Baripada August 4 (Odisha.in) Here is a man who boasts of a collection of more then 610 newspapers in 20 different languages from 16 countries.
Meet 30 year-year-old Shashanka Shekhar Dash a resident of Deulsahi Village under Baripada municipality in Orissa’s Mayurbhanj district.
Dash, a voracious reader and writer himself, had started off by collecting Oriya dailies 12 years back. Very soon his hobby became his passion and he started hunting for rate and old newspapers published across the globe.
“I love to read books and newspapers, even old editions so I started by collecting Oriya newspapers.
Later I decided to collect newspaper from other states, say Mr. Dash, whose collection comprises of newspaper from England, USA, Sri Lanka, Italy, Tanzania, Laos, Malaysia, Switzerland, Netherlands, Japan, Saudi Arabia, Kenya, Israel, Uganda and Bangladesh.
The dailies are in different languages like English, Hindi, Urdu, Oriya, Bengali, Sanskrit, Marathi, Gujurati, Malayalam, Japanese, Nepali, Konkoni, Telugu, Kannada, Tamil, Ol-Chiki, Karbi, Punjabi, Bi-lingual (English and Oriya), Assamese etc.
“I contact editors of different newspapers over the internet and over on telephone and request letter them to send me a copy of their paper. Many of them do not respond while several others have been sending me free copies and encouraging me free copies ad encouraging me to carry on with my hobby” Dash told Odisha.in .
Dash has put his collection on exhibiting many times and is planning to organize the exhibition at United State of America and United Kingdom very soon. This plan has now under processed after the recommendation by Debasis Nayak, minister of state sports and information he will go for exhibition.
However, Chair person of Baripada municipality also plans him to exhibit his exhibition in premises of municipality campus for journalism students of North Orissa University and for public awareness, said Mr. Dash.
A journalist by profession he who works for electronic media never thinks about the finance while he purchases any new newspaper. He has been exhibited his rare collection which includes some of the oldest newspapers at the local exhibition center and exhibited the state level in Indian Institute of Mass Communication (IIMC), Dhenkanal.
Even his residence is his exhibition centre. He has also published six literary works for the children and has the distinction of registering his name as a poet in the “Who’s who of Indian Writer’s 1999” published by the ‘Sahitya Academy’ and also ‘Oriya Lekhaka Parichiti’ published by Bhubaneswar Pustak Mela Committee on 2006.
“I have enriched my knowledge by nurturing a hobby like this” say Mr. Dash.