This new museum is a crash course in Meghalaya's culture and historyMumbai, Jan 18(AZINS) "Materials used by our people and nature's bounties were gathered and shown for generations to be seen... Kindly donate so that we can heartedly serve you and your endless generations." Placed above a donation box at the Ever Living Museum, this note brings a smile.

Inaugurated in April 2015 as the latest addition to Shillong's long list of museums, is 62-year-old Kyntiewbor War's modern-day 'cabinet of curiosities', a microcosm of Meghalaya showing a collection of its tribes, stones and flowers, painstakingly put together by this 'magpie' after years of combing the picturesque northeastern state.

Now, experts may frown over missing details like provenance and date in the Khasi and English captions. Gaudy seashells or a flaky tree stump touted to be one million years old, though few, are glaring fakes. Even War's conservation techniques are limited to basic silica gel and annual 'drying' out of few artefacts in the sun.

But then War is no curator, just a 'keeper of culture' blessed with shifty feet and an untiring curiosity about cultures he encounters.

His fascination for ancient coins and pebbles began at age 10. He would scale tall limestone formations just to watch orchids grow or scour for unusual stones. When reprimanded by elders for venturing into the unstable Krem Shelm Khla caves alone, he awed them with his variegated stone findings that renewed the interest of locals to preserve the caves. Stones, in his college geology department and later, travels across remote Meghalaya as engineer with the state's water supply and sanitation department, kept his interest in rocks perennial.

Once, on his way to inspect a water tank at an interior village (War is mum about its whereabouts) he chanced upon a school being built from slivers of agate and onyx mixed with cement – its locals ignorant about this precious 'mortar.' In 1998, on a land survey near Nongnam village, he discovered the Phud Khongpong cave – rich in calcium waterfalls, needle-thin stalactites and curtain-like dripstones.

"I request god and nature before every outing to give me something worthy to add to my museum."

Until last year, his collections lived in boxes, exposed to a select few. "But, I realised my life would be useless if I didn't expose this 'wealth', especially our dying traditions, to the public."

So, War sold off land and gathered funds from friends to build the one-storey 'ethnographic' museum of Khasi, Garo and Jainthia artefacts, converted the garage to house his 'stone' collection and pruned the garden into a horticulturist's delight.

It's this garden you first see upon entering. War is proud of his 75 varieties of orchids, cherry blossoms, plums, walnuts, chestnuts, pomegranates and peaches.

The ethnographic space has the replica of a Khasi hut from Lyngkyrdem village. Other attractions are bamboo rings intertwined into a coded message, statue of a kneeling man with a cockroach back, rhino shield, gourd and bamboo 'water bottles', rows of twisted driftwood barks like eerie art installations, swords of Khasi tribes and much more.

Contributions from his family include a 100-litre capacity black Khra pot that War's great grandmother brought from Pakistan to ferment betel nut. And an ivory beard comb belonging to a relative who was a descendent of Khasi chief Tirot Sing Syiem, who was killed by the British. Seeing his efforts at keeping culture alive, locals have gifted or sold their heirlooms to War. A 116-year-old flautist from West Khasi Hills, for instance, handed War his flute before passing away while a Nokma or tribe leader's wife donated her ancient Bara marang silk shawl — neither trusted their progeny with these heirlooms.

There are notes from friends of War's, a parade of helmets recording a 1986 Kynshi river rafting excursion and photographs of a 1998 expedition to Ki Krem Jong caves with Americans — both expeditions headed by War. War pays tribute to his late mother with a silhouette wrapped in her Jain Kup (overcoat), tapmoh (merino wool head wrap), nara (tunic) and knup (sun umbrella).

Immaculate white walls of his stone museum make War's stone treasures stand out on the glass shelves. Some exhibits are quirky – coiled resins from trees and burnt coal, ores with orange veins or magnetic ones to which metal nails cling and variegated quartz, sillimanite crystals and palm-sized Stone Age tools (the one with a foot impression could have been a child's slipper). There are two 'globes' — a Mawkhan stone that can be lifted only after praying to the gods and a Garo bachelor stone, a 'rustic dumbbell' for heavy weightlifting. More than stones, the fossils – starfish, worm, snake, centipede and ferns – intrigue. War's own photographs of Meghalaya on the walls appear like pages from a '60s National Geographic. Like Garo female dancers in feather and metal finery, farmhands using age-old bamboo or metal implements, and prominent waterfalls and bridges.

War wants to add a photo gallery, library and information centre. The entry fee, Rs 50 for adults and Rs 25 for children, doesn't set the cash register ringing. He had approached the Northeast Council (NEC) for funds while building this museum space and now again, but in vain. So have requests to the tourism department for signboards of the museum at junctions. Brochures at local restaurants have meagre impact. "I can only rely on social networking sites and word-of-mouth," he says.