Bata, who left indelible footprint in India, dies

WASHINGTON: Maybe it has to do withTata, but most Indians think Bata is an Indian shoe company. In fact, it isoriginally a Czech entity, having been founded in 1894 in the town of Zlin byTomas Bata, ninth generation descendant of a family of cobblers and shoemakers,and the father of Thomas Bata, who died in Toronto on Monday at age94.Bata's India connection, and vice-versa, is based on a soundfooting, the shoe empire scion's wife Sonja Bata joked to this correspondent in2006 interview in Toronto, where much of the family settled down. When Tomas Srdied in an aircrash in 1932, the apprentice son, who was only 18, took over thecompany even as the sound of Nazi jackboots was getting louder. He began toexpand the company, first to escape the Nazis (and then the communists) arrivingin undivided India in the mid-1930s and traveling from Karachi to what is nowKolkata. "We just loved it," Sonja Bata recalled, "It became part of ourlives."In time, Bata would become, like Tata, a very 'Indian'entity, with operations in eponymous towns such as Batanagar and Bataganj inIndia, and Batapur in Pakistan (most Pakistanis too believe Bata is a Pakistanicompany). Although Bata would go on to operate in more than 50 countries, theIndian sub-continent, lacking an organized footwear industry in those days,became its favored market.The Batas themselves became steeped inIndian culture and history, returning to country several times a year. SonjaBata's present to this correspondent as she conducted me around the remarkableBata Shoe Museum in Toronto was a book titled ''Feet and Footwear in IndianCulture.''Astonishing as the museum was, with its myriad kinds offootwear, including gold and silver padukas hundreds of years old, nothingcompared to Mrs Bata's private collection of some of the most historic footwearto walk the earth. That evening, she showed me the plain black pumps Mrs IndiraGandhi was wearing when she was assassinated (sent to her, she said, by RajivGandhi). Mexican president Vicente Fox had just mailed her his dusty knee-highboots he had worn during his election campaign.But Mrs Bata wasweighed down by the most remarkable acquisition missing from the collection atthat time. A few weeks earlier, thieves had stolen a pair of bejeweled slippersbelonging to the Nizam of Hyderabad, which she had bought in 1999 from acollector in Hong Kong. Encrusted with diamonds, rubies and emeralds andembroidered with gold, the slippers were valued at $ 160,000, but to Sonja Bata,they were priceless ��� a piece of history from her their belovedIndia.As it turned out, the man who stole the slippers returned themafter a national outrage, including a story in the Toronto Star with a screamingheadline: I Want My Slippers Back! Even thieves, it seemed, did not wish tosully the Bata contribution to the history of footwear.