He has calibre!

In a rather strange fad, Harish Aggarwal from Agra holds the country's largest private collection of antique, non-conventional calibre bullets and cartridges that he has been collecting for past 30 years, says Vijay Upadhyay

When most arms collectors prefer to limit their hobby to collecting guns and pistols of all kinds, this one from Agra has a completely different fad. He collects antique bullets and he could be seen participating in every old weapons auction held in the country, looking not for guns, but their cartridges!

Sitting in a dingy two- room gun-shop of Agra that his family has run for almost 60 years now, Harish Khandelwal holds the country's largest private collection of antique, non-conventional caliber bullets. Surprisingly, after being in this trade for such a long period, Khandelwal does not prefer selling guns, having transformed his gun-house into a museum of the bullets that he has been collecting for the last 30 years.

According to Khandelwal, he remains in constant touch with reputed gun dealers all over the country, who inform him of any auction of old ammo that is taking place in their city and he immediately rushes to the spot to see if he can find some more bullets to augment his collection.

An avid collector of old bullets, Harish says that the bullets he prefers to buy in the auctions are of long-discontinued caliber that cannot be used in conventional guns, most of which is comprised of pre-WWII ammunition.

According to him, most of the times, he has to spend a major chunk of his income from the gun-house in participating in old ammunition auctions which has seriously affected his financial condition in the past few years.

Besides, a legislation passed by the State Government prohibits any arms dealer from possessing more than 2000 rounds of ammunition at one time, forcing him to begin selling some of these bullets through his gun house in order to reduce them to a more "permissible" number.

News of this sale of old ammo spread quickly among the collectors of old guns who started flocking to his gun house to purchase ammo for their long-discarded guns and soon, this hobby of collecting old bullets was giving him more business than by selling conventional arms and ammunition.

At present, the Hindustan Gun House is probably the only point in the country where bullets could be purchased by collectors of old guns of almost all calibers.

Originally a collection almost 20,000 bullets strong, Khandelwal's tally of old ammo has come down to barely 2,500 rounds of different calibers, including large caliber .600 and .577 caliber rounds used in Elephant rifles. Probably the most unique item in his collection of old bullets are the 297/230 caliber Morris rifle cartridges of which, he has over 500 pieces but has never seen a gun that uses these bullets nor has he been able to sell even a single piece to a person who owns a rifle of such a small caliber.

A healthy number of mid 19th century 12, 9 and 7 mm "pin fire" rounds, first introduced in India by the British East India Company also forms a part of this collection though the only collectors' pieces in terms of weapons in his "museum" are a .38 caliber Smith and Wesson Revolver belonging to Man Singh, the prince of Bharatpur and another S&W rifle belonging to Laxmibai, the princess of Nagpur.

According to Khandelwal, the main reason in the depletion of his collection of old bullets was the restriction on possessing just 2,000 rounds of ammunition imposed by the State Government of all gun houses in Uttar Pradesh.

However, he is contesting a legal suit against this order of the Government and hopefully, he would be granted some respite from this order by the High Court of UP as even when gun-dealers all over the country were aware of his reputation of being the biggest collector of antique ammunition, it was not always easy to sell these cartridges.

These are quite expensive and without a firing guarantee, most of the collectors preferred to buy the bullets in very small quantities.