91-born collects 91 cine-tickets

The record for collecting the maximum number of tickets of movie theatres was set by Debanjan Seal (born on January 5, 1991) of Kolkata, West Bengal. He collected 91 tickets of cinema halls of his city including Metro, Globe, Paradise, Elite, Roxy, and Jaya. This hobby bagged him a proud place in the India Book of Records.

Debanjan Seal, a Biology teacher from Baguiati, Kolkata (West Bengal), has a passion for collecting hard copies of movie tickets bought from Kolkata and around. The craze for visiting the cinema halls began in 2003 when he used to see movies along with his friend’s group called as TukTuk Party.

“When I was in 8th standard, I visited a cinema hall for the first time to watch Bombaier Bombete, a Satyajit Ray film at Jaya Cinema in Laketown. Only black and white TV was found at that time. Friday and Saturday used to be very exciting days for us as Hindi movies were screened at night. To add colours to my viewing, I started frequenting local theaters like Arati, Binodini, and Sukhada Cinema to name a few. After the 10th class, I started exploring more theaters with my friends and sometimes alone. Since day one, I was keeping the counterpart of the colourful movie tickets of every hall I visited. Now, after 20 years, this collection has become very precious and worth keeping,” said Debanjan.

He has been to more than 91 cinema halls so far. The majority of them are now completely closed, ruined, or modified. There were more than 8 cinema halls in Esplanade Kolkata since preindependence. Some of the famous theaters he visited include Paradise, Roxy, Jyoti, Elite, Regal, etc. These halls had two sets of arrangements for the audience, one rear stall and the other was a balcony. Non-AC single screens dominated in Kolkata from 2003 to 2013. The most popular of them all were: Mitra Cinema, Darpana, Purabi Sealdah, Talkie Show House, etc. proof to watch the famous Akshay Kumar film ‘Blue’ as it was an adult category film and I was 17 only in 2009. Being a student from a typical middle-class Bengali family, it was very difficult to explore cinema halls across Bengal in the early 2010s. During my school days in 2003-08, I usually went to my nearby local theaters. Then in college days, I started to visit the nearest places of Kolkata like Barackpore, Barasat, Howrah, etc.” he said.

The record for collecting the maximum number of movie tickets of cinema halls was set by Debanjan Seal (born on January 5, 1991) of Kolkata, who collected 91 tickets from cinema halls including Metro, Globe, and Paradise.

“I still remember that Veer Zaara was shown in Taswir Mahal, Rajabazar; Tare Zameen Par was screened at Jyoti, Lenin Sarani; Kahani in Broadway hall at Salt Lake; Hey Baby in Mini Jaya, Laketown. Minar, Bijoli, Chhabighar, Prachi, etc. were fixed for regional cinema or say Bengali movies. In 2003, famous Bengali director Tarun Majumder screened one of the best movies of that time - ‘Aalo’ in Nandan Cinema and it was a blockbuster hit. Rituparno Ghosh, another famous director, made some historical movies like ‘Abohoman’ (City Centre I), ‘Nouka Dubi’ (City Centre II), and ‘Chitrangada’ (Nandan Cinema). Apart from these, Bengali commercial movies like ‘I love You’, ‘Challenge’, ‘Premi’, etc. also did a good business across Bengal,” he said.