This man is sure he’ll leave his stamp

His fascination with philately began when he was a 12-year-old. Bored spending lazy afternoons in his father’s cycle shop, he befriended the postman. ‘‘No one who came to our house left without being served tea’’, recalls Shenoy, amidst answering ‘‘all the best’’ calls hours before his departure. ‘‘So the postman would give me stamps as we waited for tea. I was fascinated by the colour schemes.’’

The fascination grew until, 14 years ago, Shenoy met an elderly Parsi gentleman. ‘‘He saw me poring through stamp catalogues; we started chatting and then he got angry when he found out I wasn’t specialising in anything’’, says Shenoy. ‘‘At his insistence, I chose a specific subject in philately.’’

Being a sports enthusiast (he was a national kho-kho player), Shenoy drifted towards the Olympics. ‘‘Sourcing the stamps was difficult in the begining’’, he says, but he was hooked. When his employers sent him to London, he even skipped lunch to hunt for stamp vendors.

Encouraged by friends, he held his first exhibition in 1992 at Nehru Centre, coinciding with the Barcelona Games. Many accolades later, he made it to the Atlanta Olympics in 1996. And returned with a bronze. ‘‘I was a different man after that’’, says Shenoy.

Sydney 2000 saw Shenoy exhibiting his book Olympics, A Philately Journey Through The Eras, and finished with silvers in the exhibition and literature categories.

Shenoy’s taking it one notch higher this time: He has his stamps and two books — one on the history of the Winter Olympics and Total Football, a philatelic study of football.

Today, the stamps are worth Rs 15 lakh but Shenoy insists it’s not just about the money: It’s a passion.

And to illustrate why, he shows you a stamp issued by the Dominican Republic in 1956. ‘‘India has eight Olympic gold medals in hockey, yet the Dominican Republic issued a stamp that featured a Sardar playing hockey with the tricolour in the background. Amazing, isn’t it?’’