in-the-wall kind of joints that appeal to me. From the tiniest of dosa places to popular breakfast joints, I think I make a good ‘dining’ companion!” concludes Razack.