Pratap Bhogilal Journey Through Life

Author(s): Rauf Ahmed
Publisher: Bhupendra Singh Anand

Page 27

THE JOURNEY | 21
business. Bapaji sent Popatkaka and Maneklalmama to Japan in 1926 - Popatkaka on pearl business and Maneklalmama to scout around for agencies in the engineering area for Batliboi. There they met Miki Moto, who was the founder of cultured pearl business and our firm became his agents in India.
I happened to meet the legendary Miki Moto on his island near Kobe when I first went to Japan in 1948. Miki Moto was in his 90s then, an extremely genial, soft-spoken man. He explained to me (through Miura, who was our agent in Japan) how he had come upon the business of growing 'cultured pearls, which are known the world over as 'Miki Moto pearls' Miki Moto later set up his own office in Mumbai. Our association with Popatkaka and Nagarkaka lasted for several years until Popatkaka started another business with his brother-in-law and retired from New Pearls Agency as the business name was changed a few years before.
Nagarkaka continued with us till he died in 1962.Some years after Nagarkaka's death, Bapaji retired from the business at the request of Nagarkaka's sons.
Bapaji was a simple, soft-spoken man but was always blunt in expressing himself
Bapaji was always well-groomed and proper. He was slim and dressed very elegantly. He wore a white dhoti of the finest Egyptian and Indian cotton produced by Shree Ram Mills. Over his white shirt, he wore a knee-length white or black cotton coat. There were button-holes on both flaps of the coat held together by ordinary buttons which were connected like cufflinks.On special occasions, he would wear gold buttons. He wore a black cap or, sometimes, an embroidered cream-coloured cap. He followed a strictly disciplined lifestyle. Though he was simple, soft-spoken and circumspect in whatever he said, he was always blunt in making his point!
My father could instinctively recognise the character of a person as soon as he walked in. Once it so happened that a very well dressed person
I am I plus my surroundings, and if I do not preserve the latter,
I do not preserve myself - Jose Ortega y Gasset