We have a tradition of ‘grease monkeys’, which even exists today. It goes like this. Fathers would come to the garage with an eight- or ten-year-old son in tow. The boy had shown no inclination to study, he had dropped out of school, or perhaps he was just a difficult boy with an impetuous or destructive tendency. The fathers asked to meet the head mechanic and beseeched him to take the boy on as apprentice and teach him the trade. The fathers hoped that by learning mechanical skills the boy might in the future be able to set up his own garage. We had to consider the issue of child labour, but there was also the question of the danger of the boys turning to begging on the streets or resorting to delinquency if they were not gainfully employed. They came from very poor families and such eventualities were commonplace. There is also the overwhelming tradition of ‘grease monkeys’ in India where 90 per cent of all mechanics joined the trade as ‘runaway’ apprentices. ‘Don’t give the boy any salary,’ the father would say. ‘Just give him his meals. He is a great mischief at home. Please teach him a trade. He can become a mechanic and set up his own garage in the future.’
This argument impressed me and we took on eight to ten such kids. These were extraordinary boys, as we discovered. They were naturals and loved the job. They went about with an almost permanent smear of grease on their faces and hands, and we affectionately called them ‘grease monkeys’. In the West, a mechanic is a multi-tasking worker. He is conversant with all the tasks relating to a particular vehicle. He is a vertical integrator, to use modern parlance. In India however there is a head mechanic who is the boss. He sits or swaggers around the garage yelling instructions and supervising the job while the ‘grease monkeys’ go about loosening screws, jacking up, rubbing with lint, pouring out engine oil, and running engine tests. The head mechanics rise through the ranks. In short, the head mechanics groom the boys. He might, however, get a little rough in the process and it is the responsibility of the garage manager to ensure that he does not ill-treat the boys. The boys came in at eight in the morning and left at five in the evening. They were kept away from potential mischief for nine hours. They earned Rs 100 each from me as a stipend. Customers too gave them tips. In all they made anything between Rs 300–400 a month, good money in those times.
In three or four years, I was well known in Hassan and in the neighbouring district of Chikmagalur. People knew me as a farmer and also as an owner of the motorcycle dealership. There was some brand value and admiration associated with the latter. I soon added Luna mopeds and Honda scooters to the lines of two-wheelers we sold at the showroom. We also scaled up numbers. We opened branches in Chikmagalur, Kadur, Tiptur, and various taluq headquarters; in all eight showrooms in the region. Malnad Mobikes became a brand name in that area. In the initial years, when the motorcycle business was scaling up and increasing in popularity, I spent time between the farm and Hassan, with Ravi attending to the day-to-day operations. After a while he retired. The business had by then stabilized so I appointed a manager and lived on the farm, commuting daily on my motorcycle.
My daughter was growing-up. She needed to be admitted to a school. We therefore moved to Hassan and enrolled her in the Central School in town. My second daughter was born soon after we moved. When our first daughter Pallavi grew-up we enrolled her in Bishop Cotton School in Bengaluru, where she would continue to study as a boarder. The longer I stayed in Hassan, the more I began missing farm life. One day I admitted to my wife that I was missing farm life and said, ‘I’m missing living on the farm. Pallavi is in boarding school. Krithika is still small and has two years before she starts school. Why don’t we just move back to the farm?’ My wife asked, ‘When?’ I said, ‘Tomorrow morning’. There was a longing welling-up within me. I wanted to touch the farm, breathe its fresh air, milk the cows, be a dairyman, take long walks in and around the farm, see the sunsets. It was a primeval longing. My wife understood and agreed. ‘Fine, let us go!’ she said.
I called up Raju at the farm and instructed him to build an army toilet. Such toilets are common in battlefield areas. We dig a pit in loose soil. It’s safe and clean. I asked Raju to have a room cleaned up and put up a thatched area outside for bathing. We would be arriving the following morning. He was shocked. He exclaimed in disbelief, ‘Sir, there is nothing here.’ But my mind was made-up. I told my wife, ‘If you are ready to sleep under the trees again in the afternoons and take long walks, let us go.’ Krithika was then only three years old. By the time she was born I had bought my first car, a 1950 model Dodge Kingsway sedan. A luxury carriage. It was powered by a P4 diesel engine and had a massive boot, Hollywood actors went about in this car during the 1950s and ’60s. It could be useful to carry cattle feed, farm equipment, and other farm necessities. The previous owner had installed a P4 diesel engine because petrol had become expensive. I loved driving it. When I drove into small villages where people had never seen a car before, I was surrounded by hordes of children. They would exclaim and call it ‘aeroplane caroo’ (aeroplane car). It was indeed a huge car! I never realized that the nickname ‘aeroplane’ for the car would be so prophetic.
Although we had planned to leave the following morning, we couldn’t bear to wait. We simply packed what we could accommodate in the boot of the car and left that very day, leaving everything behind as if we were fleeing the plague. When I eventually entered the farm I felt like a refugee having found a haven.
We moved to the farm for good. The farm was my best training ground. I was dealing with people, eating with them, learning the ways of nature, gaining insights into the larger things of life, throughout on land and in the open. When I was engaged in working on the farm or doing my business, I had a curious feeling that all this was the preparatory ground for something else altogether. I do not believe in superstition, but I was acutely aware that I was in the process of getting ready for much bigger enterprises. I did not know then what it would be, but I sensed it. When I left the army I had aimed to discover something. I had already known in a native way that to journey is better than to arrive. I did not entertain the idea of some grand denouement or a grand finale. If it led somewhere, that would be a good thing. But the journey—actually sensing the present, is the real thing.
The gentleman from whom we had rented premises for our motorcycle business was a well-known hotelier. His name, Kasturi, was quite famous in the district. He named the restaurant he ran after himself and called it Hotel Kasturi, and it was one of the best Udupi hotels in Hassan, famous for its dosa. Kasturi was also known for his social work and for his association with temples. He was the convener of the Ganapati temple and the annual Ganapati festival.
The Ganapati festival, a mega-event in Maharashtra, is also a major festival in Karnataka. It is an occasion for much religious and cultural activity and people look forward to it. For many communities, the festival has a religious connotation, but personally I loved the narrative evenings that used to form a part of the celebrations. The harikatha is an Indian bardic tradition in which the performer related stories from the Indian epics. As a child I wanted to be a harikatha performer. The tradition is still preserved in south India. The other cultural activities during the festival included classical music recitals. From early childhood, I nurtured a love for Hindustani and Carnatic classical music. My ardent love for musical forms was primarily due to my mother who had a keen appreciation of music and actively encouraged my sisters to learn and practise the arts. She invited the music teacher home. This was a common practise among south Indian Brahmin families. Boys learnt Sanskrit; girls learnt music. Hindustani classical music is the style of preference in north Karnataka; Carnatic is preferred in south Karnataka. The early study of music is a daily affair and is observed as rigorously as going to a temple or going to school. I woke to the strains of music floating in from my sisters’ room. I never missed a musical concert. I somehow managed to make time to listen to many of the accomplished greats like Semmangudi Shrinivasa Iyer, M.S. Subbulakshmi, Balamuralikrishna, Maharajapuram Santanam, Malli
karjun Mansoor and Bhimsen Joshi. I continued religiously to attend their concerts for many years, and continue to do so even now when time permits. On the farm, I devoted my spare time to reading and listening to music.
Entry into the Hotel Business
Kasturi, or Hotel Kasturi as he was fondly nicknamed, was an extraordinary man. He wore his trademark white shirt and dhoti with a towel draped over his shoulder. He had made it big and was very well-off but he had had no formal education. I was interested in learning how he had made it big. At seventy, Kasturi was full of energy. He used to ride his moped to roam around the town. Once he came to meet me. It was a casual friendly visit. He was fond of me and appreciated my striving to achieve success. ‘Gopi,’ he would say in a friendly way. ‘People spin the top (bugari in Kannada, lattu in Hindi) by winding a string around its base and then releasing it. You play it stringless.’ This is also how he described me to others. I laughed it off. I, however had an education. My father had taken great pains to groom me. I had had the advantage of serving in the army. This man had neither social capital nor education. Yet that had not hindered him from becoming a successful businessman and a good citizen. In addition to his service to temples, he built a hostel for poor Brahmin children, and also a crematorium.
He used to raise funds for his projects both with his own seed money and through donations from the people. He had approached me for donations on several occasions. One day when he visited me at the showroom, I asked him to tell me his story. He did. At the age of seven or eight, he left his poverty-stricken family in the village and came to Hassan. That was fifty or sixty years ago. A relative of his, Raghavachar, had a very famous hotel in Hassan. Raghavachar was a Brahmin who had moved to Hassan many years ago and built a string of popular hotels. He ran a canteen for the Railways too. My father recalled having frequented Raghavachar Hotel some seventy-five years ago. Kasturi got a job at the hotel as a cleaner. In time, he became a waiter. He learnt the culinary trade by observing others and began helping in the kitchen as an assistant cook. Kasturi saw that Raghavachar was not a typical Brahmin: he smoked, drank and had a mistress. Raghavachar had also started out as a cleaner but had now acquired a larger-than-life persona. One day young Kasturi was passed some uncharitable remark on Raghavachar’s mistress. The boss learnt of this and as Kasturi walked in to serve plates piled with idli and sambhar, Raghavachar came over to him from the till and slapped him hard. The plates of idli and sambhar went crashing all around. That was the last time Kasturi engaged in any kind of gossip. Sometime later, when Raghavachar died, Kasturi set up a small cafe in Hassan in a room that measured 2 metres by 2 metres. Kasturi was the cook, waiter, cleaner, and cashier. He poured batter, fried the dosa, served it to customers, cleared the table of the banana leaves on which he had served the dosas. He did this repeatedly through the day and for several years. He soon saved sufficient money to move to bigger premises. He met with a series of successes, moving to ever bigger premises in which to conduct business. Now a successful businessman, Kasturi built a commercial complex in Hassan and also ran the two most successful hotels in the district. He gave me space on the ground floor and basement of his commercial complex for my motorcycle dealership.
I saw that people like Kasturi succeeded because they had the courage, the determination, the energy, relentless persistence, and hard work without despair, to do more and do better every day. ‘There is no short cut even for a genius’ (Emerson). The path to success passes through fire. The treasure hunter is brazened like gold, tempered like steel, and beaten into shape by the hammer of adversity. Experience combined with energy, passion, and courage will get you there, but invariably it is the very journey that is the real reward!
One day Kasturi said he intended to build a restaurant on the neighbouring plot, which also belonged to him. Once that was done, he wanted to retire and engage in social service. He would also sell that off and his other existing restaurants and give away the complex to somebody to manage. Was I interested, he asked me. If Kasturi wanted to set up another restaurant in the plot adjoining the complex, he must have done his homework. It got me thinking. I did not need additional space at the time but at the same time I did not want the space to go to someone else either. I might require it in future, I thought.
It also occurred to me it would be a good idea to start a Udupi hotel of my own in the complex Kasturi was planning to build, as it adjoined my motorcycle business. Most of the property in Hassan was owned by Udupi hotel owners. I learnt subsequently that most Udupi hotel owners had joined as cleaners and risen through the ranks to become waiters and cooks, and some had gone on to set-up their own hotels. I liked the Udupi hotel concept. I thought it would be an adventurous experience to run one. I asked Kasturi to help me set up an Udupi hotel.
The name for the Udupi restaurant came to me on an impulse. I called my hotel Yagachi Tiffin. Commonly used in Kannada, tiffin refers to snacks. Yagachi is a tributary of Hemavathy that runs through my village, to which I had an emotional attachment. As I had already named my farm Hemavathy Farm, I decided to name the Udupi restaurant after the stream. Word got around that I was planning to set up an Udupi hotel. People said that Capt. Gopi had chosen a very beautiful location on the highway for the restaurant. While in the army, I had been mess secretary and wine secretary. I had taken an interest in the management and administration of canteens so the new venture excited me.
People looking for work began approaching me. A bhatta or cook from Udupi came to me for work. He had quit his job as head cook in another Udupi hotel. He said that if I hired him he would bring along other kitchen and hotel staff, including cleaners, and also manage them. He asked for a percentage of the sales in return. I thought it was a fantastic idea. It would solve the biggest problem of managing people. Kasturi had once told me that managing a hotel is like managing a circus company!
It was decided that the head cook would report a week before the launch, bring his team, start testing out recipes, compile a menu, and fine-tune processes. I felt free to devote myself to organizing other things such as interiors, kitchen equipment, utensils, plates, cutlery, and furniture. I had all the time in the world to design the modalities of the launch: identify and invite VIPs, get invitations printed, send them out, and devise the inaugural agenda. The local MLA and the municipal councillor were to be the special invitees. I invited all my friends and relatives, many coming from distant places. The countdown began. It was a week before the launch and the cook had not turned up. He did not turn up the next day either, or the following. He did however put in an appearance five days before the day of launch. He said he had not forgotten. He was held up because he had to attend to some work. He would go to Udupi and fetch the other cooks and workers and return two days before the inauguration. He promised much, but didn’t keep any.
Two days to go and I had no cooks, no waiters, and no cleaners. I was at my wits’ end. I was however dogged in my resolve that the launch would be deferred over my dead body. I set about cracking the plot. I recognized it as sabotage from competition: another Udupi restaurant nearby had planned this so that the setback would completely bury my plans to start a hotel. That made me even more determined. I decided I would find cooks and pay them ten times the asking salary if need be for the first few months. I would recruit them anyhow but would not abort or postpone the plan.
I hit upon an idea. I sent my brothers and cousins in my ‘aeroplane’ car to scour the district and find wedding cooks. These cooks specialized in cooking for weddings and also catered to other festivities: itinerant cooks who were turned on by the sights and sounds of a marriage hall. They loved their work and enjoyed being on the road. I planned to hire wedding cooks for a month. That would give me time to work other things out. After an entire day’s search in Hassan district, the scouting group found one cook who agreed and came over the night before the launch. He brought a team of cooks, helpers, and cleaners. He dropped, as it were, from the sky as my saviour. That was how I inaugur
ated my Udupi hotel.
Running an Udupi hotel is like getting your daughter married every day. You get up at 5 a.m. and go and open the hotel. You make all the goodies with the care that you would accord to preparing dishes for your daughter’s wedding because the customer does not care if it is three years or three days that you have been running the business! He wants the best each time he visits your restaurant!
It is also difficult to run the restaurant from a different point of view. Most people who wanted jobs as waiters and cleaners were runaway children. One day when I was sitting at the cash counter the kitchen supervisor came over and said the cleaners, three in all, had run away. The plates were piling up. I sought a reason. The supervisor said the boys had run away from home to escape cruelty or because they had flunked the exams, coming to the city or town to survive. Nobody knew them in the city. The Udupi hotel was an easy refuge because it gave them food and shelter. They picked up jobs in small hotels as cleaners and waiters. However, when a neighbour or acquaintance from the village visited the hotel and spotted the boy, his existence in the city was threatened. The neighbour would return and report the incident to his father. The father or some relative would come to the hotel wrapped in a shawl or towel that made them difficult to recognize. They would sit and wait quietly. When the particular boy came to the table, they caught their prey and hauled him back to their village. So whenever a boy spotted a nosy neighbour or a family member, he took flight.
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