The Legacy of the Luxury Hotelier
By
Khushwant Singh
PRITHVI RAJ SINGH OBEROI aka BIKKI OBEROI
PRITHVI RAJ SINGH OBEROI aka BIKKI OBEROI
The Fall of the Cecil
This particular annexation would take place in Shimla and the hotel that would fall in Rai Bahadur’s kitty was none other than Cecil, the hotel where he had set out his career working as a clerk two decades earlier. The tale of the capture of Cecil is thrilling not only because it’s a story of life coming full circle, or of business expansion, but the shenanigans.
Associated Hotels of India (AHI) was the name of the company that owned eight hotels including the Cecil. The main shareholder John Falleti, keen to return home to Rome had sold his shares to one Spencer & Co, who, over the years had lost interest in AHI properties, owing to various factors. The AHI properties, though not profitable were huge real estate and the list included Cecil, Longwood and Corstophons hotels in Shimla, Maidens in Old Delhi, Faletti’s in Lahore, Flashman’s in Rawalpindi, Deans in Peshawar and another Cecil in the salubrious hills of Muree. Besides this, AHI had just leased the Imperial Hotel, in the heart of Delhi.
Mohan Singh, who by now had developed a strong sense of smelling out an opportunity, soon started picking up shares of AHI discreetly so as not alarm anyone. To keep his move a secret, he would buy shares from small holders and would celebrate the acquisition of each chunk with a few Patialas of White Label in the evening. However, soon a time would come when a large holding would be required to become the majority shareholder of AHI and wrest control.
Herein lay the catch, for, one of Mohan’s partners in the Grand Hotel, Shiv Nath Singh had got a whiff of his game plan and had started doing exactly the same. Of collecting shares of AHI. And both of them knew who held that large chunk. It was with G.V. Pikes, a director in the company who lived in Tara Devi, near Shimla. Both of them also realized that they would have to approach him personally to get that chunk but Shiv Nath beat Mohan Oberoi by a day. However, circumstances propelled in a manner that gave a shrewd strategist like Mohan an opportunity and soon Mohan was sharing a sherry with Pikes after handing him a cheque of rupees eighty thousand for the shares, which Pikes held a few moments ago.
And when he walked in with aplomb in a three-piece suit at the 1944 annual general meeting of AHI, all he had to do was draw out a large envelope from a bag and place the shares on the table. Ticked off a few minutes ago by the secretary for not having his name on the shareholders’ list, the tables turned in a manner where the chairman, Sir Edward Buck would be forced to say, ‘Mr. Oberoi, you clearly hold the controlling interest. Allow me to offer you my congratulations and my place at the head of the board.’
The boy from Bhaun had clearly arrived. He had bought that very hotel from where he had started, catapulting himself from a small quarter in the khud to the top of the hill. However, he did not let this moment get the better of him and shrewdly, as well as graciously, requested Sir Edward Buck to carry on as chairman. He understood the significance of an Englishman at the helm and thus settled for the post of managing director. In 1949, Mohan Oberoi had floated his own company under the name the East India Hotels Ltd and AHI merged with it.
Incidentally, the only other person who knew about the AHI deal outwitting Shiv Nath Singh was his fourteen-year-old son, Bikki, who after his schooling would set on a journey, which would include higher education abroad. That and travel, solitary and with parents with the purpose of acquiring an experience that in the years to come would turn him into an hotelier par excellence. But before that could happen India was partitioned, and the Oberoi business would not be isolated from the tumult that shook everyone. ‘We were in Shimla when the riots broke out and we were brought to Delhi, (where the family would settle eventually in the later years) in a convoy,’ says Bikki, who at eighteen was being mentored and prepared to take over the mantle of Oberoi journey sooner than later.
Prithvi Raj Singh Oberoi: The Hotelier
Bachi Karkaria in her book in the chapter titled Heir Apparent Bikki introduces him on a rather descriptive note, which apart from enlightening readers about his educational journey, aptly elucidates Bikki the person and the hotelier.
‘Prithvi Raj Singh Oberoi, whom the well-heeled world knew as Bikki, sowed his wild oats at the watering-holes of the world’s wealthy, even as he studied in London and went on to master haute cuisine in Switzerland. In 1955, he returned home, got married in 1959 to Goddie, daughter of Punjabi landowners from Lyallpur.
‘On his return he took his place by his father’s side with a passion rivaled that of Oberoi pere. At twenty-five, he was certainly more of a man of the world than Mohan Singh had been at that age, his experience of the finest hotels and restaurants making up for the lack of nitty-gritty that is mastered through years of working one’s way up from the cellar. Not that Bikki had not got his elbows greasy; Ecole Hoteliere was as tough a taskmaster as they come’.
In any case if Rai Bahadur was going to build a hundred hotels, it helped to have Bikki at hand. Interestingly, even though Rai Bahadur saw the promise that his son held in being a hotelier, he wanted him to become a chartered accountant and a lawyer. ‘I resisted it because I found it too bookish,’ says Bikki, even though he worked as an apprentice for about eighteen months with a chartered accountancy firm in London. ‘I would wake up at six in the morning, and traverse the thick London fog to get to work.’
As per his father’s desire he also started pursuing law, but didn’t like that either and took to what he interested him. ‘I wrote to my father that I want to travel all over Europe, and which is where I worked in many different hotels at various positions. I worked in London, Austria and France and that really gave me a lot of experience how hotels should be run. Especially food and wine. In India wine wasn’t a big thing back then, as everyone drank whiskey.’
During this journey, other than cultivating skills that would make him a top-notch hotelier in the coming days, Bikki also acquired all entrapments of a good life as the Oberoi story became bigger and richer. Game shooting or hunting and polo to name a few became the de rigueur, even as he took responsibility to look after the properties in Delhi, Kolkata and Pakistan, which were being run under the banner Associated Hotels of Pakistan (AHP). Interestingly, AHP would repatriate funds till the Indo-Pak war of 1965 sealed the border implacably. All the hotels of AHP were declared enemy properties.
However, a new outing awaited the Oberois in the war forlorn year. It would be the beginning of the transformation that Mohan Singh had been dreaming of: from annexing hotels to building his own, especially after his world tour along with his family to visit premier hotels. So what if they had lost the Imperial to a poorly fought legal war. Rai Bahadur would soon turn around this personal loss and humiliation and gift India its first modern hotel, which in a way was not a hotel but a state of mind. It not only gave the Indian hotel industry concepts like twin-sharing, wake-up calls, health clubs, ice-makers, flower arrangements, housekeeping and room service, (which was first introduced in India at the Grand, Kolkata) but its restaurants and bars veiled well the Indian image of a hungry and a poverty ridden nation.
