About a lifetime,” he said to reviewers questioning how long it took to cull material for his seminal 2006 book, Mumbai Police. Urban historian Deepak Rao could well give that same answer to anyone asking after the enviable collections he has built of the rarest maps, publications, photographs, movie memorabilia and comic books.

The proof lies in teetering piles of these at every corner of the 67-year-old’s Queens Road home, bursting at the beams with treasures stashed since boyhood. In Standard 1 of St Xavier’s School, he thrived on sneaking in adventure comics with other brazen six-year-olds, despite this being strictly forbidden by the principal, Fr Richard Pereira. “He was as addicted to super heroes as we were, and read our confiscated copies of Tarzan and Lone Ranger,” says Rao laughing.