Football Ephemera from the Apurba Kumar Panda Collection

This exhibition concludes with a remarkable selection of football ephemera from the private collection of the renowned collector Apurba Kumar Panda. Bringing together scrapbook pages, membership cards, chapbooks, rare photographs, match tickets and sporting journals, these materials illuminate the everyday worlds of football culture. Among the highlights are informal photographs of Chuni Goswami and P. K. Banerjee relaxing during an overseas tour, and a coveted ticket from the historic 1977 match between Mohun Bagan and Pelé’s Cosmos. Also displayed are pages from colonial-era sports periodicals featuring Indian clubs and British military teams, alongside cartoons, advertisements and visual commentary on the game. Individually modest but collectively extraordinary, these objects preserve the memories, emotions and stories that official records often overlook. They remind us that the history of football in Bengal was shaped not only on the field, but also in albums, scrapbooks, collections and cherished personal archives.