Adventures of a Salesman in Art World – Part 7

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 seventh part, he shares his experiences while interacting with clients across Udaipur and Ajmer territories in Rajasthan while he was entrusted to implement the ‘SAFAI Scheme’ of Camlin.

Part 7 – ‘Expanding Horizons’

Camlin has been making many experiments in operational systems, and one such experiment, introduced in the end of eighties, was to vertically bifurcate the product range (of Art Material division) between sales representatives and merge their territories, so that one can focus on particular product group fetching better results. The groups were titles SAFAI and WIP, which were abbreviations of the product groups covered. It’s no surprise that in this scheme I was entrusted with SAFAI (School Art, Fine Art & Instruments) and my area of operation was extended to Udaipur, Ajmer etc.

Since Jodhpur had no art college and very few artists, I was very excited with this new arrangement. On my first visit to Udaipur I connected with many artists and also visited the artists’ group TAKHMAN – 28. This is probably the only art group with its own campus. This campus is situated in a beautiful part of the city and has been well cultivated and cared for. I was highly impressed with the fact that the senior most members like Dr Suresh Sharma and Mr L L Verma used to visit it every day after work to take care of it and so all others would also come and contribute. When I first visited it had one hall and a couple of rooms, whereas now it has everything needed by an artist, like facilities for exhibition and studio space for artists, including sculptors, print makers etc.

Since my old friend from Abu Road, Dr. Vishnu Mali was a member, I soon connected with all other member artists and many became friends for life. Apart from TAKHMAN 28, Udaipur had one more prominent art group called Aaj, headed by Prof Choyal. Though I had no inroads here, like with TAKHMAN, I used to call on all the members and cultivated good relations with them as well. Most of the artist there used to work as art educators in schools or colleges and also in other government departments like WZCC, Tribal museum etc. However, one of them Mr Abbas Batliwala, who has developed a unique figurative style had a spice shop, where we generally used to meet him. It was sort of funny that he would keep on doing his business and also talk with us on colours and mediums. A few like Mr Lalit Sharma, came from a prominent miniature artists’ family.

One thing surprised me that that though Udaipur, as well as Jaipur had a BA with painting course, where the student has only one paper of art out of other 4 or 5 for 3 years, which is not considered enough to make someone a professional artist. However, in this case, almost everyone used to paint professionally. The answer came to me much later in my career as someone told me that it was due to the local miniature painting eco-system.  This is the correct hypothesis as many artists from these places have developed their style from local painting and other art traditions, like Mr Shail Choyal, Mr Abbas Batliwala and others. But I must appreciate the efforts taken by the seniors in creating the right mind set and ecosystem, which motivated the people to remain creatively engaged.

Ajmer was also a very exciting place to visit, mainly due to the famed Mayo College. Visiting the beautiful sprawling campus of Mayo and Mayo Girls, visiting their art department etc. was a great experience. The art master, Mr Ashok Hazra, was a practicing artist, educator and a good person too. His wife Ms Deepika Hazra, (daughter of great artist and former Mayo AM, Late B C Gui) was the art teacher of Mayo Girls. I was excited to meet them as their children, Keshub and Madhabi, who were good artist as well and were regular winners of AICCC. Every year I used to notice and appreciate their paintings during the regional (state level) judging of AICCC.

During almost every Ajmer visit I would call upon Mayos along with other schools for promoting products and AICCC. On one such visit, I got an opportunity to visit the living quarters of Hazras, and was pleasantly surprised by their bonsai and cacti collection. It was really amazing and well cared for. Both of them are retired and settled in Ajmer. When I visited Ajmer years later with my family, we called upon them specially to show their green collection to my kids. Both of them were really happy looking at such wonderful collection of plants and meeting the generous host couple, who welcomed us with open arms.

But the person, who is most noteworthy for me in Ajmer, is Mr Ram Jaiswal, great painter, story writer, poet & a great human being, whose handwriting is as beautiful as his paintings. His water colours, especially those in Lucknow school wash technique, are a treat for eyes. I am most impressed with his humility and soft speak. He is an alumnus of Meerut and Lucknow School of Art and had spent his life teaching in DAV Ajmer. When we launched CAF in 2001, he started participating in it but never bothered for the results as it was his way of supporting the initiative. Once when I received his entry with the entry fee, I called him and told him that I am rejecting it as he is going to be on the Jury, he humbly accepted and contributed to the process. I am proud that such a person is in my universe.

Kota was also a visiting town where apart from schools, tutors & artists, visiting Instrumentation Ltd. and meeting artists and art critic Mr. Ram Kumar ji gave me a new perspective. I was highly impressed with JYOTIPATH, an in-verse translation of the selected part of the religious texts of all major Indian religions, presenting a seamless message with amazing continuity. During my first visit to Kota, I located the poet, Mr Bashir Ahmed ‘Mayookh’ and had a nice little discussion with him. Lucky me, don’t you agree with me?

Chandrashekhar Ojha