Adventures of a Salesman in Art World – Part 3

Through this series ‘Adventures of a salesman in art world’, Mr Chandrashekhar Ojha, former DGM Marketing of Camlin continues to share his insightful memories. Throughout his career spread across four decades, he gathered a wealth of insights about the art world through his interactions with artists and art lovers. In this third part, he shares his experiences about ‘Survey of India’ in the context of his institutional clients in Mount Abu. 

Part 3 – Survey of India 

My fathers’ library had a book called, ‘Deep Sea – High Mountains’ about the life and adventures of a surveyor, which has excited me a lot. When I went to Mt. Abu, which had SOI (Survey of India) office, I was dying to go there. Incidentally a friend of my uncle was also working there, who made my entry easier. When I reached there after a strenuous track, the old school building with sprawling gardens and riot of flowers, regaled me. They had two units housed in Mt. Abu called, ‘photo’ party, and ‘field’ party.

On my first visit I encountered a lot of complaints about products, especially drawing ink. Exploring further I learnt that though they have moved to new technology substrates like Drawing Films from Drawing Cloth or Drawing Paper, they continue to use the same ink formulated for cloth/paper. I recommended the ink formulated for film and the complaints turned into appreciation. However, they had to retrain their draftsmen to use this fast drawing ink, the results were amazing.

On my very first visit to Dehradun, I made it a point to visit the Survey of India museum and also visited the Surveyor General’s office. Looking at instruments like Theodolite, about which I had read so much and learned about the great trigonometrical study for measuring the length and breadth of the country and its features was so exciting. I don’t know if it is right or not to get involved in the business of your customer, but I did it all through and enjoyed every bit of it. Rather I feel that it is a very important reason behind whatever success I have achieved. 

I am proud that I have been able to work through the entire working chain of SOI, from making primary map from aerial photographs (photo party) to field verification (field party) to final layout to plate development (proofing party) to map production (MPO) and solve their issues with Camel products. i.e. the Map Publishing Office used a lot of water colours and brushes and during the meeting I recommended to them the best brushes we had, the Pure Sable range. The last interaction was with the proofing party in Chandigarh, which was facing issues with poster colours during proofing of different layers of maps. Again, a detailed report helped R&D to rework on the formulations to solve the issue. 

Not only this, I came across some wonderful people in SOI, one such person is Lt. Gen. (Retd.) Girish Kumar who was a Superintending Surveyor and held the rank of Captain, when I met him first in Mt. Abu and retired as the Surveyor General of India. He held many important positions in the Indian Army as well as SOI during his career. I had the privilege of meeting him on many occasions. During one such meeting while he was leading his army survey unit, he introduced me to his team as the ‘Ink Sahab’. He discussed their work and told me about the vintage truck mounted map-printing set-up, which can print the maps-on-demand for the advancing army units in the battlefield. He was one of the pioneers in map digitization and has contributed richly in the digitization of maps in India.

Another person, whom I met several times in different locations and positions, was Mr. Jaswant Rai. He was Superintending Surveyor of another party in Mt. Abu initially and was an old school officer. During one of my initial meetings, I promised him to send some literature and samples, out of which I fulfilled some and some were pending. During my next visit, he picked up a fat notebook from his desk, flipped some pages and gave an update on the promises made. Though I confessed the issues, I was surprised with the notebook and questioned him about it. According to him from the day he had joined SOI, he was maintaining a journal and documenting all important happenings and discussions daily. How proper and organized old-school this sounds today! That day onwards I became conscious of the fact, and we never had any problem though we met many times after that, not only in Mt. Abu but in Jaipur and SOI HO in Hathibadkala, Dehradun, where he was Deputy SGoI. 

I would like to quote one more instance related to the ‘Camligraph’ pens. Ajmer had an HMT unit and as in early nineties they were not doing well financially, they started using Camligraph and ink for them, No. 98. Since it was a resin bound carbon-based ink and the pens had a fine capillary for ink flow, in the dry climate of Rajasthan they started facing issues of ink coagulating in the pens. During my next visit I recommended another Camel product, Camel Indian Ink Cleaner No. 74 to clean the pens. During the next meeting they were not only happy with the solution, but rather very excited for their experiment with it. I was told that they started adding a few drops of the cleaner with the ink at the time of filling and the pens performed excellently well without any issue at all. 

Excited, as I always would be with such discovery, I wrote a report to R&D, informing them about the ‘Jugaad’ and requesting them to explore the possibilities to adopt it during the manufacturing process itself. The reply was the best dampener I have ever got. Their statement was that the product was absolutely fine and there is no need for any correction. On my repeated communications explaining that it is not a complaint but a probable solution, they stuck to their guns till, frustrated, we stopped following it. However, soon after the sharp drop in sales of Camligraph pens, Ink No. 98 and Ink Cleaner 74, these products were discontinued, and HMT also shut shop. They rightly say that common sense is not so common.

(To be continued)

Chandrashekhar Ojha