Malavika’s Mumbaistan: A Brilliant Legacy

Word comes in of Paris’ enchantment with the ‘Modern Maharajah: A Patron of the 1930s’ which opened this week at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs. Said to be a paean

Word comes in of Paris’ enchantment with the ‘Modern Maharajah: A Patron of the 1930s’ which opened this week at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs. Said to be a paean to Yashwant Holkar II, (1908-1961) the 14th Maharaja of Indore, a man of exceptional taste, who along with the active participation of his wife Sanyogita Bai Holkar, built their palace Manikh Bagh, the exhibits include his collection of Modern European art and design, including geometric rugs by the French painter and weaver Ivan Da Silva Bruhns, a Transat lounge chair by Irish designer Eileen Gray and portraits by surrealist photographer Man Ray. But this brilliant legacy is underpinned with poignancy: When his beloved wife had died at 22, the Maharaja is said to have abandoned his passion for beautiful things. There to attend the inauguration were the late Maharaja’s two children, his daughter, Usha Devi Holkar, who inherited his title upon his death and his son, the epicure, designer, textile revivalist and owner boutique hotels, Richard Holkar, now in his 70s, who divides his time between Maheshwar and Mumbai. “I was fortunate to grow up with my parents in Manik Bagh until the age of 8, and then after marriage between 1968 and 1971,” said Holkar. “As a child, I had a French governess, whom we called Zezelle, and I recall the lessons she would give in the children’s’ apartment called the nursery. The painted images on the walls, especially the monkey, were pretty frightening. [But] I was quite thrilled when the guards would salute me [a full present arm] every time I went by,” and the consummate epicure reminisces: “Meals were quite special. My father had three chefs, one Indian meat chef RajaRam, one vegetarian Dhulji Maharaj and one Swiss chef, Mons Birché. The dal bhat waran fodni made by Dhulji, which was served first is a taste which I will always remember, and which I have never been able to duplicate.” The exhibition is on till 12 January 2020.

Satish Malhotra, Usha Holkar and Richard Holkar with friends at the exhibition.

There’s Cooking In The Street

Gaggan Anand at the street food stall in Bangkok.

Currently on a temporary self-imposed hiatus, celebrity chef Gaggan Anand is finding ways to keep busy after he shut his two Michelin-starred restaurant in Bangkok this August. Gaggan, who took the restaurant to the World no. 4 rank earlier this year, said he would return with his new venture this month and we are informed preparations are underway with a projected pre-opening date during the last week of October. But last week, Gaggan took to social media to announce a new initiative: “It’s an experiment to create a charity for under-deserved street food vendors, to give them new or better infrastructure,” he shared, announcing that he would take over a struggling street food stall run by a single mother in Bangkok over the weekend. “We attempt to give her 100,000 baht atleast. The money we raise will help them buy better carts or other means of secured life,” he continued. And we hear the news of India’s most famous chef taking over a street food stall had travelled far and wide. “Gaggan cooked himself at Lido Connect, a street food stall in the Pathum Wan district of Bangkok. Along with his team they served redang curry with Indian paratha and within an hour, there were long lines in the area, the food was sold out,” informed a source. And we hear, the chef plans more initiatives with the goal of one every two months to support six families a year.

True Lies

Oh dear, friends of this high-profile India Inc statesman, one of the pillars of the community, cannot help but grumble about his penny pinching ways. “He is a gentleman and a highly-regarded social figure, no doubt,” they rue, “but his parsimonious habit has got the whole of his friend circle a bit, bewildered.” The bone of contention is that twice in a row, over a period of a few months only, the statesman and his wife have invited a bunch of their friends to dine with them at new and much hyped city eateries. “The group has included his peers and friends and their wives and everyone has enjoyed the company and the food and drinks,” says a source. But come the time to pay the bill and their host has turned to everyone and suggested charmingly: “Why don’t we all split the bill?”

This has happened not once, but twice and though all on the table can well afford to pay for their own share, they are curious about the reason for what they allege is needless tightfistedness.

“God knows, he can well afford to pick up the tab and so can we, but why make a show of hosting the evening in the first place?” is what they say.

A Close Shave

Rohit Bal

“We almost crashed. There was a loud bang in the aircraft. We almost died. We sort of crash landed back in Goa. Just landed,” said designer Rohit Bal, about the experience he’d had on a Goa-Delhi IndiGo flight, which was forced to make an emergency landing soon after take-off when its pilot detected technical issues in the engine on Sunday. Bal was not the only high-profile passenger on the flight, Goa environment minister Nilesh Cabral was also on board. Bal’s post about his narrow escape brought forth a volley of responses from his friends with a few weighing in on the issue of the airline’s choice of engines. Aviator Parvez Damania noted he had been on innumerable debates and written a number of letters to the DGCA and the aviation ministry to look into the airline’s engine issue, but unfortunately nothing seemed to be happening. Meanwhile, the airline said that there was a technical issue with the engine. The Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) has launched a probe into the incident. As for Bal, safely ensconced in Delhi on terra firma, what can one say but all’s well that ends well.