Relic from Indian nationalist soda war soldiers on

NEW DELHI -- The old accountant works in the ruins of an abandoned cola factory, amid piles of rubble and sheets of cobwebs, a relic from a nationalist soda war that was lost long ago.

The former headquarters of Campa Cola, a nearly defunct Indian soda brand, have been shuttered for years, but Radha Krishan, 70, remembers when the office was buzzing with activity, and the bottling plant in the back turned out sweet, fizzy soda by the truckload.

Krishan is still there today, in Campa's crumbling office, scribbling in his ledger and squaring ancient accounts. Except for the pigeons and the occasional squatter, he and his three assistants are the only ones left, corporate orphans all but forgotten.

"It is just us," he says beneath the building's lone flickering bulb.

Campa Cola and Krishan are curios from an India that barely exists anymore, a distant country that used cola as a nationalist symbol of pride as it sought its own defiant, isolated path. A tiny, doll-like man with a thin white mustache and a milky right eye, Krishan seems a world away from the India of today that has so lustily embraced the international consumer culture of malls and fashion magazines.

Campa flourished during an era of quasi-socialism in India that saw the country's protectionist policies virtually ban the sale of foreign brands, leaving the soda market -- and so many others -- to quirky, homegrown companies that were often less than world class.

Campa's slogan, "The Great Indian Taste," was a nod to a nationalist culture determined to get by without the cars, movies or colas of the West.

At the beginning of the domestic cola reign, a government-run company introduced a soda called "Double Seven." It was named for 1977, the year India gave Coca-Cola the choice of handing control to its Indian subsidiary, or leaving. That would have meant revealing Coke's secret recipe. Coke left.

Stripped of its product, Coca-Cola's main bottler in India, Pure Drinks, scrambled to produce a soda of its own. Campa Cola, its name printed in the Coca-Cola font, was born.

"Campa tasted good -- because we didn't have any other options," said Santosh Desai, a Times of India newspaper columnist. "Double Seven was a government-produced cola, and it tasted like that."

The other leading soda was a spicier cola called Thums Up -- a misspelling that has become iconic in India.

Campa and Thums Up prospered until the early 1990s when India loosened restrictions on foreign companies, sparking an unprecedented boom. Coca-Cola and Pepsi swooped in and conquered the cola industry -- and not everyone mourned. In a 2000 essay, Salman Rushdie dismissed the Indian sodas as "disgusting local imitations."

Coca-Cola bought Thums Up, which remains popular across the country. Campa Cola, like its headquarters, withered.

Campa shuttered the Delhi bottling plant in 2000 and 2001 and closed the offices soon after, said Satwant Singh, a director of the Pure Drinks group, which owns Campa and its building, along with real estate across India. The building languished for years as company lawyers negotiated final payments with former workers, Singh said.

Today, the sign outside Campa's brick-and-peach-colored building in the heart of the city has lost its "C" and its "P," though their ghostly shadows remain.

The guard downstairs has nothing to guard. He shoos away squatters and tells you no one works there anymore. Fruit and tea vendors nearby call the Campa building an empty husk. Even the company directors say the corporate offices have all moved.

But Krishan is still there, still studying his brittle papers. He is working to settle retirement funds for laborers who worked at the bottling plant long ago, he says. The work is difficult because many of their addresses are long since obsolete.

"I have worked here for 40 years," Krishan said from a desk surrounded by dusty files and broken cabinets. "There were 1,000 employees. It's a very good company. A very good job."

Krishan is unfailingly polite, offering a visitor water that is poured from a jug carried in by his assistant, and tea fetched from the street. When asked a question, he puts on his horn-rimmed glasses -- he switches between two pairs, both with lenses as thick as Campa Cola bottles -- and leans in close.

Even Krishan's bosses seemed unaware of his existence when told he still sits just steps from hills of rubble, slowly working his way through curled paper tied together with string.

"He's probably taking care of some data," said Singh, the Pure Drinks director. "There are a few guys there who are cleaning up and just winding up the paperwork."

Is he getting paid? "I would suspect he must be getting a stipend," said Singh.

Singh says the building is being renovated for Pure Drinks to move back into. As for Krishan, Singh says he should be gone in a few months when the last accounts are settled.

Pure Drinks still bottles a small amount of Campa Cola in Haryana, a state neighboring New Delhi, though Singh declined to say how much they produce.

"We are not putting too many resources into it at the moment," he said.

Today, a bottle of Campa is hard to find, although a stall outside the decrepit former headquarters still sells it.

D.P. Verma, a motor rickshaw driver, says he visits the stand every day for his fix of Campa -- he says he'll drink no competing soda.

"It's more tasty than the others," he said between swigs. "It's the Indian taste."