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Anita Nair:

One of the joys of my Sunday is to spend some time with my porcelain. During the week, my day is so pressed with all I have to do and who I have to be that they are relegated to the back of my mind. But as there are Sunday painters, I am a Sunday porcelain aficionado.

I don’t actually file or catalog the few pieces I own. First I wipe the dust off carefully. I have to do this as neither my family nor household help share my enthusiasm for porcelain. The former see it as boring and the latter as too much work. Then there is also the fear of breakage. But there is a certain pleasure to this as well. For one of the joys of porcelain is its tactile charm. Like the swish of silk so the smooth cool touch of porcelain.

There is nothing more to be done then but gaze. As I would perhaps a flower or a cloud. It is a distanced passion but it is one that suffuses me with a certain joy. I wish I could date my passion for china. Sometimes I think it was ignited by a writing table in my grandmother’s house. The table itself had nothing to redeem it from the ordinary. But it had three drawers with white ceramic knobs. Ever so often, I would caress the knob as if it were a kitten. Perfectly contoured to fit within my palm, the knob, cool and sleek stoked a fervor that would rule the rest of my life. My heart gleamed... It wasn’t as if there was a method to this madness. I didn’t acquire full dinner services nor was I a true collector in that sense. Going by crests and insignias...mostly what I was attracted to were bits and pieces and then the china found me rather than vice versa. When I first moved to Bangalore 19 years ago, in a neglected corner of an antique shop I chanced upon remnants from an Edward VIII Coronation breakfast set. I knew then what a magpie must feel.