The ringing street sounds of Kolkata had as if melted into the distance to a pleasantly bearable level as I requested a tall brown bottle of Kingfisher beer at the Fairlawn Hotel garden restaurant. At last, respite from the city din, and more than that… charming surrounds and a clientele of youthful Kolkatarites engaged in lively engagements. Just what I needed after battling the frantic street that is the everyday Kolkata.
Intending travellers to the frenzied chaos of this tumultuous city might like to know of a non-exclusive hotel that secretes one away from the chaos yet which itself holds the essential characteristics of this vibrancy within its memorabilia decorated walls. This is it!
Mumbai is the business end of India, never failing to enchant. Delhi is right up north and one wonders why it became the capital but capital it is and from there, the majesty of the Taj Mahal is accessed. Chennai is old Madras where Doubting Thomas the Disciple ended up centuries ago and to which cities godowns great blocks of ice were towed, across the Pacific from North America, to supply the British Raj with that other gin-tonic essential – as they could get the lemons locally!
However, Kolkata is the Bengal Tiger of India. The frantic streets of this quite powerful and quite mad but so appealing city demands that the traveller finds repose in certain moments and usually that is found in some splendiferous up-market hotel but then, one sacrifices the very reason for being in Kolkata, to experience India in the raw.
Walking into the terraced greenery of the Fairlawn Hotel and all that city-generated tension fell away. At my side young crowds at tables chatted over the so-popular beer (4 or 8% alcohol at R130 a bottle). At my back the wide entrance to the hotel proper, an arcade-like welcome atmospheric with, if not Raj remnants, some deposited from of Old India, as it was and should be.
A room, spiffingly clean and along a potted-palm lined corridor with a writing table at its door where a hooded crow sat unblinkingly on a fire extinguisher. Passing through function rooms furnished with once-upon-a-time styling, the walls replete with framed photographs that enticed into their innocent mysteriousness.
Long, high-ceiling rooms with tall curtained doors at each corner, dark wood bureaus and glass fronted display cabinets, huge intricately ingrained vases in porcelain and brass. Mother Teresa was there, also actress Felicity Kendal, but the Hindu god Ganesh also… no particular theme. A mixed gallery.
In a smaller but similarly engaging room there was a bookcase full of books but that was no library it turned out, featuring all of the least of readable leftovers – highlighted in a compilation of Readers Digest stories, condensed!
That bookcase was a preview into the life of madam Violet Smith, today’s owner, in that if you sought for some saving grace of an enquiring philosophical mind, or an interest in her own heritage among the Armenians you would be at a loss!
She just liked people, being with and talking and making them comfortable in this her home which doubled as a hotel and hideaway, plus an investment for three generations of her family.
Complimentary afternoon tea was served and that introduces the visitor to the general demeanor of this hotel steeped in time and redolent with other’s memories. Also the Grand Dame who is central to this archive of what once was, “Vi”, as she insists, formally… Mrs Violet Smith.
While it was Vi’s mother, Rosie Sarkies, who established the hotel and its essential ambience, from 1936, in 1962 daughter Violet Smith along with husband Ted, took over the proprietorship. “I met Ted in Calcutta, in fact in this very hotel in 1942, when he was visiting in Calcutta as a major with the British Army. Soon after the hotel was requisition by the Canadian allies for two years. At that time, the hotel was still owned by my mother, Rosie Sarkies.”
Rosie Sarkies and her husband came to India via Ispahan and Pakistan and joined the active and quite large Armenian community there, in 1933. Armenians have a substantial history as traders in India, going back hundreds of years.
“An extremely shrewd lady, Rosie – despite her man’s indulgences – saved 4 and 8 anna pieces in two empty kerosene cans, which she hid, of course,” tells Vi. “Eventually she had saved up enough money to purchase the Astoria Hotel, which is still in business at the end of Sudder Street.”
The term Sudder comes from the previous name Sadar Court (pronounced Sudder) which was established in the street. A sadar court is a local court of appeal.
“She charged Armenian workers and traders Rs 150 per month to stay there with all meals,” continued Vi. “This was a considerable sum even then, however she provided that community with a place where they could cater to their own, with a family atmosphere and familiar food. The business thrived and after two years, she heard that the two British spinsters who owned Fairlawn wanted to retire and sell up. Rosie, being an incredibly astute and thrifty business woman, instinctively knew that Fairlawn would be the making of her. She sold the Astoria to another Armenian for Rs 6,000 and bought Fairlawn.”
Her judgment paid off and provided her family with the best of everything, education, clothing and decent dining. From that base, she built a hospitality empire, including 5 hotels in Calcutta and one at Emperors Gate in Kensington, London. She also purchased a separate family house in Isleworth, a welcome change from living above a shop!
However, Fairlawn has always been “home”. Like any family home it has witnessed all the significant occasions in the Smith family history.
“Ted and I were married here, a full military wedding no less. My daughter Jeni was born here in Calcutta and her childhood was spent within these very walls until she went to public school in England. Déjà vu, she met her husband John in Calcutta in 1966 and they were married here at the hotel in 1968.”
It is with daughter “Jeni” Fowler that a Hong Kong connection emerges. The husband of Jeni is a Hong Konger, John Fowler, who worked at Hong Kong & Shanghai Banking Corporation (HSBC) for twenty five years during which period Vi and Ted would visit often. John Fowler’s grandfather was Mr Bertram Walter Bradbury (wife Millicent) then known as “Bertie” (and in Chinese as Bai Puli).
In moving to Hong Kong Mr Bradbury made a fortune in property and printing and to this day has a huge philanthropic trust which donates large sums of money to works in England and Hong Kong, to many churches schools, hospitals and hospices that have been named Bradbury…
Mr Bradbury was a household name in Hong Kong at the time of his death. During the Japanese invasion of China (1942-45) he was interred in Stanley Camp. He skinned the last tiger in Hong Kong and had the first television the colony had ever seen.
Historical notes tell that ‘Bertie’ was born in 1888 in Shropshire and that he was a Master Butcher who emigrated to live in Hong Kong, the family arriving 1908. Originally working for the Hong Kong Milk Company – retiring in 1947 – he founded his own business, initially in the printing industry and then in the property and stock markets.
Daughter Jeni (Jennifer Ann Fowler), who is the joint managing director at Fairlawn Hotel, says: “It is more like a club than an hotel. We have loads of people who return every year to stay with us which gives it that clubby atmosphere. It is also very family oriented as John and I go out [from their ‘other home in London] about four times a year and our children come out once a year also to see their Nana and as they too are shareholders and put in their tuppence worth of good ideas for the smooth running of the place. Their input has been very important to us and very valuable. Our staff have been with us forever which can be a good or a bad thing!”
Indeed the Hong Kong connection brings some indelicate quips from Vi as she recalls the often snooty colonial types she had to contend with in Hong Kong, though she also loved the place.
From the first moments of acquaintance with the Fairlawn Hotel, one has hardly sat down in the table-and-fronds dining court than such as the muezzin calls the faithful to prayer. Surely one is in India! Away from the incessant and sometimes painful beeps of street-juggling vehicles, that city tumult was acceptably removed, leaving the chatter and clatter behind to sit amid greenery and happy talk.
It was at breakfast that visitors meet the good lady herself, catching sight of her being assisted by two staff down the staircase, as she is a little unsteady, but in good mental nick for a 93-year- old. She declares good morning to one and all and like responses came from the breakfast tables in the pleasantly lit alcove-like dining hall.
Her breakfast arrived and while sampling the fare she chatted with the breakfasting guests, “Where are you from?” Where are you going next? Simple but warm conversations ensued.
When my turn came to have some exchanges we sat at a side table and her first sentence told of her Armenian ancestry, though she holds a British passport: “As a British subject I don’t rock the boat.”
She mentioned the terrible genocide of the Armenians, but more dwelt on the local Armenian community hereabouts which is now significantly diminished. The Indian Armenians have been around for centuries and are not from the sad genocide said to have started in 1915. That was when Ottoman authorities arrested some 250 Armenian intellectuals and community leaders in Constantinople. Thereafter, the Ottoman military uprooted Armenians from their homes and forced them to march for hundreds of miles, depriving them of food and water, to the desert of what is now Syria. The majority of Armenian diaspora communities were founded as a result of the Armenian genocide.
“When my parents arrived in India they came via Afghanistan and lived in today’s Dhaka (now Bangladesh and once spelled Dacca) for years. I was born there. Later we lived in Bombay, on Malabar Hill. That’s a loverly area.”
“In Hong Kong we used to socialise with the likes of Willie Purves as he was John’s boss [Daughter Jeni dutifully added later that ‘he did happen to be at a party we threw once but we were never close friends… I put that [mention] down to Mothers exuberance!’ – Sir William “Willie” Purves was the first Group Chairman of HSBC Holdings following the creation of a holding company to act as parent to The Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation and the Midland Bank following the former’s acquisition of Midland in 1992]. Thing is though, in Hong Kong many people don’t look at you as you are, they see you through your connections, your level in society. So pretentious. This has caused the break up of homes, and of nice relations.
But Kolkata is her true home. “I love Calcutta, it’s a real place. I couldn’t live anywhere else. People look after each other. If I lived in England surely I’d be in a home by now… that’s what everyone does these days. Put their oldies into homes for the elderly. Here I can just carry on.”
Gesturing to the staircase walls decorated with photos and what not Vi said, “Oh, if you want to get to know about the history of this hotel you can read all the bullshit on the walls,” she waved at the staircase walls. “I just live in one room and all this stuff from the past, well, it’s used to ornament the place. All the family’s bits and pieces that have gathered over the years are on display.”
“This is the way I like to run the hotel, in a friendly manner. We don’t try to give some five-star service, nothing like that, just a homily feeling and people usually come back… so many do. We want to keep this ambience.”
Vi notes that society is changing and she finds a lot of people are rather ‘antiseptic’. My husband Ted was an old fashioned English blood type, a tall man, about six feet two.” Vi is on the smaller scale and among some friends is called “cheda mische bargai” – “small chilli, hot stuff.”
Celebrities, such as travel writer and ex-comic Michael Palin, use the hotel. “Palin stayed at the Grand but would come here for evening drinks. Sting was here, the singer, and the people making the movie City of Joy.” There is a long list of celebrities that have used the hotel.
Historical records show that the building itself has existed on this site since 1783, built by European William Ford who purchased the land from Sheikh Ramjan and Bhonay, in 1781. The building was constructed shortly after the land was purchased and this is known from the deeds which state that a “Pukka” building had been built by Mr Ford, when the property passed into the hands of Mr George Chisholm.
The word pukka (meaning proper) denotes that it was built of brick. Bengalis were only allowed, by the ruling Nawabs, to build from coconut palm and mud, and only with the Nawab’s specific and costly permission.
Since those days, the possession of the building has fallen to:
1801 – 1812 Mr George Chisholm (died in residence)
1812 – 1840 Captain Sir James Mount and Sir George Mount.
1840 – 1873 The Chisholm family.
1873 – 1900 Sir David Ezra.
1900 – 1936 Miss Clarke and Miss Barrett.
1936 – 1962 Mrs Rosie Sarkies.
1962 – Mr Ted and Mrs Violet Smith (nee Sarkies & Mrs Jennifer Fowler).
Not much is known about the Chisholms, however, the Mounts were a seafaring family, allegedly involved in smuggling opium and textiles into and from China. Many of Britain’s earls and viscounts can trace their beginnings to these types of people of the empire. Job (pronounced Jobe) Charnock once said that, “it will always be possible for a man to make his fortune in Calcutta”, and many did.
During the Second World War it was requisitioned for Canadian air force personnel and for two years was known as “Canada House”. Melvyn Douglas, then an air force major, occupied the family quarters during this time.
Amongst the longest staying guests were the Kendal (Bragg) family, (mother and father of the British actress Felicity) who stayed here off and on for nearly 30 years (Felicity left when she was 18). They were a traditional theatrical family and earned their living by touring Shakespeare around Indian schools. They would sometimes put on plays upstairs in the lounge at Fairlawn. Their eldest daughter, another Jennifer, married one of India’s most famous and outrageously handsome actors, Shashi Kapoor. They had their honeymoon at the Fairlawn.
Amongst the many literary figures who return to the Fairlawn often is one of the worlds most respected travel writers, the late Eric Newby and his wife Wanda. Other famous guests and visitors include:
Ishmail Merchant and James Ivory; Tom Stoppard; Patrick Swayze and the cast of The City of Joy, the Fairlawn is featured in the film; Tirtio Terzani and family (his son had his wedding there in 1997); Julie Christie; Dominique Lapierre and his wife; Clive Anderson; the late Norman Hutchinson (Royal Artist) and Gloria his wife; Julian Barrow (Landscape artist); Dan Cruikshank; Ian Hislop; Gunthur Grass. Many others have also stayed, however, they treat the place as an escape and therefore Vi does not compromise their privacy.
Sadly, husband Ted died at the age of 83 years in November 2002. This has not deterred Vi though who valiantly and happily continues to maintain Fairlawn as the Grand Dame that she herself is!
Violet Jessica Smith 1921-2014
