Society

The Chawlas -- the extended family at this point numbered 20 -- did not go all the way, but preferred to hop off at Karnal in Haryana, some 130 kilometres from Old Delhi. The family moved into the first available vacant building: a mosque approximately 15x18 feet, with no doors and just a dirty well in one corner. Chawla and his father set out to seek food. Chawla recalls cleaning up the 60-foot well and searching for a job, while his father teamed up with a relative and set up a small shop.

However, the strain told on the elder Chawla, who fell ill a few months after the family settled down in Karnal. For Chawla junior, that was when life began in earnest. He remembers his first job, as an attendant in a shop that sold chutneys and such. "I was to carry the big chutney containers from the rear of the shop to the front when customers required it. On my first day on the job, a big jar fell from my hand and broke. I was fired," Chawla recalls.

When he talks of those days, he is emotionless -- it is almost as if, having seen it all, having endured it all, he can no longer be roused by mere memories. His next job was as an assistant in what was then Karnal's only automobile workshop (the town in fact had only a couple of motor vehicles), on a lordly salary of Rs 10 per month. He worked for eight months without receiving a paisa. On the eve of Diwali, Chawla asked his employer for his salary. He remembers the disdain on the face of the employer, as he thrust an Rs 5 note into his hand. "I didn't take the money. I ran away crying," Chawla recalls.

Amidst such gratuitous cruelty, came brief moments of respite - a colleague in the garage, for instance, gave him Rs 5 to buy new clothes. Chawla's restless mind hit upon an idea: to manufacture small and cheap metal boxes for storage. He started making three to four boxes each day, an endeavour that fetched him around 10 annas.

After some months, he gave up box making, and started selling soap. "I carried them on my head, and went around the locality," Chawla said. But when that too failed to click, he shifted to selling groundnuts and later, dates. He wouldn't give up -- that was not in his nature. Chawla moved on to selling toffee at Karnal station, his customers the refugees who continued to pour in from across the border.

It was then that he finally found his niche - Chawla went back to making boxes, this time for the hordes of refugees who had thronged Karnal with nothing to store the rations the government was distributing. He began selling five to 10 boxes a day, and the business boomed as shops too began demanding his wares. Shortly thereafter, he married Sanjogta Kharbanda, the educated daughter of a doctor who, too, had fled the horrors of Partition. As the business prospered, the family expanded -- daughters Sunita and Deepa came first, then son Sanjay, then the baby of the family, Kalpana, in 1961.

Sunita remembers the box manufacturing shop. "The shop was there till I was in Class VIII," Sunita, who went onto secure a gold medal in Masters from Punjab University, recalls.

Chawla tried his hand in running a textile shop in partnership, but that did not last long. The experience however helped him in setting up an exclusive showroom of Binny Textiles, which dominated India's retail textile market before Dhirubhai Ambani came on the scene with Reliance. The Binny's showroom was a major success, and Chawla admits earning "much beyond my expectations". It was during this period that Chawla bought a second-hand scooter for himself - a rarity in Karnal.

A tyre burst, one day - and again, the seemingly innocuous incident was to prove a turning point in the saga of the Chawlas. "I went to Punjab for a new tyre. But they said it was not available," he recalls. He asked his younger brother who was staying in Delhi to get him one, but failed again. Finally, Chawla went to Delhi and began scouting Delhi's markets for a new scooter tyre.

Near Gurudwara Rakabganj, Chawla finally found someone who could get him a new tyre, but on two conditions: he had to deposit the amount in advance, and wait for a few days. It was weeks before Chawla finally managed to procure the tyre he needed. Most people, in such situations, would have fumed. Chawla, tempered by his trials, however pondered the tyre shortage in Indian markets, then dominated by foreign brands such as Goodyear and Dunlop.

"Immediately after returning to Karnal, I advertised for people with the technical know-how of tyre manufacturing." Many applied, fully as many scoffed at his idea of setting up a tire-manufacturing plant with self-designed machinery and told him only international companies could do it.

Chawla however found two young engineers willing to buy into his quixotic idea -- and that was the genesis of Super Tyres. The new factory was located a few kilometres from Karnal, on the road to Delhi. "After about one-and-a-half years, when the machines were being assembled, both the engineers left the job." By then, Chawla had sunk all his money into the project, his children were growing up, and he was out of funds.

His younger brother came visiting, from Delhi. "Your ship is sinking," the brother said. "When the ship sinks, the captain also goes with it," Chawla responded. The younger brother returned, in tears, to Delhi - then called his brother and told him to go ahead and not worry about the money. With his brother's support and his family's backing, Chawla pushed ahead. He hired new engineers, continued designing machinery, and refused to give up when the early prototypes failed.

Finally, in 1969, Chawla's machines began functioning. Chawla believes his was the first company in Asia that produced tyres with "indigenous technology". Whatever the merit of that belief, Super Tyres began cutting into the market share of the majors.

Meahwhile, his children were growing up, and proving to be intelligent. In fact, Chawla saw nothing special about Kalpana, in that respect. Chawla by then was leading a hectic life, travelling extensively within India and outside, visiting his offices around India and attending tyre exhibitions in Europe and the US. Son Sanjay joined the Karnal flying school, and Kalpana, engineering classes. Ironically, by then Chawla was so busy he was unaware his youngest daughter had opted for Aeronautical Engineering -- of no use to the owner of a flourishing tire business. "I thought my son and Kalpana would join me in the business," he recalls.

(to be continued)