By T Sher Singh | Opinion |
My father was a bit of a marketing wiz, but with a difference. He lived his life by Sikh values and was married to them in everything he did. Which meant that he also applied them to promoting his fledgling business, and stuck to them as he became increasingly successful.
Early on, I got involved in an annual project which was always launched in the late summer. Salesmen representing calendar printers would arrive at his place of business and leave behind a stack of albums of calendar samples, thousands of them. I soon gravitated to the task of perusing the entire collection and helping select a handful so that we could order our calendars and have them ready for distribution in time for the New Year.
Since these calendars consisted of a single sheet with a 12-paged flap attached at the bottom of each, my father did not like the idea of a common image for all of them. Our customers came from a full range of religious backgrounds and, being Sikh, he wanted to honour them by presenting them with an image that each could relate to and would cherish.
So, my chore was to come up with eight different images, and each would be ordered in numbers roughly matching their respective percentages in the local population.
Thus an image was selected for Hindus – e.g., of a cute, blue-skinned baby Krishna, gamboling with a couple of calves and overturned pots of butter. 2000 copies were ordered.
1000 copies with an Islamic icon would be the next one depicting, for example, a view of the revered Kaaba in Mecca. 500 copies of a picture of one of the Gurus or a matching historical event for our Sikh clientele. 200 copies of either Jesus or Mary with baby Jesus, to take but two examples, for our Christian customers. 100 copies each for Buddhists (usually with Buddha), Jains (Mahavira), and Zoroastrians (Farouhar).
The 8th selection, also 2000 copies, was the most challenging. Because it was the most sought after. The customers would ask for a religious one and then beg for a second one, which would invariably be this secular one which showcased a scene from nature.
We tried to stick to a similar scenic view each year. The challenge was to find one slightly different each time but equally appealing. It was therefore no coincidence that the subject was always of a snow-covered, forested, rural landscape. You cannot imagine how pleasing it was, the sight of a home partially buried in snow, the warmth of electric lights oozing out of its windows, and a horse-drawn buggy parked amidst the soft shadows of the surrounding trees, to us all who lived in the sun-baked Gangetic plains.
Lo and behold, after all these years, I live today in Canada and make my home in a real-life scene – especially in these long, wintry days and nights – straight out of one of those very calendars, complete with horse-drawn Mennonite buggies that ride by outside my window at all times of the day.
T. Sher Singh is a writer, editor and publisher at sikhchic.com. The Sikh media portal, now undergoing a major overhaul to bring it up-to-date with the latest gadgets, aims to be up by Spring.
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