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  We did not have a proper shop then. What we had was a mobile shop of sorts. Grandfather used to hire porters to carry loads of clothes and fabrics around, and sold them wherever he found customers. He was somewhat like a street vendor of today. Father started to help grandfather in the business before he was even ten years old. At family reunions, father used to tell us how our grandfather would visit the palace of the Rana prime minister with porters loaded with clothes: ‘If the load was light, he used to carry it himself. I used to go along with him wherever he went.’

  Those were the days of Prime Minister Juddha Shumsher. Grandfather used to spread out the clothes in the palace courtyard to display the latest designs of sarees and other clothing. Most of the clothes were ordered by the queens, but even if they had not placed orders, grandfather would head to the palace whenever a fresh consignment arrived from India. The queens used to select their clothes by gesturing from their khopis, or private chambers. The purdah system was in place then, and the women were not allowed to mingle with men from outside the family. Being a child, my father, however, was allowed to go straight to the queens’ private rooms to deliver the clothes they had selected. We never had to return empty-handed from the palace. The queens would always buy something, perhaps just to show off.

  Grandfather established his first proper shop in 1934, just before a powerful earthquake struck Nepal in the same year. Back then, a trader’s share of the market was not determined by merely his abilities or the quality of his merchandise. Personal allegiances and animosities, based on racial, linguistic and communal differences, also played a part. ‘That guy is a Nepali and this other guy a foreigner!’ ‘He is a local and the other guy an immigrant!’ At a time when a person’s ‘nationality’ was judged on the basis of his language, dress and the food he ate, the Marwaris were as thorns in their side for some local business families. The local traders’ grievance was that the government should have trusted in the capability of the indigenous traders instead of inviting the Marwaris to come in. They claimed this would eventually let the foreigners take control of Nepal’s trade, and undermine nationalism. In fact, the real reason they resented us was that they did not want to share the market they had monopolized for so long. However, they were not in a position to openly oppose us. To openly attack the families that had been invited to Nepal by the all-powerful Rana prime minister himself would have been perceived as a revolt against the Rana regime, and considered treason.

  However, these jealous local business families started to poison the ears of the Rana rulers. As they had good connections with the elite in the Rana oligarchy, they succeeded in convincing some of them that we and some other Marwari families who had come from India should be squeezed out. We had to wait months for petty administrative processes to be completed, whereas the local businessmen enjoyed instant service. They succeeded in turning many of the Ranas against us, though fortunately, not the prime minister himself. Had the day come when we lost his support, we would have either been deported to India, or driven out to the malaria-infested lowland belt of the Terai.

  The local traders might have succeeded in their goal had a devastating earthquake not struck the country in 1934.

  Half the city of Kathmandu was destroyed in the quake. All the old, mud-walled houses collapsed. The eleven-storeyed Dharahara tower, the pride of the capital, shrank to nine storeys high. Ghantaghar, the clock tower, was damaged. Many people lost their lives and many more were rendered homeless. At the time of the crisis, the Marwaris came to the rescue of the people. They set up camps at Tundikhel, the open space in the heart of Kathmandu, where they treated the injured and gave shelter and food to the homeless. The Marwari women cooked, while the men brought those who had been pulled out of the rubble to Tundikhel for treatment. The entire Marwari community gave whatever it could afford.

  Reports of the open camps run by the Marwaris reached the palace, and Juddha Shumsher himself came to inspect them. What he saw there was far removed from the things his brothers and other officials had been telling him about the Marwaris. These Marwaris were providing selfless service to the victims of the earthquake. Right there, Shumsher declared: ‘Where did the idea of deporting those who are providing for my people in their hour of need come from? And how dare those who are doing absolutely nothing believe themselves superior? It will be them I will take action against.’

  Those who had tried to squeeze us out got swept away themselves, while we received rewards from Juddha Shumsher, who had assumed responsibility for rebuilding the city. A few shops were constructed on Juddha Sadak (Road), and Juddha Shumsher leased one of them to my grandfather for Rs 200 a year. Later, the rent was raised to Rs 500.

  Our shop was located just opposite the present-day Bishal Bazaar supermarket. In those days, companies did not have formally registered names. Grandfather was the first person in the country to start a formal and organized clothing company, which he called Bhuramal Lunkaran Das Chaudhary.

  The earthquake that shook Kathmandu to its foundations led to the foundation of the Chaudhary Group.

  The clothing retail shop was very modest. Our family lived downtown at Indra Chowk in the capital. Every day, grandfather would visit a Ganesha temple at nearby Maru, make a round of the Basantapur area and return to Indra Chowk. There he would visit the temple of Akash Bhairab, an incarnation of Lord Shiva, before opening the shop. He never changed this routine even during the most frigid winters.

  ‘Looking at the face of a customer before looking at the face of God would bring bad luck,’ he would say.

  He built a small altar in a compartment on the top row of one of the shelves in the shop. There he placed a small statue of Lord Ganesha, who symbolizes luck, and of Laxmi, the Goddess of affluence. He would offer prayers and make offerings of sweetmeats, which he brought from the Ganesha temple. He would also make offerings into a small cash box at the shop. A swastika, symbol of good luck for the Hindus, was painted on the box in vermilion, with the auspicious words Shubha Lava written just beneath it. We still have that cash box today.

  As the strong aroma of incense permeated the shop, grandfather would settle down to business for the day, sitting on a cushion with a clean white cover. Very few people were out on Juddha Sadak that early in the morning. Only a handful of the folk from Indra Chowk and the surrounding areas would stroll along that road. Grandfather recognized each of them and knew them all by name.

  ‘Taremam!’ He would greet them waving his right hand.

  They would reply, ‘Taremam, Sahujee!’

  His neighbours and friends called him Sahujee, it being a term of respect to acknowledge his enterprising spirit. If a close friend passed by, he made it a point to invite him into the shop and share with him the sweets offered to the deities.

  He was competent in the Newari language. My father too spoke Newari fluently, as do I.

  Opening the shop so early in the morning was an exercise in public relations. Morning was when people had some leisure time. Even if a few customers came into the shop, it gave grandfather a chance to interact with the locals, get acquainted with them and build relationships. He always reminded us, ‘A good businessman doesn’t wait for people to come to him. He reaches out to them.’

  Once people were at work and there were fewer customers, he would open his ledgers. He would double and triple check the entries and make the necessary adjustments every day before he returned home late in the evening. He would go over the figures again the next day, slowly moving his lips as he calculated, dipping his pen in the ink. A person who does not take numbers seriously will never be successful in business. This is something father learnt from his father and I from mine. I am now teaching this to my sons.

  As the city was sparsely populated and quiet in those days, the chimes of the Ghantaghar clearly resonated at Juddha Sadak.

  Father used to arrive at the shop at around 10 a.m., with one hand inside his pocket and the other wiping his eyes.

  ‘You’re late again to
day,’ grandfather would chide him. ‘Had you gone to bed early, you would have woken up early in the morning.’

  Father would just smile. After cupping his hands around an oil lamp at the altar to seek blessings from the deities, he would eat the remaining sweets and then squat beside grandfather to peek at his ledgers.

  My father already had a good knowledge of the business as he had followed grandfather around selling clothes before the shop was established. As grandfather entered old age, my father began to contribute more at the shop. Father’s duties were to enter the daily transactions in the ledger, clean the shop and show the clothes to the customers. He was getting good training.

  After grandfather passed away, father got the key to the cash box. Grandfather had given my father wings and shown him the open sky. My father was full of dreams and determination, but lacking in resources.

  When I was born on 14 April 1955, father was trying his hand at enterprises beyond the shop at Juddha Sadak .

  There was a high demand for Nepali jute in the international market. Many traders in the town of Biratnagar were making good money exporting it. The jute produced in that town bordering India was considered to be the best, in both quality and quantity.

  Biratnagar had become a trading hub for the exporters because of its proximity to the port of Calcutta, now Kolkata. Father opened an office of Bhuramal Lunkaran Das Chaudhary there. That was the first branch of our company outside Kathmandu.

  The decision to open the branch was in keeping with the times. The majority of Nepali traders, who had previously limited themselves to internal trade, were now getting into import and export trade. Trade with India was growing. The Nepali towns that were close to the Indian border, such as Biratnagar, Birgunj, Bhairahawa and Nepalgunj, were growing fast.

  Father started to export jute to India and to places as far away as Europe from our Biratnagar office, and import clothing from Japan and Korea. The import trade was growing very fast, but the jute export side of the business was sluggish from the beginning. The business families of Biratnagar had almost monopolized the market, and others would have to depend on their grace to flourish. They would allow other entrepreneurs to export jute only when they had enough orders to keep their own jute mills fully functioning.

  When I was two years old, father diversified his business interests into construction.

  The construction of the Kathmandu–Trishuli road began in 1957. Father took a subcontract. He had taken a huge risk by trying his hand at an enterprise that his forefathers had never undertaken. A businessman who was selling cloth by the metre was now trying to gauge scores of kilometres of road. Father was a neophyte when it came to the construction business. He did not have a team to rely on and had no acquaintance with any of the experts whom he could have consulted. He had simply heard that the Trishuli road was being constructed with Indian assistance and that a subcontractor was required; on that basis alone, he was ready to give it a go.

  Father mostly stayed at the construction site until the road was built. Mother used to tell us that he would drop by at home for a few days and sometimes, only a few hours, and then disappear for weeks or months. Sometimes it was hard to recognize him as his face would be smeared with dirt. Sophisticated technology was not available in those days. A contractor had to employ labourers who used their bare hands to construct roads, and father was not a hands-off boss.

  ‘You learn by doing a job, not by watching it being done,’ he used to say. ‘Supervision is not about being the “big boss”. If you lend a hand, you get better results because you’re not only showing your workers that you value what they do, but also that nobody can get away with not working when you’re part of the team.’

  Though I have not travelled much on that seventy-kilometre stretch of road, its construction was an important part of the family journey that has brought us to this point. A person who has big dreams should take on tasks that push his limits. Capability is something you can acquire. This is another lesson I learnt from my father. From that point on, we have kept raising the bar for ourselves.

  The experience father gained from the road project, as well as the money he had made from it, encouraged him to take on another. The Soaltee Oberoi, a five-star hotel, was coming up in Kathmandu. Father got the contract to construct it.

  He formed a core team for the project. An engineer from Calcutta, V.K. Dhar, was one of the experts in the team. Dhar and father had become friends during father’s business trips to Calcutta. Ghan Shyam Das Dhurka, a businessman from Calcutta, was another member. Father became acquainted with him during the days of his jute export business. Dhurka used to operate a jute mill owned by the famous Birla House of India. Birla House had a policy of letting its executive employees run their own businesses, provided they duly informed the board of directors and there were no conflicts of interest. If they failed to comply with this condition, they were fired immediately. Dhurka looked after the financial management of the project.

  While Dhar was the engineer and Dhurka looked after the financial matters, the person with overall responsibility for project management was Satya Pal Sachdev. My mother treated him like her brother. In partnership with these members of the core team, father established a construction company called United Builders. His expertise grew with every project. Father had learnt to crawl with the Kathmandu–Trishuli road. When it came to the Soaltee project, he was still only a toddler. And building that five-star hotel was by no means child’s play.

  I was five or six years old at the time. I used to go along with father to the construction site, the way father followed grandfather about to the palaces of the Ranas. I still vaguely remember dozens of people working at the site, constructing the huge building.

  The royal palace had a financial interest in the construction of the Soaltee hotel. Father used to tell us that King Mahendra and Prince Himalaya would visit the site from time to time. However, Prabhakar Shumsher Rana, the great-grandson of Juddha Shumsher, was the one who handled the project on behalf of the royal family. It took almost six years for the hotel to be completed. Everybody was pleased with the end result. However, for father, his hard work did not pay off. The hotel management kept putting off payments to the contractor, citing cash flow problems. There was nothing my father could do, as it was a hotel owned by the royal family. My father has told me that even the hotel accountant, who was a good man, used to candidly tell him that he was embarrassed to face the contractor.

  Father had done his job honourably and was now being denied the payment due to him. But how could he, a businessman and a simple commoner, possibly raise his voice in any matter linked to the royal palace?

  Father made numerous futile rounds of the hotel, hoping to collect his payment. Eventually, having undertaken a major project for which it was never paid, his construction company was forced to close down.

  The toddler had tumbled as soon as he took his first step.

  Juddha Sadak was no longer what it used to be in grandfather’s time. It had become New Road, the heart of Kathmandu city. One day, father was chatting with his old friend Ramjee Narayan Agrawal during an evening get-together at New Road.

  ‘Lunkaranjee, my son has just graduated from university. He speaks good English and gets along well with westerners. Please find a job for him,’ he requested father.

  ‘Let’s see,’ father said. ‘Ask him to come and see me.’

  A few days later the son, Binay Agrawal, came to see father. He was well educated, as his father had said, and also quite clever. He was fluent in English and well connected with the elite such as the Ranas, the Thakuris and the Shahs. Through those circles, he was acquainted with many westerners living in Nepal.

  At that time, father was planning to open a flooring and furnishing store. Nobody had done a business like that in Nepal before. If people wanted to buy jute flooring or a linen carpet, they had to order it from India. No entrepreneur was importing those products, though there was high demand for them. Internatio
nal organizations were opening their offices in Nepal. Hotels were being built, in view of the prospects for tourism in Nepal. Even the average person was showing more interest in home decor. Father was looking for a reliable assistant who would have a good rapport with the international organizations, the hoteliers as well as ordinary shoppers. He saw that potential in Binay.

  ‘I am opening a flooring and furnishing store,’ father told him. ‘Would you be interested in looking after it?’ Binay agreed.

  That was in 1963, when I was eight years old.

  The clothing shop that grandfather had opened, thanks to Juddha Shumsher, was now turned into a flooring and furnishing store. Binay became our working partner. The store soon found its market. Tiger Tops hotel, among other such facilities, was about to open. USAID had recently established an office in Kathmandu. We supplied a lot of the furniture and fittings for the new hotels and international organizations.

  Soon the demand grew so much that one old shop was not adequate to handle it, and father opened another outlet at nearby Fasikeba, and then yet another in Birgunj. Hotel Panorama stood just across the road from our present-day office at Khichapokhari in New Road. One more outlet was opened on the ground and first floors of the same building. With almost no competition, we had a virtual monopoly.

  We shifted to the building at Khichapokhari where our office is located today. It was Binay who mostly looked after the store in that building. I used to call him Binaydai, ‘dai’ meaning older brother in Nepali. I used to visit him as soon as I woke up in the morning and as soon as I came home from school in the afternoon. He would buy me peppermints, candies and biscuits. However, he would not make me his centre of attention when he was busy with work. I would then get offended and start to fiddle with things in the shop, at which he would scold me and send me away.