A few years ago, a 25-year-old Shreya Kasturi was strolling through a labyrinth of narrow alleys in Varanasi when she spotted a bright yellow matchbox at a paan shop. Excitedly, she handed over a Rs 10 note to buy it. But this seemed like an outrageous request to the conservative village man who refused to do so, assuming the lady wanted to smoke. She told him about her matchbox collection project and assured him multiple times but it was all in vain.
Finally, Shreya took her mother to the shop who convinced the shopkeeper to give her the box that had a picture of a farmer with his cows. And with the addition of that box Shreya’s matchbox collection touched 3,500 — a feat that seems both strange and intriguing.
Shreya’s fascination with matchboxes began in 2013 during her dissertation project. She had to use a visual medium to analyse gender, religion and India as a nation. “I decided to study matchbox labels as a form of popular…