Raja Dinkar Kelkar Museum

Raja Dinkar Kelkar Museum Review

About 25 minutes due south on foot (better to take an auto-rickshaw) from Dagdu Sheth Halwai Ganpati, is the Raja Dinkar Kelkar Museum. This celebrated museum in the old city houses some 2,000 carefully catalogued daily utensils and objets d'art of metal, wood, stone, and earthenware from the remotest corners of India (18,000 items are still in storage). The range of items, accumulated over 60 years, is bewildering. The artifacts are illustrative of everyday life: coconut meat scrapers, hookahs, pots, and water containers; musical instruments, toys, lamps, locks, and ornate implements.

The household tools have been chosen on the basis of their utility and for their unusual form or design. The Chitrakathi paintings from Paithan, Maharashtra, are intriguing, as is the large Vanita Kaksha, or lady's parlor, devoted to personal and domestic objects women used. Equally fascinating is the room set up as a replica of the Mastani Mahal, which once existed at Shaniwarwada Palace, where Mastani, Baji Rao I's kept woman, lived. Do check out the poison testing lamp, a design that dates back to the Peshwa era; the lamp was used to check for poisoned food.

This collection was put together by a well-traveled Maharashtrian and award-winning poet Adnyatwasi, aka Dr. Dinkar Gangadhar Kelkar (1896-1990), who was a devoted collector of art, and his wife Kamlabai. What is most unusual about the museum is that Kelkar was an ordinary man of simple means—-not a wealthy maharaja with money to burn like most of the collectors of that era. Dinkar used most of his income and even money obtained by selling his wife's jewelry to collect the most unusual items that India had to offer. Late in life, Kelkar donated his collection of artifacts to the government for a museum in memory of his son, Raja, who died at the age of 12. The museum is housed in Kelkar's own home, a rambling peth wadas bungalow-courtyard complexes near Shaniwarwada Palace. Quite a bit off the beaten path, in somewhat dingy and dusty surroundings, the museum requires a bit of patience and real interest to make it worthwhile. If you have time, chat with Surendra Ranade, the grandson who runs the museum. He'll tell you all about the amazing poet, who was once offered a blank check for his collection by another collector, but refused. The museum's expansion plans are under way, and by about 2011 the entire collection, including the undisplayed items, will move to a 6-square-km (4-square-mi) location 10 km (6 mi) away in the village Bavdhan on the Mumbai-Bangalore highway.