Record-holder backs Hillary’s no-lapel pin look

Behind his office door, a dark-green-blazer-clad Hillary Clinton has frozen in the middle of a speech on the quality of global healthcare. This blown-up photo is one of many symptoms of businessman Arvind Sinha’s faith in the US presidential candidate “who has made tremendous strides for the American political system and has been one of the most successful foreign secretaries”. No wonder when people criticised Clinton for not wearing the American flag pin on her blazer to the presidential debate last month, Sinha wished they would grow up. “She is American by heart,” says the Versova-based obsessive lapel pin collector who — despite being spoilt for choice — does not wear a miniature metallic Indian flag below his collar for the same reason. “The loyalty is inside.”

A former president of Lions Club International in Andheri, 60-year-old Sinha has entered the

Limca Book of Records

this year for his grand collection of nearly 1lakh of these tiny pins from 80 countries. Usually worn near the heart, lapel pins first gained popularity when Americans donned them to show support for presidential candidates. It was on a pin showing

Abraham Lincoln

that many first saw the leader’s face. “It denotes your affiliation,” says Sinha, adding that a few could be ornamental. Apart from serious pins on the Civil War and World War II, for instance, his bounty boasts around 1,000 fancy pins including one that says, ‘Down with Saddam Hussein’ and a cheeky US election pin that shows Hillary Clinton behind bars issued in the wake of Donald Trump’s comment: “Hillary has to go to jail”. The only Lions member in the world to have entered the Guinness World Records (in 2012) for his collection, Sinha has amassed enough pins to never bother repeating one. Still, his hoarder pangs surface when you inform him about the lapel pins that 270 Vietnam veterans received last week to commemorate 50 years of the United States’ involvement in the Vietnam war. “If you find one, can you get it for me?”

An incorrigible hoarder who collects buttons, miniature flags, identity cards and seemingly even pets (he has seven dogs), Sinha’s obsession with lapel pins began in 1998, soon after he became “a Lion”. What started as a rash of theme-based collections covering horses, birds, football, guns and NASA, greedily escalated into a more widespread itch spanning the gamut from Indian Army pins to world history pins. On his trips abroad, the president of the Textile Association of India scoured all kinds of pins. Many came from generous ex-armymen in the US and also the house purges of local Lions members. In fact, five years ago, Sinha inherited 7,000-odd pins from two deceased Mumbai-based club members who had willed their collection to him. “Collectors usually pass them on to people who will keep the pins alive and circulating,” says Sinha, who has spent close to Rs 5 lakh so far on his bounty.

Shrouded in plastic and resting on beds of orange foam, his collection now occupies a chunk of his office, warehouse, home and his son’s flat in London besides his imagination. For the frequent flier, these pins are ice-breakers. They act as a cue for Lions members abroad to instinctively shake hands with him, they make other strangers — like a few men in

Afghanistan

who borrowed his pin and stuck it to their kameez — come up to him and ask what ‘lapel’ means. “It is the flap below the collar,” Sinha says.

To Sinha, a history buff who tends to mail historians questions such as “Before tranquilisers, how were wartime injuries treated?” and “How did the British forces distribute salaries among soldiers?”, these enamelled pieces of metal are alloys of beauty and perspective. “You can learn a lot, especially about the Civil War, through them,” says Sinha.

As a part-time art dealer who can gauge from brush strokes if the artist has had a fight with his spouse, Sinha believes: “Anything lasts longer if you can explain it.” He can explain every little thing in his cluttered office —the painting of a Russian landlord drinking tea, framed South African police badges, towers of history books like ‘Japanophobia’ and ‘Soviet Aircraft’. “They help keep my throat clear,” says the record holder, who is often invited by schools and colleges to talk about his collection.

Besides local fame, the Guinness logo — that adorns the windshields of his three cars and his office door — has also been good for business. Once, after a futile meeting with a bank chairman whom Sinha had approached with a request for sponsorship, the record holder handed him his visiting card and left. Soon, a guard accosted Sinha at the entrance saying the chairman had beckoned him. “He had noticed the Guinness logo,” recalls Sinha.

It helps that his wife, Archana, not only tolerates his hobby but adds to it by gifting him pins. The easiest route to her man’s heart, she knows, is through his lapel.