by Adrian Levy
He was as particular with his attire as he was about the hotel: a navy suit, crisp cotton shirt, matching silk tie and handkerchief, usually chosen by his wife, Neeti. Today it was orange and gold check, a bright note to lighten a hard day as the high season was upon them, with all of its associated stresses. Up on the Palace’s third floor, his deputy Food and Beverage Manager was conducting a morning stock-take in one of the hotel’s alcohol stores, hidden behind a false door, marked as room 324. On the fifth floor, in a flower-strewn room, the hotel’s ‘public areas’ florists constructed towering assemblies. Today it was roses from the north-east arranged around a base of shocking pink chrysanthemum and hibiscus flowers from Kerala.
He strode out of the Palace lobby and into the Taj’s poolside cloister, pressed with vitrine mosaics and topped by onion cupolas, giving it the appearance of a hammam installed in a Florentine boarding school. Architects grandly call this the Indo-Saracenic style, a cocktail of Indo-Islamic, Gothic Revival and Neo-Classical styles, in the way that India was also a blend of Islamic, Hindu, Sikh, Christian and Buddhist values. For Karambir, the Taj was part Kew Gardens and part haunted palazzo. Around him came the swishing of palm frond besoms as groundsmen removed the overnight leaves. They earned 6,000 rupees a month (£70), and were gone to their chawls by the time the guests emerged. His circuit done, he went back to his office behind the Tower reception area to leaf through the roster of the day’s events.
He could have done this on his laptop or his BlackBerry. Everything was set up to digitally assay the days and weeks ahead. But Karambir liked to feel his way with his fingertips. The Taj deserved this kind of intimacy. For him, the hotel was a special case, so needy that he lived here too, up on the sixth floor of the Palace, in a stunning suite overlooking the Arabian Sea that he shared with Neeti and their two boys, Uday, twelve, and Samar, five. Located in the top southern corner, it was surrounded by some of the hotel’s most exclusive apartments.
The son of a Sikh major general who had fought Pakistan in 1965 and 1971, Karambir found his metier in the sales department of the Taj group soon after graduation from Fergusson College in Pune, moving into sales. When he was posted to New Delhi, he transformed the flagging brand into the city’s most popular hotel in under a year. He was sent to Lucknow to establish a new Taj out of nothing – his friends joked that the group’s owner, Ratan Tata, would tell Karambir to take a morning flight to a new city and, when he got there, advise him that he was taking over. Given how much of his life was spent in five-star hotels, it was fortunate that Karambir loved everything that went with them: good company, a glass of wine and an expensive cigar. After his mother came to terms with the fact he was never going to join the army, she joked that her son had become so hospitable he should have been a housewife.
When Karambir met Neeti Mathur, a North Indian girl with rook-black hair, at a Taj conference in 1994, he told his father she was the one. Neeti gave up her job to become a full-time mother. Uday, their elder son, was calm and stoic like his father, and Samar was peppy like his mother. Neeti got used to couriering her husband’s clothes to the next hot location and talking to him mostly on the phone. Somehow he always made it back home for parents’ evening or school plays, often slipping in late. The family was delighted when Uday won a place at Mumbai’s Cathedral School, one of India’s best.
After seventeen years in sales, in 2006 Karambir was given his first hotel to manage, the stale Taj Lands End, Bandra, a fashionable district to the north-west, loved by Bollywood stars. ‘It was putting me in the deep end,’ he recalled. His boys were delighted, hoping they would get to see more of him. And he out-performed himself, more than doubling occupancy in under a year. In November 2007, he was given the Tatas’ jewel, the Taj Palace and Tower on Apollo Bunder, becoming General Manager and Vice-President. Neeti was excited to be back in the heart of Mumbai. But the Taj proved demanding, with the family complaining that they saw less of Karambir than before, as he was always on call.
Today was no different. His planner showed that most of the hotel’s 20,000 square feet of conference, banqueting and function rooms – located on the first floor of the Palace – were booked. The indents and event sheets presented by Chef Oberoi listed the Sindhi wedding in the Crystal Room, a favourite location for society functions, which, when fully opened, stretched the length of the pool. The board of Hindustan Unilever, one of the hotel’s most powerful clients, was also expected, with thirty-five French, Dutch and Indian executives and their wives coming for a luxurious dinner in the Prince’s Room, an intimate private dining space in the southernmost corner of the hotel.
A large European Parliament party was arriving imminently, with trade commissioners and Members of the European Parliament (MEP) from Britain, France, Holland, Spain, Italy and Germany. Also checking in was a committee of Indian MPs. The Taj would soon be hosting several international cricket stars, including Shane Warne and Kevin Pietersen, who were launching the new Champions League Twenty20, and their advance team were landing in the hotel today. Sunil Kudiyadi, Karambir’s security chief, was up in his fifth-floor office, finalizing the hotel’s security plan. Over in the modern Tower, there was no let-up. A visiting Korean trade delegation of more than a hundred had booked Rendezvous, a function room on the top floor, next door to Souk.
This morning would be especially frantic as Karambir had to leave the hotel after lunch. The chairman of the Indian suit manufacturer Raymond’s, a Mumbai ‘Ultra’, was throwing a bash in the Taj Lands End and Karambir was on a three-line whip to attend, with the Formula One driver Mika Häkkinen making a guest appearance. It was an hour or more each way, so he and Neeti might not see each other until the morning. In his absence, Grand Executive Chef Oberoi would take charge.
Before leaving, Karambir had one especially sensitive task to attend to. The hotel was mollycoddling Sabina Sehgal Saikia, the most powerful food writer in India. While professional kitchens across India were male dominions, Sabina had levelled the playing field by becoming their chief surveyor. Having her in the hotel was a double-edged sword. On good form and in the right company, her words could turn a new restaurant into a money-spinner. But she was as famous for her vicious tongue-lashings. Nowadays, suffering from diabetes and general ill-health, she was increasingly bad-tempered. Sabina was feeling down and had not yet recovered from the death of her father in February. When the Taj first floated the idea, she had not wanted to come.
She only said ‘yes’ when she realized the trip coincided with a society wedding in Mumbai. Instantly, she had regretted it and rang a close friend in Delhi, Ambreen Khan, who was also heading to Mumbai. ‘My life is out of control – I am so stressed out,’ Sabina had complained, telling Ambreen she was under pressure to stay in Delhi for a niece’s pre-wedding party on the night of 26 November. ‘What should I do?’
She had met Ambreen when the latter was doing PR for the Oberoi hotel. ‘Be careful or she’ll eat you alive,’ Ambreen’s boss had warned. But Ambreen found Sabina ‘easy to deal with’, telling a confidante: ‘She is sweet and wants affection.’ There was a price. Once Ambreen was inducted into the inner circle, Sabina was demanding, on the phone ‘every day, all day, and hard to decline’.
Sabina had come to this game by chance, starting life as a classical musician, before joining The Times of India to manage its 150th anniversary celebrations. It was her otherworldliness that caught everyone’s attention and often made for the best stories, told by her with her unnerving frankness. In the nineties, a PR working for the Dalai Lama’s exiled government had called with an enticing offer: ‘Richard Gere is in town and wants to throw a concert for Tibet. Can you organize?’ Sabina had not heard of Gere, but agreed to meet him in the InterContinental’s coffee shop, worrying immediately that ‘this good-looking man’ would annoy her boyfriend, Shantanu Saikia, ‘an Assamese hothead’, who was waiting outside in his car.
Gere never stopped talking, she told everyone. ‘The longer it took, I knew the more pissed of
f Shantanu was getting,’ she recalled. ‘I kept wondering why these other diners on tables were staring at Gere. “Can’t these Indians see a good-looking Caucasian and leave him alone?” ’ Then his phone rang. He apologized, saying it was his girlfriend, Cindy Crawford. Sabina had not heard of her, and all she could think was: ‘OK, your girlfriend is calling and I have my boyfriend waiting outside. Is this business or what?’ Finally, Gere thanked her and gave her his card, with his private number. When he offered to walk her to the door, she declined. ‘You stay inside or I’ll have some explaining to do.’ That weekend, Sabina and Shantanu rented a video, An Officer and a Gentleman. ‘Mii gawd,’ she shrieked, scrabbling through her bag for Gere’s card. She had lost it.
In 1998, dabbling again, Sabina had tried a food column. It was a huge success. But these days she had fallen out with The Times, although she could place her pieces wherever she wanted. ‘She either trashed places or lapped up their hospitality,’ said Ambreen, who warned her friend, ‘You’re mean and hard on people. Bad will come of it.’
Now Sabina was dilly-dallying over the Mumbai trip and Ambreen was unsympathetic. ‘What’s the matter with you?’ she asked, interrupting her friend’s monologue. ‘The whole of Delhi is going to be at the Mumbai wedding.’ At this thought, Sabina perked up and committed to come.
She had touched down in Mumbai on Monday, 24 November, to be met by a chauffeur-driven Jaguar sent by Karambir. Sabina had been stunned, calling Savitri Choudhury, another strong-minded freelance hack, who lived in Mumbai and worked for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation among others. ‘Sabi, they are launching a Chef’s Studio. Hemant Oberoi is doing a special dinner for me.’ Pause. ‘I want you and Vikram to come. Let’s make a party of it. OK?’
At the Taj, Karambir had shown Sabina up to the Sunrise Suite. With marble floors, a magnificent ribbed wooden ceiling, a lounge, a bedroom and a dining nook, it filled most of the hotel’s southernmost cupola and was next door to Karambir’s family’s apartment. There was champagne on ice when Savitri and her husband called round at 8.30 p.m. Feeling exuberant, Sabina pulled them through the door. ‘Come on, let’s jump on this huge bed.’
Oberoi’s Chef’s Studio was an idea imported from the US and Europe, where he had eaten at several Chef’s Tables – intimate settings placed inside the kitchen of a star cook. For Mumbai he had to refine the idea, as no ‘Ultra’ was going to sit in a kitchen and pay 125,000 rupees (£1,500) for a dinner for six people – excluding wine. ‘Sabina, you’re on top form,’ Savitri told her, as they ate from Versace plates, served by Amit Peshave. ‘The food is amazing.’ They kept bringing more. ‘It was the first time I had Kobe beef. With Sabina, they went overboard. Typical Taj.’
After eight courses, Sabina went up to her suite, feeling groggy. She called Shantanu, who was now her husband. ‘They are really laying it on,’ she told him. But he was busy at the family wedding party in Delhi. The whole family was nonplussed at her flying off to Mumbai for somebody else’s celebrations. The needy Sabina did not get it and was hurt. ‘You don’t know what you’re missing,’ she said, cutting the line. She called Ambreen: ‘You can’t believe this suite. Please come over.’ But Ambreen was working. As General Manager of the Indian Express, she needed to attend a conference. Sabina spent the night alone in a bed fit for a king.
26 November 2008, 4 p.m. – the Palace lobby
Karambir Kang was in Bandra, Chef Oberoi was studying orders in his cabin, Amit Peshave was still not done with his Italian food festival report, and out in the Tower lobby holidaymakers and businessmen stood three deep before the reception desk. Along the marble axial corridor, beside the Grand Staircase, was the calmer Palace reception, where VIP guests sat in wing-backed chairs, waiting to check in. Will Pike and Kelly Doyle were among them, dressed in flip-flops and beach gear, catching some stares from the doormen.
They had just flown in after two weeks in Goa and the ride in from the airport had been a baptism of fire. ‘My first experience of real India,’ Will murmured as their cab was circled by salesmen at every traffic light, wielding books, phone rechargers and dusters. ‘It’s mental.’ Now in the perfumed calm of the Taj, he felt himself relaxing. ‘Good afternoon, Mr Doyle,’ said the receptionist, using Kelly’s surname as everything had been paid for on her credit card. Will grinned, a smile that stayed on his face as they were shown to their sea-facing room, up the Grand Staircase on the third floor. He was two years younger than Kelly and her junior at work, with his salary a fraction of hers. He joked that he was permanently emasculated.
When they entered room 316, the panorama of the Arabian Sea hit them. What a view. Opening their bags, spilling sand and wet clothes on to the floor, Kelly headed for the bathroom. Will tried a window, but it was double-glazed and would not budge. He perused the TV channels and the hotel restaurant list. After two weeks of Kingfisher beer, grilled fish and malai kofta, there were too many choices.
As he lay back, contemplating the ruched silk curtains, he felt he had been away from London for weeks. The whole holiday plan had been a chaotic, seat-of-the-pants scramble, with Kelly booking flights but forgetting about visas, leading to an embarrassing scene at the airport and a humiliating return to work. They eventually made it out on 10 November, a week late, but it had been worth it, with a memorable fortnight spent on Goan beaches, riding trains and in a yoga retreat.
It was Kelly who suggested the last-minute splurge. Will, who had spent two weeks smoking charas (hashish), was not so sure he could acclimatize, or even that he wanted to. The Taj might be the most famous hotel in India, the kind of place where Gregory Peck and Duke Ellington had hung out, steeped in history and refinement, but it was not his scene. They had to come through the city to catch their flight home, Kelly argued, so why not?
When it opened in December 1903, the Taj had been a disaster. The British did not like it and it was too expensive for Indians. Broken-hearted, the founder, Jamsetji Tata, had set sail for Europe and died the following year from heart disease. He was buried at Brookwood cemetery, Surrey, in the Tata family mausoleum. But slowly maharajas and nawabs began to treat the hotel as a second home, coming with retinues of servants. By the time the Prince of Wales and Princess Mary landed on Apollo Bunder for a state visit in November 1905, the Taj was turning a corner, awash with indigenous royalty.
As India changed, the hotel kept pace, the old aristocracy eased out by the well-off figureheads of the independence movement, including Muhammad Ali Jinnah, who proposed to his wife, Rutti, in the sea-facing Ballroom and would lead the new Pakistan in 1947. Sarojini Naidu, a child prodigy and poetess, who became the president of the Indian National Congress, spoke at the hotel. After the Partition of India eventually was declared, it was from the Taj that the first eulogies of independence rang out. When the British staged a formal departure, it was from the Gateway of India, built to commemorate the 1911 visit by King George V and Queen Mary. Once the bastion of colonialism, the Taj had effortlessly realigned itself as an emblem of self-reliance.
The next three decades saw Hollywood come to love it, too, with Frank Sinatra and Sophia Loren rubbing elbows with world leaders, entrepreneurs and tycoons. In 1973, the over-subscribed hotel doubled its occupancy, with an American-designed Taj Tower. A new lobby was created at its base, on the harbour side, with a private club located above it and named after the hotel’s architect, William Chambers.
While the public areas were streamlined, the service areas became more labyrinthine with each renovation. The kitchens had moved down from the top floor to the first floor in the thirties and a new sixth floor had been added to the Palace in 1969. After the Tower was built, new service areas straddled it and the Palace but they did not quite line up. All over the place stepladders led up to storerooms hidden in otherwise inaccessible ceiling cavities. Windows became doors, panels swung round to reveal service lifts. Extra staircases were built but not added to the architectural blueprint. Interconnecting corridors developed irregular angles.
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Will had taken some working on, and during their penultimate day in Goa Kelly kept at him. He needed to make his mind up. Her London salary meant they could afford a more expensive package, which included a free airport pick-up, a butler and a heritage room with a sea view. Kelly was already thinking about the king-size bed, the flat-screen TV, the bath and fluffy towels, a first-class treat after two weeks barefoot on the beach. ‘There’s only so long you can be a hippy,’ Will said, wondering if that was actually true. With his mind half made up, they had packed for the Taj, lured by a night of extravagance before real life kicked in on Monday morning, in London, where the forecast was for drizzle. The line of least resistance was one he had travelled for most of his life, although that was changing.
The Indian trip was the culmination of two great years. ‘This is my moment,’ he had said to himself, before leaving. His work had been going well. He was in a relationship with ‘a really cool girl and we are going to be together for ever and ever’. He had turned the corner early in 2007, after flunking his degree and spending several years managing Soho bars. One night a customer had offered him a job as a runner at Bare Films, a London-based TV production company, where he had first spotted Kelly. From then on everything had clicked into place.
Precise, pretty and high-octane, Kelly was an up-and-coming producer. She was also married. But Will – with his floppy hair, footballer’s physique and laid-back demeanour – made an impression. One night they went out for a drink and ‘things just developed’. He had woken the next morning, struggling into his jeans, feeling like he was an embarrassing indiscretion who had just lost his job. Three weeks later it happened again. Soon they were embroiled in a relationship that should never have happened but that neither of them could stop. Kelly’s energy was infectious. ‘You just know that if you follow her you’re going to have a really good time,’ Will told his friends. The only time he had felt anything like it before was when he was sixteen and had fallen in love with a girl at school. When that relationship had ended, he had ‘cried for a week’.