Pratap Bhogilal Journey Through Life

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

Page 93

THE JOURNEY
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in India. Batliboi had sent their engineers to be trained at Barber Colman. The machines became very popular in India and Batliboi sold about 350 to 400 machines.
My trip to the USA was very fruitful too. While leaving, I asked Frederick to book two brand new Cadillac cars with General Motors, a sedan and a seven-seater. The sedan arrived after a year or so. It cost me Rs.13,000 inclusive of duty. I think the import duty then was 10 percent and the rate of exchange was Rs. 4 to a dollar. The seven-seater cost around Rs.31,000. It was the first car to have electrical winding for the glass windows.
Trip to Europe in 1948
In 1948 from Jan/March, as I mentioned earlier I had to go to Europe, after the cotton bales were shipped out of Karachi.
Later in June, I went again to Europe on our normal business and again in November I went to Japan. On the way I had a stopover in Shanghai which had just emerged from war and at that time Chiang Kai Seik was the Prime Minister. Shanghai was badly battered during the war and was in a comparatively bad state. I have already mentioned earlier my account of the visit to Japan.
I went abroad several times after that. In 1948, when I was in Europe, Mr. Heyrbick asked me not to go to Czechoslovakia because the government had changed and the communists had taken over. However, this did not affect our business since the machine tool group was taken over by an organisation called Strojimport. The 1948 trip was critical. The Bombay Cotton Export Import Company had a branch in Karachi, and because of the riots following the Partition of India, 14,000 bales of our cotton were lying open in Karachi. They were shipped out urgently. So I had to meet our cotton agents in Paris, Hamburg, Milan and Liverpool to sell off our stock that was shipped out of Karachi. A day after we had shipped our cotton stock out, the government of Pakistan imposed export duty on cotton. We escaped it by a whisker. The trip also brought me in contact with a cotton supplier Mr. Ben Lassin through our agent in Paris, Maurice Devildere,
Willful waste brings woeful want - Thomas Fuller