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Bata, who left indelible footprint in India, dies
WASHINGTON: Maybe it has to do with Tata, but most Indians think Bata is an Indian shoe company. In fact, it is originally a Czech entity, having been founded in 1894 in the town of Zlin by Tomas Bata, ninth generation descendant of a family of cobblers and shoemakers, and the father of Thomas Bata, who died in Toronto on Monday at age 94.
Bata's India connection, and vice-versa, is based on a sound footing, the shoe empire scion's wife Sonja Bata joked to this correspondent in 2006 interview in Toronto, where much of the family settled down. When Tomas Sr died in an aircrash in 1932, the apprentice son, who was only 18, took over the company even as the sound of Nazi jackboots was getting louder. He began to expand the company, first to escape the Nazis (and then the communists) arriving in undivided India in the mid-1930s and traveling from Karachi to what is now Kolkata. "We just loved it," Sonja Bata recalled, "It became part of our lives."
In time, Bata would become, like Tata, a very 'Indian' entity, with operations in eponymous towns such as Batanagar and Bataganj in India, and Batapur in Pakistan (most Pakistanis too believe Bata is a Pakistani company). Although Bata would go on to operate in more than 50 countries, the Indian sub-continent, lacking an organized footwear industry in those days, became its favored market.
The Batas themselves became steeped in Indian culture and history, returning to country several times a year. Sonja Bata's present to this correspondent as she conducted me around the remarkable Bata Shoe Museum in Toronto was a book titled ''Feet and Footwear in Indian Culture.''
Astonishing as the museum was, with its myriad kinds of footwear, including gold and silver padukas hundreds of years old, nothing compared to Mrs Bata's private collection of some of the most historic footwear to walk the earth. That evening, she showed me the plain black pumps Mrs Indira Gandhi was wearing when she was assassinated (sent to her, she said, by Rajiv Gandhi). Mexican president Vicente Fox had just mailed her his dusty knee-high boots he had worn during his election campaign.
But Mrs Bata was weighed down by the most remarkable acquisition missing from the collection at that time. A few weeks earlier, thieves had stolen a pair of bejeweled slippers belonging to the Nizam of Hyderabad, which she had bought in 1999 from a collector in Hong Kong. Encrusted with diamonds, rubies and emeralds and embroidered with gold, the slippers were valued at $ 160,000, but to Sonja Bata, they were priceless — a piece of history from her their beloved India.
As it turned out, the man who stole the slippers returned them after a national outrage, including a story in the Toronto Star with a screaming headline: I Want My Slippers Back! Even thieves, it seemed, did not wish to sully the Bata contribution to the history of footwear.
WASHINGTON: Maybe it has to do with Tata, but most Indians think Bata is an Indian shoe company. In fact, it is originally a Czech entity, having been founded in 1894 in the town of Zlin by Tomas Bata, ninth generation descendant of a family of cobblers and shoemakers, and the father of Thomas Bata, who died in Toronto on Monday at age 94.
Bata's India connection, and vice-versa, is based on a sound footing, the shoe empire scion's wife Sonja Bata joked to this correspondent in 2006 interview in Toronto, where much of the family settled down. When Tomas Sr died in an aircrash in 1932, the apprentice son, who was only 18, took over the company even as the sound of Nazi jackboots was getting louder. He began to expand the company, first to escape the Nazis (and then the communists) arriving in undivided India in the mid-1930s and traveling from Karachi to what is now Kolkata. "We just loved it," Sonja Bata recalled, "It became part of our lives."
In time, Bata would become, like Tata, a very 'Indian' entity, with operations in eponymous towns such as Batanagar and Bataganj in India, and Batapur in Pakistan (most Pakistanis too believe Bata is a Pakistani company). Although Bata would go on to operate in more than 50 countries, the Indian sub-continent, lacking an organized footwear industry in those days, became its favored market.
The Batas themselves became steeped in Indian culture and history, returning to country several times a year. Sonja Bata's present to this correspondent as she conducted me around the remarkable Bata Shoe Museum in Toronto was a book titled ''Feet and Footwear in Indian Culture.''
Astonishing as the museum was, with its myriad kinds of footwear, including gold and silver padukas hundreds of years old, nothing compared to Mrs Bata's private collection of some of the most historic footwear to walk the earth. That evening, she showed me the plain black pumps Mrs Indira Gandhi was wearing when she was assassinated (sent to her, she said, by Rajiv Gandhi). Mexican president Vicente Fox had just mailed her his dusty knee-high boots he had worn during his election campaign.
But Mrs Bata was weighed down by the most remarkable acquisition missing from the collection at that time. A few weeks earlier, thieves had stolen a pair of bejeweled slippers belonging to the Nizam of Hyderabad, which she had bought in 1999 from a collector in Hong Kong. Encrusted with diamonds, rubies and emeralds and embroidered with gold, the slippers were valued at $ 160,000, but to Sonja Bata, they were priceless — a piece of history from her their beloved India.
As it turned out, the man who stole the slippers returned them after a national outrage, including a story in the Toronto Star with a screaming headline: I Want My Slippers Back! Even thieves, it seemed, did not wish to sully the Bata contribution to the history of footwear.
