The 38-year-old film historian has expanded his collection with LP records, film booklets, lobby cards, black and white photographs and magazine covers. An MBA from Lucknow, Ausaja began his career under Amit Khanna and Mahesh Bhatt, in Plus Channel's first English soap A Mouthful of Sky.

Ausaja's passion started early, when he would collect his favourite actor Amitabh Bachchan's film posters. He soon realised that these posters were quite precious, and started collecting posters of other films too.

"I have hunted for old posters with scrap dealers, producers, old libraries and also approached a few directors," Ausaja says, explaining how he managed to get 5,000 posters.

But Ausaja does not plan to sell his priceless posters. "I have not collected them for monetary purposes," he says. "They are worth anything between a few thousand rupees to lakhs. Old movie posters are now being sold for lakhs in the international market, and collectors are laughing all the way to the bank. It has become a profession for many of these collectors."

How does he preserve his old posters? "It's hard to preserve them but I keep them in plastic bags. I am trying to get some corporate assistance also because some posters were made in the 1980s," he says

Besides his poster collection, Ausaja is also writing a book on India cinema. It will be a poster book of 200 Hindi film classics from 1931. It will be launched in June. He is writing two more books, chronicling the life and times of Dev Anand and Amitabh Bachchan.

He takes us through his favoutire posters.

Text: Rajul Hegde