Meet Rakesh Vaid, the lord of 32, 000 keyrings’

New Delhi: In 1979, when typist Rakesh Vaid was gifted a key ring by a colleague for keying in a few extra pages, little did he know that 38 years later he would be the proud owner of a massive collection of 32,000 key rings.
Initially the passion began with purchasing every key ring that he could lay his hands on, but a growing financial crunch that made it difficult for Vaid to keep money aside for his indulgence, led him to make the key rings himself. “I was so passionate that after getting my salary, the first thing I did was to buy key rings. But, as the prices increased, I had to look for alternatives to fuel my passion.
So, I decided to make them myself,” Vaid, 63, told. Soon after, thermocol, plastic sheets, chart papers, and cardboards became his friends and great personalities began getting packaged in tiny fibre glass frames, dangling from metalling chains.
Today his collection features over 1200 key rings each on Prime Minister Narendra Modi and cricket legend Sachin Tendulkar, 1100 on acting star Rajinikant and 1,500 on Bollywood star Amitabh Bachchan.
‘I wish to gift my collection to respective personalities if I ever get a chance to meet them,’ he says. The key rings have photographs that tell the stories of the eventful lives of these personalities.
Vaid has also made key rings on all Indian presidents and prime ministers since Independence, besides a separate collection of 500 rings on Mahatma Gandhi.
He recently gifted a series of key rings on APJ Abdul Kalam to the former president’s family for his memorial in Rameshwaram.
While Vaid’s mother and wife did not approve of his interest initially, he says he found great support in his father and later his daughter, who contributed immensely to his collection. His 31-year-old daughter Neha who lives in Mumbai, continues to bring him key rings every time she visits.
Apart from setting 260 records, he also has to his credit the world’s largest key ring –- a 10-foot Titanic ship — and the smallest, a replica of the Indian national flag. Vaid continues to add to his collection with a new set of key rings that he has been making out of matchboxes, hoping to make a record of 50,000 key rings by June this year. (PTI)