In the late 1960s, Hindustan Trading Company, a small yet thriving store in Sowcarpet selling cashew nuts and rubber nipples for feeding bottles, was presented with a proposition to stock up on Kohinoor, Ajantha and Mercury — products of the famed Madras Pencil Factory.
“Ours was never meant to be a stationery shop but we had a wide distribution network across Tamil Nadu and decided to add the product to our list,” says Amritha Venketakrishnan, the current proprietor of the store. Amritha’s grandfather PV Narayanan instructed his son to travel across the State, marketing their stock. PN Venketakrishnan would make his way in a Standard 10 van to places like Thoothukudi and North Arcot, convincing shopkeepers to sell these pencils and other stationery material that they began accumulating with time.
PN Venketakrishnan and the Standard 10 van. | Photo Credit: Special arrangement
In October 1974,Venketakrishnan’s van found a base in Chennai again. A ‘fancy’ shop in Royapettah’s Ajantha complex was opened, this time, selling greeting cards and gift articles. Art was not the primary focus again. With time, requests poured from regulars to stock up on glass paints and Indian ink.
Amritha sends across sepia pictures of this first store with sparse staff and shelves packed like a game of Tetris. “Only he knew how to find things at the store,” she says.
After Venketakrishnan traded his cashews for brushes, painters like MF Hussain, Thota Tharani and stalwarts of the Madras art movement, walked into the shop to scout for supplies. Others would hang about, occasionally sharing a smoke and chatting with Venkatakrishnan about their day, the latest in the world of art, the news in the papers.
Over time, HTC has become an oasis of calm and a haven for artists amidst road rokos and traffic that is a consequence of this busy neighbourhood. This is despite shifting twice. Once from the Ajantha complex to the IOA Complex and a second time to the bigger store at the entrance within the same space.
On October 25, the organisation enters its 50th year. It is easily the city’s largest art supply store with two floors full of materials including but not limited to resin, paints, sparkles and the good old pencil.
Amritha speaks about her father’s prudence regarding money, meticulous bookkeeping, daily discipline and his charitable heart with pride. She looks to emulate the same but her scale is vastly different from her father’s. It is what has lead to HTC’s expansion since her take over in 2010 when her father’s health began failing.
Today, her store has a clear glass facade, is organised in a streak of pleasing colours and shelves of beautiful, precise stationery. She has employed additional staff — mostly women, has a workshop space.
At her office which was the original store in the IOA Complex, Amritha serves some excellent tea. At the same spot, she has seen her father finish lunch and take a small post noon siesta occasionally. She doesn’t do so — her brew helps her get through the day. The allowance she prefers is walking in at 11am when the shop starts at 10am. The owner deserves some perks.
Four years after his death, people still walk up to Amritha and tell her stories about her father. “This is an everyday affair. There are moments where I discover bits of my father I never knew before,” she says. It was difficult in the beginning but grief has been easier to deal with over time.
For someone who has spent every weekend and major holiday inside this art store, Amritha says that the ‘organised chaos’ of inventory still remains. Digitisation of account books, the stocks and increasing the number of warehouses within the same complex has made a difference in keeping the noise contained.
Hindustan Trading Company in Royapettah | Photo Credit: Special arrangement
“During the lockdown, I would sometimes door-deliver or dunzo material when possible,” she says.
Today, Amritha’s website continues to ping with orders from across the country. They ship material everyday. She also looks to introduce interesting material on their website, keeping up with the trends in the art world. Only recently, she made an unboxing video of a limited edition box by Faber-Castell with watercolour pencils, markers, graphite crayons, among other material, costing a whopping ₹1.9 lakh. She is also looking to make her presence felt on YouTube with Tamil content, particularly DIYs and reviews of new art supplies. This former journalist knows how to write and the content game has been a five-year long experiment for her.
Amritha Venketakrishnan | Photo Credit: Special arrangement
“If my father knew that we had a social media room [to create content], he would have been aghast,” she says, laughing.
For the 50th year, Amritha plans an exhibition, calling suppliers from around the country and the world to expose their wares to the Chennai public. There will also be a video documentation of the store’s long history. Her month-old new workshop space will host several classes by experts.
Today though, on an odd work day, the space shows an expansive spring scene of flowers and fields. Amritha wanted an Alice In Wonderland-esque mural, she says, helping people escape into a zone that is reserved for exhilaration through art.
“My father would provide credit to artists struggling to make money back then, sometimes providing them advice that would change their life’s trajectory. I know that I have a good relationship with my clients too but I doubt it’s at the same level,” she says, reminiscing.
Standing before the mural, Amritha sighs. “That van — that is my father’s Standard 10 van right there. It just had to be a part of the store again,” she says.
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