small piece of cardboard match is precious for me he says many ask why he risks stockpiling hazardous matchsticks and turns his bedroom into a tinderbox bhatt is unmoved hes innovative with matchsticks transforming them into amitabh bachchans portrait or a variety designs in fact such is his love for big b that he has thousands of matchboxes with the celebritys face his movies and dialogues bhatt has never puffed at a cigarette but his majority clients and contacts are smokers as they are the repository of matchboxes once we went to a fair police were grappling with the security situation everybody had to empty their pockets at checkpoint and to my surprise every second person was junking matchboxes into the bin the next thing i remember doing was rushing to the security guard and requesting him to let me collect those matchboxes at first they thought i was eccentric and refused after much persuasion they allowed me to collect the matchboxes but without the sticks i did not enter the fair premises but i was the happiest man that night he said his collections have gone up after marriage earlier i was indifferent to his hobby but now whenever i go shopping and see a matchbox lying on the road i pick it up his face lights up as if its the best gift he can get said wife tripti bhatt my two daughters support me and also help me increase my collection but my mother was my biggest motivation in those times seeing a matchbox in the hands of a boy was nothing less than sin but my mother understood my hobby and encouraged me says bhatt he grew up in a small town in neemuch district i remember there was an elephant man in our village tall haggard and deformed children would be excited to see him but my eyes were stuck on a matchbox he held i went up to him and asked for it but he shooed me away saying dont demand big things from big men disheartened i ran to my mother and asked for help without a blink of an eye she went to the man and bargained for the matchbox at that time my mother paid rs 5 just to make me happy from that day i have never looked back on what people say this is my passion and i will continue to be called the matchbox man he said