Day Two :
My day two had started , it was the day to visit the Haveli’s of Mandawa for which i was here and was eagerly waiting for night to pass out. Day had started well , we were back on road , already had witnessed a man making Laakh ki Chudiyan (bangles) , wife was also happy as she had done her part of shopping. Now it was my turn to explore Mandawa.
My main target was to see as much of haveli’s as i could in the time left for me in that day , as we have to start our journey back to Delhi as well. But life is always full of surprises , some unusual things do happen or i see whenever i am on trip , things of which i have never thought of or heard off, and same thing happened with me when i reached to Sneh Ram Lada Haveli of Mandawa.
This haveli’s guard has his own shop of antiques , though the owner ( dont know how many from 40 partners) allowed him to open his shop he has no issues till the time the haveli is not converted into a Museum.
This shop was something like a junk yard for me when i entered it , but in some 2 minutes only it had started showing its colours to me.
These watches were the first thing which caught my attention , as watches are the second most loved accessory by me after my camera , though i saw one Pentax reel camera also of which he said it is in working condition sir.
Whatever i touched had dust on it , but it is very common when one enters an antique shop , dust helps them making a thing look more older then they are. Small bowls kept here and there on the floor , some had coins in them and some had watches , shaving blades and razor even.
The owner of the shop claimed , “every item has been purchased by our team members who travel around the country and fetch these items, some directly from the owner and some from other antique shops”
But something which he showed me in the last , was thing which had caught my attention the most and infact i tried to buy it also.
It was the ” Most complicated lock ever seen by me” , though my grand father also have one lock which doesnt have any hole , its key is electromagnetically charged and we just have to touch it on one side of lock and lock opens , till date it was the most complicated lock i had seen but this one had given it a back seat.
This typical , solid iron made lock had 3 keys and which were to be used 4 times to get it unlocked.
The owner showed me how to open it and trust me it took atleast a minute for him to open it.
” First he had to put the back holder of one of the key around that rocket shaped pointer of the lock and twist it , that rocket shaped pointer came out from the lock and we got our first hole and then twist the same key clockwise to get the second hole .
On doing this lock raised a bit , and a second hole came at the side of the lock , then another key to be put there and twisted same way.
Now was the final thing , a third hole came in front when he twisted the key on side as lock raised again a bit , then third key was used in this hole and atlast we could see the lock being unlocked”.
I was lost so much into seeing the method that i forgot to make his video.
Things were not ending here , he showed me one more lock , though for me it was much simpler than this.
This lock would hang on the door like a scorpio is biting the bolt of the door , it had its hole at the back side which was much like a hollow strip , but for me the contest was won by the previous Most complicated lock. Surprising thing was that it was very much in working condition , no extra effort was added in opening and he told me that this lock is atleast some 80 yrs old , which he bought from some haveli in Gujarat.
