M ag a z i n e - The Leela Palaces, Hotels and Resorts...The Leela Group going all out to ensure...

M a g a z i n e

The Art & Culture Issue

BMW 7 Series

730Ld740Li750Li760Li

SheerDriving Pleasure

JOY REDEFINES ULTIMATE LUXURY.

The model, equipment and possible vehicle configurations illustrated in the advertisement may differ from the vehicles supplied in the Indian market.

Authorized BMW Dealers:North: Chandigarh: Krishna Automobiles +91 172 525 0000, Delhi: Bird Automotive (South Delhi) +91 11 4087 0707 BMW Studio +91 11 4266 0000, Deutsche Motoren (South-East Delhi) +91 11 4309 0000, Deutsche Motoren (West Delhi) +91 11 4726 0000 Gurgaon: Bird Automotive +91 11 3988 5577, Jaipur: Sanghi Classic +91 141 408 7070, Ludhiana: Krishna Automobiles +91 161 525 0000South: Bangalore: Navnit Motors (South Bangalore) +91 80 2852 0060, Navnit Motors (North Bangalore) +91 80 2234 1661 Calicut: Platino Classic +91 495 669 6666, Chennai: KUN Exclusive +91 44 4291 1111, Coimbatore: KUN Exclusive +91 42 2227 0900 Hyderabad: KUN Exclusive +91 40 4465 6565, Kochi: Platino Classic +91 484 669 6666East: Bhubaneswar: OSL Prestige +91 674 644 4672, Kolkata: OSL Prestige +91 33 2251 7010, Raipur: Munich Motors +91 771 225 9333West: Ahmedabad: Parsoli Motors +91 79 2684 1231, Goa: Bavaria Motors +91 832 288 7771, Indore: Infinity Cars +91 731 400 8989 Mumbai: Infinity Cars +91 22 6714 5100, Navnit Motors +91 22 6677 7777, Nagpur: Munich Motors +91 712 647 1111 Pune: Bavaria Motors +91 20 2614 1555, Surat: Parsoli Motors +91 261 272 1231

www.facebook.com/bmwindia

JOY IS THE BMW 7 SERIES.

The BMW 7 Series redefines progressive leadership with ultimate luxury. Take a seat and experience unrivalled innovations like Rear view Camera, folding tables in the rear, rear Comfort Seats with massage function, refrigerator box, integrated BMW Navigation System Professional and Rear-seat Entertainment Professional with largest-in-segment 9.2’’ high-resolution screens that turn every drive into a relaxing experience. The folding tables in the rear create a perfect working ambience and the integrated refrigerator box offers chilled refreshments at any outside temperature while on the go with space for two 700 ml bottles or two cans of beverage. With the Rear view Camera safety leads the way even when reversing. Enter the BMW 7 Series and let innovation indulge you with highest levels of comfort.

For a test-drive or more information contact your local Authorized BMW Dealer or log on to www.bmw.in

chairman’s message

Every journey is marked with milestones to remind you how far

you’ve reached. Today, as The Leela Group steps into its 25th

year of existence, it marks an important milestone for the Group

and also for me.

When I started the first hotel in Mumbai, I never imagined

it to be an acorn that I was planting, which would grow into an

oak tree one day. I attribute this to my wife Leela, who inspired

me to enter the world of hospitality, along with my two sons Vivek

and Dinesh.

Today, in retrospect, The Leela Group’s journey seems like a

living dream. I had begun this journey with a vision and conviction

to be a host to the world and show one and all how India treats its

guests, and is guided by the ethos — Atithi Devo Bhava (Guest is

God). It gives me immense satisfaction to see every member of

The Leela Group going all out to ensure that this belief is part of

their lives.

It’s the year of celebration, introspection and also a time to

envisage a new road ahead to reach the next milestone with as

much success.

The Leela magazine, too, is echoing this celebratory mood

through its special ‘Art and Culture’ Issue.

So, we bring to you Indian art legends like Anish Kapoor and

Subodh Gupta (one of his work adorns our cover), whose art has

received worldwide acclaim.

While the world takes notice of our rich art, culture and

history, we, at The Leela, are showcasing Indian culture through

our hotels, its traditional décor and its exemplary services, which

are so Indian and yet so world-class.

With a prayer on my lips, I wish the silver turns to gold

and brings in many more successes and goodwill during its

journey ahead.

Captain C. p. Krishnan nairChairman

The Leela Palaces, Hotels and Resorts

i had begun this journey with a vision and

conviction to be a host to the world and show one and all how india

treats its guests, and is guided by the ethos

— atithi Devo Bhava

The LeeLa magazine – summer 2012 1

Travelogue

The leela Magazine – Monsoon 2010 7

contents The LeeLa Magazine

SuMMer 2012

26collector

Tête-à-tête with entrepreneur and art expert rajshree Pathy

12luxe effect

Say it with silver to celebrate landmark occasions

52literaryPondicherry captured on lens, sans its clichés

42photography

Stunning visuals are a work of art in today’s age and time

32mixed media

3-D installations are a rage among indian artists

16fashion

haute couture steps into the realm of art

48music

Musical journey of The Symphony Orchestra of india

48music

Musical journey of The Symphony Orchestra of india

61accolades

62events

71PersPectIve

“This Magazine is published by Hotel Leelaventures Limited (“Leela”) and produced by Mediascope Publicitas (India) Pvt. LTD. (“MSP”) on behalf of and under agreement with Leela. Opinions expressed herein are of the Authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Leela or of MSP. Editorial, reproduction of articles and advertising enquiries should be addressed to The Leela Magazine, Mediascope Publicitas (India) Private Ltd, 51 Doli Chamber, Arthur Bunder Road, Colaba, Mumbai 400 005, India. Email: [email protected] Material in this publication may not be reproduced, whether in part or in whole, without the consent of the publisher. Leela or MSP do not assume any responsibility or endorse any claim made by the advertiser herein”Printed at Parksons Graphics, Andheri (West), Mumbai 400053.

COvERart and culture Issue: Cheap Rice, an installation by Delhi-based artist Subodh Gupta, shows a rickshaw spilling with shiny brass pots. It highlights the plight of itinerant workers in urban India, who carry the burden of a society loaded with spirituality (the pots are used in India to hold the holy water) and all he gets in return is a meagre amount.

Th

e L

ee

La

Ma

ga

zin

e s

uM

Me

r 2

01

2

M a g a z i n e

The Art & Culture Issue

This magazine is printed on environment-friendly, wood-free paper.

59jet set go

54tête-à-tête

THE LEELA

PuBLISHER — Amruda Nair

EDITOR-IN-CHIEf — Lakshmi Nair

PRODuCTION DIRECTOR — Shobha Patel

CONTENT AND DISTRIBuTION — Priyanka Paul

PRODuCTION — Prakash Bachche

MEDIASCOPE PuBLICITAS

EDITORIAL

EDITOR-IN-CHIEf — Deepali Nandwani

EDITOR — Sujata Dugar

CLIENT SERvICE MANAGER — Reshma Malvankar

ART

CREATIvE DIRECTOR — faruqui Mohd Jaan

ART DIRECTOR — Sanjay Rane

SENIOR DESIGNER — Shamkant More

IMAGE EDITOR — Atul Jangam

PRODuCTION MANAGER — Elidio fernandes

ADvERTISING SALES

MuMBAI (022-22850188 / 61377200)

— Lamont Dias, Mallika Jamsandekar,

Sumit Shetty, Gokul Dharan, Shruti Baghel

DELHI (011-23730873/74)

Asha Augustine, Nikhil Mehrotra

BANGALORE (080-25592714/82514)

— Yogeesha A

LuCkNOW (0522-2780560/754) — P P S Marwa

PuNE (09850086865) — Shailesh Amonkar

kOLkATA (09831131395) — Subrata Mazumder

CHENNAI (09841091288) — J v Naveen

kERALA (0484-2354867/2381417)

— Hari M Das

JAIPuR (09828150706) — Peeush Gupta

AHMEDABAD (09898002522) — Madan Menon

SECuNDERABAD (08978866599)

— Sheetal Petkar

AD SALES - INTERNATIONAL

HONG kONG (+852-2516 1003) Winky Wong

MALAYSIA (+60-3-7729 6923) Shallie Cheng

SINGAPORE (+65 6735 8681) Joui Ong

DuBAI (+9714 3913360) Sunil kanchan

MARkETING

MANAGER MARkETING SERvICES — Salim B.

MANAGER Ritcha verma

ADMINISTRATION DEPARTMENT

SR. MANAGER - ACCOuNTS & ADMIN.

— Girish Sharma

ACCOuNTS ExECuTIvE — Ashwin Makwana

CREDIT CONTROLLER — Girish Joshi

DELHI ASST. MANAGER - ACCOuNTS & ADMIN.

— Raj Bhushan Singh

CORPORATE

CEO & MANAGING DIRECTOR — Marzban Patel

ExECuTIvE DIRECTOR — Anita Patel

CfO — Manish Mehta

COO — Indu Joshi

contents The LeeLa Magazine

SuMMer 2012

Travelogue

The leela Magazine – Monsoon 2011 11The LeeLa Magazine – SuMMer 201210

LeTTerS To The ediTor

i wish to thank

Honourable Captain

Nair for his kindness

and thoughtfulness

while paying tribute

to Mr. Bijan Pakzad

in the beautiful

The Leela magazine.

Manijeh Messa

general Manager

house of Bijan

For all correspondence and feedback, e-mail: [email protected]

in this section, we share feedback and suggestions from guests, patrons and readers of The Leela magazine

The Leela

magazine is

fantastic with a

great new look.

Sabine van Ommen

Sabine van ommen

Public relations gmbh,

Berlin

i received The Leela magazine and was transfixed with

wonder by the beauty of the cover and every page in this

publication. It is the most beautiful magazine I have ever

had the pleasure of receiving — it is more elegant and

sophisticated than what is distributed by other luxury hotel

companies. The photos are breathtaking.

Congratulations on accomplishing such an amazing

publication.

Bernd K. Wosgien, CHA

President & Ceo,

executive Search international

orlando, Florida, uSa

The team at house of BijanThe team at house of Bijan

Travelogue


Silver is celebration, silver is sheen, silver is glitter and also a milestone. We celebrate our 25th anniversary with some interesting objets d’art which are sure to attract the eyeballs and add a sparkle each time they are used

Add sparkle to your home with SWAROVSKI’s crystalline vase. The crystalline centre with thousands of glittering

chatons adds sheer brilliance to your floral arrangement. It costs `29,800 and is available at the DLF Promenade mall,

New Delhi,Contact: 91 11 4606 0924; Ambience Mall, Gurgaon,

Contact: 0124 4029104; and at Palladium Mall High Street

Phoenix, Mumbai,Contact: 91 22 6610 0140/ 2,

among others.swarovski.com

Silverstreak

Luxe effecT

Famous for its hand-crafted jewellery, AmRApAlI’s beautifully designed tribal cuff, which is plated in both silver and gold, is sure to turn heads. The smooth silver textured cuff has tribal motifs in gold. It is just the right bling to pair with any Western or Indian outfit. Its price is available on request. To buy, visit Amrapali Jewels, Juhu, Mumbai. Contact: 91 22 2612 5001. Or, visit Santushti Shopping Complex, New Delhi. Contact: 91 11 2467 2025. amrapalijewels.com

12

lOngIneS, the Swiss, high range watchmakers’ Agassi Collection,

boasts of a white gold watch with diamonds on the bezel. Andre

Agassi, one of the greatest tennis players, is famous for his precision

and exceptional timing during the game. He also had a remarkable

endurance and was extremely combative. Agassi’s unique style,

his kindness and the emotions he evoked while playing has been

transmitted by Longines into its sport collection watches, named

after the player. Its price is available on request. Buy this precision tool

at the Longines Boutique, CRII Mall, Nariman Point, Mumbai.

Contact: 91 22 6743 9852. longines.com

Audelade in French means beyond, and taking this cue is the AudelAde brand that has taken luxury and fashion beyond its standard confines. This moccasin (photo above) is hand-crafted and hand-woven in a fabric made of silver and combined with the finest quality of natural patent leather. It costs `63,500. The ladies boots (left) are similarly made of hand-crafted silver fabric and leather. Its mid-level heels and a zip opening at the side adds a touch of style and comfort. It costs `1,17,300. It is available at the Atria Mall, Ist Floor, Worli, Mumbai. Contact: 91 22 2481 3771.audelade.com

For exquisite silverware and signature collectibles, SHAZe, the sterling silver store, is the place to go to. A Pyramid photoframe in solid silver is available for `47,700 at Palladium Mall High Street Phoenix, Mumbai, Contact: 91 22 3222 5557; and at Infnity-2 Mall, Mumbai, Contact: 91 22 3220 8610. shaze.in

The LeeLa Magazine – SuMMer 2012

Luxe effecT

14

The LeeLa Magazine – SuMMer 201216 The LeeLa Magazine – SuMMer 2012 17

Stepping down from its high ground, from where fashion seemed lowbrow and trivial,

artists and art museums are embracing haute couture as an exquisite expression of

art and craftsmanship

FaShion

By Deepali Nandwani

andy

meetsalexander

Warhol

McQueen

The Christian Dior retrospective at the Pushkin Museum, Moscow

Way back in 2009, it was Warhol who exhibited his

quirky art with the creations of French fashion

legend Yves Saint Laurent at the historic Parisian

museum, Grand Palais. The show, a huge success, blurred the

rigid lines that divide art from fashion. “From being considered

trivial, unworthy and inferior, fashion is now seen as a form of

high art,” says designer Manish Arora, among the few Indian

designers whose beautifully structured and tailored garments are

considered akin to a piece of installation or art.

“Why do people think artists are special? it’s just

another job.” — andy Warhol

andy Warhol


Much before

Warhol broke the barrier,

way back in the 18th

century, fashion was

considered as another

expression of art, even

the defining characteristic

of human civilisation.

New York-based fashion

historian and writer

Samuel Phillips says, “In

the mid-18th century, the nobility separated their high fashion

from their everyday dress. An English Duke might have worn

lace, embroidery and velvet on a formal occasion.” In India, too,

the unstructured garment, the sari, traces its origins back to

the Indus Valley Civilisation. “Sculptures from the Gandharva,

Mathura and Gupta schools of art show goddesses and dancers

wearing exquisite saris,” says art historian and curator, Siddhi Das.

But then, somewhere down history, art took a high

ground, losing its way into a desert of complex concepts of what

is fine art and what is pedestrian. According to Harvard University

sociologist Stanley Lieberson, who authored the book, A Matter

of Taste: How Names, Fashions and Culture Change, fashion was

considered suspect because of its fickleness. “Fashion simply

means that something is now more attractive than what was

previously deemed attractive,” he says.

Now, however, as art itself moves away from the traditional

painting and sculpture mediums into several unexplored terrains,

haute couture is finding its way back into museums and galleries.

Alice Rawsthorn, director of The Design Museum, London, says,

“I would never say that fashion, at its best, is not a suitable subject

for museums or that it cannot share some of the attributes of art.

On the contrary, an exquisite haute couture dress — like the ones

that Cristóbal Balenciaga created in his 1950s heyday — can look

as perfect as a beautiful painting or sculpture.”

The trend, reports Wall Street Journal, has been building

for decades. Several designers, starting from Coco Chanel

to Alexander McQueen and our very own Manish Arora are

considered as much artists as couturiers. “Coco Chanel, for

instance, changed the language of fashion, from flamboyant,

uncomfortable dressing to a rather simple style that she herself

liked,” says Phillips.

The first step towards demolishing the outdated notion

of fashion being trivial was when the art powerhouse, The

Metropolitan Museum of Art (Met), arranged a retrospective

of the late Alexander McQueen in May 2011. The exhibition,

organised by The Costume Institute, celebrated McQueen’s

genius and his contribution to fashion. From his Central Saint

Martins postgraduate collection of 1992 to his final runway

presentation after his death in February 2010, the designer

constantly has expanded the understanding of fashion beyond

utility, to a conceptual expression of culture.

The stunningly brilliant ‘The Savage Beauty’ exhibition was

the most-visited among those curated by the Met’s Costume

Institute since its inception in 1946, and drew in 23,000 new

members to the Met during its three-month run. According to

a note written by the Met experts, McQueen’s “iconic designs

constitute the work of an artist whose medium of expression

was fashion”. The exhibition featured over 100 ensembles and 70

accessories designed by the designer in his 19-year-long career,

all drawn from the Alexander McQueen Archive in London,

while some pieces came from the Givenchy Archive in Paris and

private collections. “McQueen’s fashion often referenced the

exaggerated silhouettes of the 1860s, 1880s, 1890s, and 1950s,

but his technical ingenuity always imbued his designs with an

innovative sensibility that kept him at the vanguard,” says the

Met essay on the designer. Each of McQueen’s ensemble and

accessories were not only exquisitely produced, much like art

is, but also broke the mould. Collectors preserve a McQueen

creation as they would preserve a Van Gogh painting.

This retrospective sort of triggered off an avalanche.

In November last year, Dallas Museum of Art hosted The

Fashion World of Jean Paul Gaultier: From the Sidewalk to the

Catwalk. It ran for three months and showcased several different

aspects of the design philosophy that defined the work of the man

considered the enfant terrible of the fashion world. It highlighted

the several different influences on the designer and his vibrant

sources of inspiration through a carefully curated selection

of over 140 haute couture dresses and ready-to-wear pieces,

crafted between early 1970s and 2011. “By acknowledging the

importance of fashion as design through hosting this exhibition,

the Dallas Museum of Art was simply fulfilling its mission to

bring to the public a broad spectrum of art in a variety of media,”

says Kevin Tucker, coordinating curator for The Fashion World of

Jean Paul Gaultier. The exhibition spawned an entire gamut of

mediums — from sketches, stage costumes and video clips from

fashion films, runway shows, concerts, dance performances and

television programmes. Among the accessories on show were the

corsets worn by Madonna during her 1990 tour, besides artwork

of legends like Andy Warhol, Mario Testino and Steven Meisel.

“For me, Gaultier’s work, like that of Vivienne Westwood’s,

celebrates life through a visceral kind of energy and a sense of

spectacle that is full of unexpected sources of influence, thereby

making it undeniably exciting and ideal for the Dallas Museum of

Art’s first major foray into the world of contemporary fashion,”

says Tucker.

In November itself, The Design Museum, London,

organised a retrospective of the iconic French shoe designer,

Christian Louboutin, the man who pushed the boundaries of high

The LeeLa Magazine – SuMMer 2012 21

FaShion

FACING PAGE & AbovE alexander McQueen’s iconic designs curated by the MeT, reveal how he drew inspiration from historical references from medieval england and the Salem witch trials, of which one of his ancestors was a victim

alexander McQueen

Travelogue

The leela Magazine – Monsoon 2011 23

fashion shoe design. These sculptural shoes, with their unique

red soles, are masterpieces in which fashion, craftsmanship,

engineering and sculpture segue seamlessly. It drew liberally

from Louboutin’s personal archive, referencing the origins of the

iconic red sole, through to the latest collections.

Then, on March 25, 2012, the Denver Art Museum

hosted the Yves Saint Laurent Retrospective. To run till July 8,

the retrospective, organised by the Fondation Pierre Bergé-Yves

Saint Laurent (run by his partner Pierre Bergé) in collaboration

with the Denver Art Museum, it celebrates the genius of the

designer through 200 haute couture creations. In Beijing,

Louis Vuitton’s exhibition, Voyages, at the National Museum in

Tiananmen Square drew throngs who stood in line for hours to

see iconic pieces from the archives, as well as some of the more

sensationalistic concepts dreamed up for the brand’s nouveau

riche clientele. Quick on their heels are nearly a dozen other

brands who have, or will soon mount major exhibitions, including

Ferragamo, Van Cleef and Arpels, and Prada — all eager to boast

of their heritage of craft and design. Louis Vuitton is also currently

building a massive space designed by architect Frank Gehry in the

Bois de Boulogne and slated to open in 2013.

The India FactorIn India, the only designer whose work has come close to the

eclecticism, structure and sculptural profile is Manish Arora.

On March 4, Arora exhibited 1950s silhouettes in nipped-waist

dresses, lit up by subversive images lifted from Brooklyn street art

to the backdrop of black-hooded graffiti artists. The haute couture

designer’s Autumn/Winter 2012 collection is inspired by street

art. “I’m very attracted

to street art,” says the

designer. “It deserves a

lot more attention than it

gets.” For the collection,

he met several artists,

from the Brooklyn-based

Judith Supine, whose

bright-coloured, surreal

work Arora superimposed

onto his clothes, to


FaShion

LEFT Cleopatra by Vivan Sundaram

Vivan Sundaram

Travelogue


the Paris graffiti art trio

called Rude, Vision and

Broke. Motifs ranged

from urban landscapes

to fragmented figures

or faces, and bright red

kissing lips dotted all over

a black knee-length dress

under a little black bolero.

However, the

avant-garde work in which fashion seamlessly segues into

art is not by a designer, but interestingly by an artist, Vivan

Sundaram, whose art practice includes working with trash and

found objects, returned recently with a flamboyant exhibition in

which high fashion met cutting edge art. He first showed the

intriguingly titled Gagawaka series, which includes masquerade-

isque haute couture creations that he calls ‘sheltering sculptures’

or ‘sculptural garments’ in Delhi, and then in Mumbai’s Gallery

Chemould Prescott Road.

He collaborated with professionals like designer Pratima

Pandey, NIFT graduate Tanmay Gupta, and two tailors for the

collection, who helped translate his sketches into fashion

ShowTImEThe four fashion-art shows you must catch up on

Exhibition: Christian Louboutin, a retrospective At: Design Museum, Londonwhen: Till July 1, 2012

Exhibition: Ballgowns: British Glamour Since 1950At: The Victoria and Albert Museum, Londonwhen: May 19, 2012 – January 26, 2013

Exhibition: Louis Vuitton- Marc Jacobs, a retrospective of Jacobs’ work at LVAt: Les Arts Décoratifs, Pariswhen: Till September 16

Exhibition: Fifty Years of James Bond Style with pieces from Giorgio Armani, Prada, Oscar de la Renta and other designersAt: The Barbican, Londonwhen: April 2012

AbovE Manish arora’s garments blend design, art and fashion

installations, which range from a sculptural black gown called

Cleopatra’s Trail to the red Dervish skirt, the architectural Flow

Wrap dress and the men’s wedding suit, a white garment made

from sanitary napkins.

Researching the history of fashion and the close linkages

between fashion and art down centuries, both in India and

Europe, led Sundaram to believe that the two concepts are not

as exclusive as they seem. “In India, there is very little debate

on whether fashion and art overlap. Worldwide, however, there

is a movement to take fashion back into the art museums. There

are designers whose work is more art than fashion. Alexander

McQueen’s work was sculptural and his seashell constructions

remind me of works created during the modern art movement,

Arte Povera’s phase in the 1960s, when works were made from

perishable materials and fabrics. In the West, the relationship

between art and fashion is quite complex and a lot of experiments

have taken place.”

Manish arora

FaShion

The LeeLa Magazine – SuMMer 201226 The LeeLa Magazine – SuMMer 2012

coLLecTor

entrepreneur, art collector, philanthropist and the founder of the

recently held india Design Forum, Rajshree Pathy, chairman and managing

director of rajshree Sugars and chemicals

is a multi-faceted woman. apart from

starting contemplate: an arts initiative that supports workshops,

she is also building an art museum and an

institute in coimbatore to provide a platform for

contemporary art

Tell us a bit about your collection — who are the artists you buy, what

kind of works do you collect and do you also collect installations,

sculptures and multi-media?

The collection mostly comprises of contemporary art. This

includes all genres of art from video installations, site-specific

works, installations, sculptures, prints and paintings.

Which are some of your favourite works from your own collection?

The Encounter by S.H. Raza, Man by Rameshwar Broota,

Veena Box by Anjolie Ela Menon, Rickshawpolis by Jitish Kallat,

Glowing Embers by A. Balasubramaniam, Reaching Out by

Vasundara Broota Tiwari, untitled works by Jaishree Chakravarty

and Rekha Rodwittiya, a sculpture by Anita Dube, Penetration,

an installation by Mia Westerlund Roosen and The Womb, an

installation by Janet Echelman are some of my favourites. My

collection is eclectic, both in its genre and its language.

Besides collecting individual artists, have you also collected works

that belong to a particular school of art, or a particular genre?

As most of the collection is contemporary, it is non-linear

in nature. I mostly built the collection by being inclusive of genres

and disciplines than looking at schools of thought.

What prompted you to set up Contemplate: an arts initiative? What do

you hope to achieve with the initiative?

Contemplate, as an initiative, was set up to expand art

awareness. We work out of Delhi and Coimbatore. In Coimbatore,

the gallery has a full calendar and we focus our programmes on

providing art education to an interested audience of all age groups.

Could you share details about the Coimbatore College of Contemporary

Arts (CoCCA) and what do you aim to do through this institute?

Coimbatore Centre for Contemporary Arts (CoCCA) will

be a centre for continuing fine arts education, both practical and

theoretical. The Centre will serve as a space in which students

will be given an opportunity to explore, question, experiment

and innovate. It will strive to provide an integrated art education

experience that is interdisciplinary in spirit.

CoCCA’s major contribution to the contemporary Indian art

world will be to offer artists an educational experience that assists

in the development of their thinking about art making, its pedagogy

and the social functions of art. These will be learned along with

other disciplines such as film theory, anthropology, ethnography,

art history, sociology, media theory, economics, ecology and

political science, among others. This will help introduce intellectual

diversity and rigour to creativity, conceptualisation and practice.

Do you hold shows regularly at CoCCA? Tell us a bit about some

forthcoming shows?

So far, CoCCA’s work in Coimbatore has been to lay the

groundwork for the institute and the museum. We are achieving

this through our outreach programs. We have conducted

RIGHT a painting by artist rekha rodwittiya is part of Pathy’s collectionABOVE art connoisseur rajshree Pathy

Queen of artsWhat inspired you towards art? Since when did you begin collecting

and do you recall the first painting you bought?

Art was all-pervasive in my parent’s home in Coimbatore

during my growing years. My mother had a unique aesthetic

sensibility and as she, along with my father, travelled around the

world both on work and pleasure, she brought back antiques and

curios of exquisite beauty that filled our home.

Frequent visits to Mumbai brought my mother in contact

with contemporary art galleries like Chemould and Pundole. As

a child, I vividly remember my mother buying a beautiful Shanti

Dave orange and green abstract painting, which hung on the wall

of our living room for several years.

When you grow up surrounded by beauty, somehow

the eye gets trained to search for and relate only to a particular

sensibility. I felt very responsive to contemporary art at a very

early age. Those days, only one gallery existed in Chennai —

Sarala’s, that was owned and managed by a lovely lady called Mrs

Daruwala who sold mainly M.F. Husain’s works along with some

other masters.

I still remember that day when I managed to buy my first

M.F. Husain — a 3 by 3 oil on canvas for just `18,000. I was barely

17-years-old and married, and I could feel my heart pounding with

excitement at having bought a Husain. It still adorns the same wall

and I have never been tempted to replace it with another painting.

By Sujata Dugar

27

PhoT

o co

urTe

Sy: r

ajSh

ree

PaTh

y

The LeeLa Magazine – suMMer 2012 29

Art

28 The LeeLa Magazine – SuMMer 2012

workshops in collaboration with artists from across India for

children and adults. We hold lecture sessions conducted by artists

at various institutions as a part of our awareness initiatives.

CoCCA’s past events included a comic illustration for

children with comics author Bharath Murthy; a paper making

project with artist Shanthamani Muddaiah and a paper plane

making workshop with artist Baptist Coelho. Some of the

forthcoming events are life study / portrait drawing workshop

with artist Reema Alva and an image making workshop with

Rakhi Peswani.

What are the other initiatives undertaken by CoCCA in the recent past?

On the global level, we recently organised the India Design

Forum (IDF) 2012 in New Delhi (March 2-10). It is a pioneering

international platform for design disciplines cutting across

architecture, fashion, interior, product and graphic design. It has

been conceived by me and my daughter Aishwarya as a space for

creative dialogue, to showcase and collaborate around design. It

highlights the power of design to change our lives and focusses

on sustainable and urban design.

The inaugural edition of IDF, a nine day celebration of India’s

distinctive design aesthetic and the way in which it continues

its conversation with the international design world, saw two

components. The first was the Design Week — a week-long

schedule of cutting edge design exhibitions and curated events

in venues across New Delhi, and open to the public, the second

was the Design Forum — a private, registration-only programme

featuring two days of talks by highly acclaimed design experts

from around India and the rest of the world.

Some of the keynote speakers included Karim Rashid,

the celebrated industrial designer, Sam Pitroda, entrepreneur,

policymaker and advisor to the Prime Minister of India on

public information infrastructure and innovation, Tim Marshall,

chief academic officer, Parsons The New School for Design and

Justin McGuirk, the award-winning design critic at The Guardian,

publishing director of the Strelka Institute for Media, Architecture

and Design in Moscow, among many others.

It brought global design thought leaders together in

India to enable strategic alliances, encourage dialogue between

academia and industry and facilitate cross design cultural thinking

and application.

What are your views on the current crop of artists and who among these

are your favourites?

There are many young and emerging artists. The

commercial success of their peers in the last decade has been

a great motivation for young people to pursue a career in art. It’s

difficult to name just a few but Aditya Pande, Manil and Rohit

Gupta, Kiran Subbiah, Venkanna, Vibha Galhotra and Princess Pea

are some talented artistes whose works I admire.

coLLecTor

ABOVE Works of artist anita Dube (left) and jayashree chakravarty (right) are among Pathy’s favourite artworks

The LeeLa Magazine – suMMer 2012 31

Art

The LeeLa Magazine – SuMMer 201230LEFT an installation artwork by artist a Balasubramaniam

is another of Pathy’s favourite work

What do you think of the ‘art as an investment’ concept? Do you think it

has helped the art scene and artists?

The concept of art as an investment has proven to be quite

a challenge for the artist. Nowadays, the artist has to keep his

practice going to produce art that is interesting and challenging.

He/ she has to better himself/ herself with every exhibition. It

gives a consumerist nature to the art work.

What, according to you, is lacking in Indian art and what are the

drawbacks that are curtailing its reach to a global audience?

Indian art is reaching out to a global audience. We have

Indian artists winning prestigious awards such as the Artes Mundi.

We need a more active state-level/ national-level participation; the

government needs to provide an infrastructure for arts.

India lacks a serious art infrastructure. We have no museums

of the stature of, say, MOMA or Victoria & Albert Museum. Even

art research and education seem to be in shambles.

What do you think India should do to build its infrastructure?

Most of India’s renowned museums are private. We need

a larger, more involved participation from the state. At CoCCA, my

attempt is to provide an exposure of global standards. CoCCA will

be a one of its kind museum/ art institute in the south of India.

The Indian art scene is in a flux right now and where do you see it going

from here?

What is happening to the art market today is both good

and bad. Good, because never has Indian art become so popular

and so global. Thanks to the booming Indian economy, newer

collectors and investors are coming into the market to buy art.

Auction houses like Sotheby’s and Christie’s are proving that

investments in Indian art are extremely profitable. This is all good

news for our artists and I am excited for them.

The bad side of this madness is that just anything sells. So

many galleries without any credentials have sprouted in the cities,

selling just anything in the name of contemporary art with the

sole objective of making money and exploiting unaware buyers in

search of quick short term gains. Some upcoming artists, instead

of waiting for recognition, are hiking their prices to abominable

levels and churning out trashy art.

I believe we need to have more discerning galleries,

such as a Leo Castelli in New York, who, in the years 1957-1999,

launched the careers of Andy Warhol, Robert Rauschenberg,

Frank Stella and Jasper Johns and helped to create an awareness

of what is good art.

As a collector, what tips would you offer to people who have just started

collecting?

So many young collectors constantly call me for advice on

what to buy. I have only one piece of advice — follow your heart.

Creativity is something so personal, so emotional and should

remain vibrant within oneself. I believe you are either an investor

or a collector — two very different agendas.

indian art is reaching out to a global audience. We have indian artists winning prestigious awards such as the artes Mundi

coLLecTor


art is coming off the wall and into the public realm in india with artists displaying an unbridled

affinity for three-dimensional installations

Mixed Media

By Maria Louis

Beyondframes

Beyondframes

From the series Match Fixed by Thukral and Tagra

The LeeLa Magazine – SuMMer 201234ABOVE Sheela gowda’s Collateral

BELOW a sculptural work at the uttarayan art Centre, Vadodara

At the India Art Fair held in the capital this January, visitors

could hardly miss the 38-foot-long concrete wall displaying

pictures and illustrations from around the world. Titled

Discord, it consisted of seven blocks (weighing 250kg) fabricated

with images of conflict that reflected artist Samar Jodha’s work

inspired by migrant workers in the Middle East, coal miners in

Burma, Polish and Russian waitresses in London, and workers at

oilrigs in Ghana as well as at the Commonwealth Games 2010 site

in Delhi.

At the Kala Ghoda Art Festival in February, bemused

Mumbaikars found themselves circulating around strange and

sublime works of art, craning their necks to take it all in. The

pièce de résistance was the life-size Volkswagen Beetle created

out of 800 spark plugs, 800 cold drink crowns, 200 bottle caps,

60 mother boards, computer keyboards, hard disks, CDs, audio

cassettes, speakers, barbecue sticks, beer cans, telecom wires,

flat screen monitor, pens, typewriters and other scrap by city-

based artist Haribabu Natesan.

A more permanent new installation in Mumbai is Charkha,

the 30-foot-tall steel sculpture designed by architect Nuru Karim.

Strategically located at Cross Maidan, between the Churchgate

railway station and Flora Fountain, it was commissioned by Tata

Steel in collaboration with the Oval Trust and unveiled on Gandhi

Jayanti. Charkha is an asymmetrical, stylised representation of the

spinning wheel that could be described as a ‘futuristic version’

of Gandhiji’s ‘weapon’ of non-violent protest. Karim didn’t want a

metaphorical interpretation of the spinning wheel. “I didn’t want

to take it literally,” he explains, adding “I wanted to represent the

energy, the motion — the dynamic, abstract quality.”

So, almost a century after Marcel Duchamp provocatively

installed a urinal in a New York art gallery (Fountain, 1917), artistic

outpourings have made the wall space of our galleries woefully

inadequate. Contemporary Indian artists are exploiting a unique

vocabulary to express themselves — but it all began with the

experimentation of the ’80s.

Who could forget the irrepressible but trendsetting M.F.

Husain, who used this art form most dramatically when he booked

the Jehangir Art Gallery — only to fill it up with crumpled balls of

newspapers for a show titled Shwetambari. He was denounced

by purists whose sensibilities were outraged at his impudence.

Mixed Media

Baji

rao

Paw

ar

using materials ranging from everyday or found objects to new media like video, sound, performance, computers and the internet, artists even make installations that are site-specific

BHARANY’S

EXQUISITE�JEWELLERY &�FINE�JAMAWAR SHAWLS

14,�Sundar�Nagar�Market,�New�Delhi�-�110�003.�Contact:�4351�8755,�2435�3957Fax:�2435�3081��E-mail:��[email protected]

ABOVE LEFT Mute figures by g.r. irannaRIGHT The Flying Bus installation by artist Sudarshan Shetty

in Mumbai’s Bandra-Kurla Complex

Sunil Gawde’s inverted feminine bases masquerading as

heart-shaped balloons bobbed up and down within his designated

Frame/Grid/Room/Cell at the group show of seven artists including

Nalini Malani, Anita Dube, Riyas Komu, Shilpa Gupta and Jagannath

Panda, curated by Gayatri Sinha for the now defunct Bodhi Art

Gallery, a few years ago.

Not long before that, the same space hosted a procession

of gleaming high-rise dabbas going round in circles on a sushi

conveyor belt at Subodh Gupta’s solo show; and Tushar Joag made

a powerful room-size statement with a suspended ‘periscope’

at Galerie Mirchandani+Steinruecke’s group show, Pink. Bose

Krishnamachari’s Ghost Transmemoir, which travelled around the

world, even had video interviews beamed through small screens

fitted into rows of tiffin dabbas, with headphones to access sound.

Using materials ranging from everyday or found objects

to new media like video, sound, performance, computers and

the internet, artists even make installations that are site-specific

— such as pioneering artist Sudarshan Shetty’s Flying Bus that

is anchored to the ground outside the Maker Maxity complex in

Mumbai’s Bandra-Kurla Complex. Using the city’s iconic double-

decker bus that will soon be obsolete, the artist has given it a new

lease of life — and stainless steel wings — as a public art venue

hosting exhibitions.

The bus (open for viewing from noon to 7 pm) is symbolic of

the constant fluctuations in the city. “The work is poised between

states of relevance and obsolescence, things being remembered

and things being replaced,” discloses the artist. “The double-

decker bus persists as an icon of Mumbai despite now being

phased out. The work is about accepting that things do and must

change, and is about determining a useful way to handle loss that

does not drift toward nostalgia; a re-phrasing of loss as something

vital. The steel wings with their potential of flight, whilst being

burdened by the huge weight of the bus, hint towards this change

and whatever may come in its place,” he states.

Anguish and struggle have long been the preoccupations

of G.R. Iranna, whose profound paintings and sculptures capture

the plight of those who remain cowed down by repressive social

and economic disparities. His sculptural installations created

from fibreglass, titled The Birth of Blindness, make a powerful

statement of protest. Lined up in rows of military precision, his

protagonists are muffled and suffocated — unable to speak out

against the injustices that hold them prisoners.

Bangalore-based artist Sheela Gowda has turned old bits of

house timber into battered versions of abstract sculptures. Cow

dung, thread, spice and oil drums have all been transfigured in her

installations, bringing to light the daily lives of those living on the

economic margins.

Gallery Threshold recently presented a solo show by Israel-

born artist Achia Anzi (now living in India) titled Peaceful be your

return O lovely bird... It is a line borrowed from Zionist poet, Hayim

Nachman Bialik, who wrote these while studying in Europe and

long before immigrating to Israel. In this poem, Bialik addresses

Two Indian artists have managed to

break out from the traditional sculptural

forms to take installation art to a complex

conceptual level — Anish Kapoor and Subodh

Gupta. London-based Kapoor, of Indian-

Iraqi Jewish ancestry, is considered among

the most influential sculptors/conceptual

artists of his generation. Born in Bombay,

the 58-year-old artist has lived and worked

in London since the early ’70s and his art is

in numerous private and public collections,

including the Tate Gallery, the Museum of

Modern Art in New York, the Reina Sofia in

Madrid and Stedlijk Museum in Amsterdam.

Winner of the prestigious Turner Art Prize, among Kapoor’s

much-admired works is a 110-ton stainless steel sculpture, Cloud

Gate, in Chicago’s Millennium Park, an ambitious and controversial

project by architect Frank Gehry, which opened on July 16, 2005.

Standing 33 feet high, with enough space below for people to walk

through, it is said to be one of the largest sculptures in the world.

Nicknamed The Bean because of its shape, it has been fabricated

on site by thousands of Chicago residents. “It perches on two

down-turned ends, allowing viewers to walk underneath,” says

Kapoor. To the southwest of the sculpture

is a fountain designed by the Barcelona

artist, Jaume Plensa, with two 50-foot-high

glass-block towers in one-eighth-inch deep

reflecting pool.

Kapoor, who showed a couple of years

ago in Mumbai and Delhi, his first exhibition

in India, says it has always been “a struggle

as a non-Western artist not to be labelled”

with one’s country of origin. “I’m Indian, my

sensibility is Indian. And I welcome that,

rejoice in that, but the great battle nowadays

is to occupy an aesthetic territory that isn’t

linked to nationality.” Among his newest

public installation is Orbit, commissioned by

the Greater London Authority from a shortlist

of the artist’s proposals for a permanent

artwork for the Olympic Park. It is due for

completion anytime soon.

Delhi-located Gupta is often

compared to the British conceptual artist

Marcel Duchamp, for the kind of raw

materials he uses for his art and installations

— pots, pans and squat stools from his

childhood in Bihar, which recall his rustic

roots. A mainstay of big international art fairs,

Gupta has exhibited at some of the biggest

art events and galleries across the world

— the Venice Biennale, London's Frieze and shows in Moscow,

Miami, Lille and Japan.

Among Gupta’s seminal works is the one owned by collector

and French billionaire François Pinault, who bought a one-ton skull

called A Very Hungry God, crafted out of aluminum pots and pans,

after one of his curators spotted it in a remarkable show at Paris's

Eglise Saint-Bernard church. It now occupies the premium space

outside Pinault’s museum in Milan.

Among his recent works is This Side is the Other Side, an

installation with milk cans slung on either

side of a Priya scooter, a comment on the

chasm that exists between the old and the

new India; Colgate, a quirky piece of metallic

sculptures of bundles of neem sticks and

Oil on Canvas, a series he exhibited at

the Nature Morte Gallery in New Delhi

in December 2011, for which he worked

with bronze, marble, brass and wood and

explored themes of the readymade and

the found object. He has also collaborated

as a scenographer for a ballet staged at

Moscow’s Bolshoi Theatre at the invitation of

the French choreographer, Angelin Preljocaj.

The global Voices

anish Kapoor

Subodh gupta’s The Very hungry god

Mixed Media


Travelogue

The leela Magazine – suMMer 2012 39

an imaginary bird that migrated from Palestine to his window,

expressing his loneliness and longing to return to Israel.

While exploring the fall of the Zionist dream, the sculptures

readdress that old vision. Anzi uses iron, plaster, tin sheet and

scrap material for his sculptures and sculptural installations. The

works are crude, coarse, distressed and abrasive so as to convey

feelings of pain and destruction.

At their exhibition at the Ullens Centre for Contemporary

Art in Beijing in 2010, the artist duo Thukral and Tagra presented a

series of works entitled, Match Fixed. The works on display were

a delightful take on sexual double standards and social hypocrisy,

stuck in the middle of a contemporary India.

While art installations are engaging and gripping, adding

life to inner spaces as well as the outdoors, one wonders if art

buyers are ready to accommodate the less ephemeral but still

unwieldy works in their collections. If not, why do artists indulge

themselves and where do they get the financial support to do so?

Shireen Gandhy of Chemould Prescott Road, who hosted Pakistani

artist Rashid Rana’s “sold out” solo show, maintains that this art

form has come into its own, yet laments that the climate is not

completely conducive.

But Mortimer Chatterjee, partner, Chatterjee & Lal, which

launched its new gallery space designed to hold new media art as

well as paintings and sculptures with a show of video installation

work by international artist Sophie Ernst, feels that the tide is

turning — as “at last there are viable spaces that can effectively

house installations.” He points to Subodh Gupta and Sudarshan

Shetty as India’s leading installation-based artists.

The avowed aim of such practitioners is to challenge the

status quo by encouraging their audience to see familiar objects in

an unfamiliar light and, half the fun lies in decoding the scrambled

message. For instance, if one did not know about Riyas Komu’s

political preoccupations, one could easily miss the point in his

satirical Oil’s Well at Bodhi.

“Though there are few takers, it’s heartening that purchases

are being made outside of the canvas,” says Gandhy, pointing out

that “almost everything Subodh Gupta makes is sold. His Hungry

God (skull sculpture made of vessels) was bought by Francois

Pinault, one of the world’s biggest collectors.”

Installations are, more often than not, a financially non-

viable exercise. Yet, artists like Delhi-based Atul Bhalla continue

to sink their hard-earned cash into voicing their concerns through

expansive statement-making visuals. “One doesn’t work because

of the climate, but because one finds it essential to work like that,”

shrugs Bhalla, who drew attention to the pollution of the river

Yamuna in his solo show at Project 88. “If artists work according

to the climate, there wouldn’t be avant-garde or cutting-edge art.

It is mediocrity that waits for climate to change rather than make

attempts to change it.”

Ranjana Steinruecke of Galerie Mirchandani+Steinruecke

feels that galleries should encourage artists by bearing the cost of

unsold works, though this does not always happen.

The LeeLa Magazine – SuMMer 201238ABOVE LEFT grid by riyas Komu

RIGHT israel-born artist achia anzi’s recent show held at gallery Threshold

Mixed Media

Travelogue

The leela Magazine – suMMer 2012 41

Bhalla often has to dismantle and store the huge tanks

that depict his environmental concerns, he insists that there

are buyers — “essentially good collectors and institutions

that appreciate cutting-edge art, and are willing to support it.”

Collectors are currently acquiring what they think is important

within the contemporary art scene. “They are supporting artists

who they think are going to be very essential to the definition of

contemporary Indian art in the coming years,” observes Bhalla.

Anupam Poddar is one among a handful of Indian collectors

who champion such art.

“The interesting thing is, from being a collector he has now

gone on to setting up a foundation that will house, display and

store his collection,” discloses Gandhy, adding that the walls are

designed to display projections rather than only paintings. “If there

are collectors whose passions give birth to foundations (in lieu of

the sad death of museums in our country), then art buying can go

beyond the realm of painting,” she reasons.

Now that we are being surrounded by installations in public

spaces, traditionalists claim that Indian artists are just aping the

West — but Gandhy refutes this indignantly: “It’s not about being

trendy, it’s a process that becomes essential. The stimulus, the

world that sensitises our artists is so intense, that to sustain

themselves creatively they feel the need to make work that’s

not bound by a frame. Art is a reflection of society; so if society

has the privilege of moving forward, why should artists be caged

within the 2-D formula?”

Shetty, who chooses not to describe himself specifically

as an installation artist, finds it essential to be free to move

between different techniques and materials. He echoes Gandhy’s

sentiments when he says, “It is vital to continually find new ways

to re-state things.” He likes working outside the context of the

white walls of the gallery, and accepts that he does not have

complete control over the environment. “That means the work is

allowed to transform and be transformed, and new meanings can

enter,” he explains. “It is interesting to open up the work to as

many different readings as possible.”

After all, that is really the essence of art installations and

public art — to engage the audience and set them thinking,

whether or not they buy or fund the work on display.

(Maria Louis is the editor of Architect and Interiors India)

ABOVE Charkha, the 30-foot-tall steel sculpture designed by architect nuru Karim, located at Cross Maidan

BELOW a Volkswagen Beetle installation by haribabu natesan at the Kala ghoda art Festival 2012

Mixed Media



“i have discovered photography. now i can kill myself. i have nothing else to learn.”

— Pablo Picasso

There is more to photography then merely capturing static images. They tell a story

and increasingly are being seen as exquisite works of art

Photographer norman Parkinson’ Floating with Flower, india, Vogue, 1956. his impulsive and unstructured style changed the

static approach to fashion photography

PhoTograPhy

By Deepali Nandwani

The art of images

Even before the world had discovered the art in photography,

one of the world’s greatest artists had begun using the

medium as an art form. Years later, in 1993, auction house

Sotheby’s auctioned off a Man Ray photograph for $194,000 and

Christie’s sold an Alfred Steiglitz photograph of Georgia O’Keefe’s

hands for $398,000. Since then, photography has attracted high

prices at auctions and a strong presence at international festivals.

Vicki Goldberg, the photography critic for The New York

Times, says, “The first time photography was subject to a legal

definition of whether it could be considered art was in France in

1862, when one photographer sued another for using his photos.”

In 1910, the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo became the first

museum to buy a photography collection. New York’s Museum of

Modern Art mounted an exhibition of photography in 1937. PhoT

o co

urTe

Sy: n

orM

an P

arki

nSo

n LT

d./ c

ourT

eSy

nor

Man

Par

kin

Son

arc

hiVe

/ TaS

Veer

arT

S


ABOVE Pablo Bartholomew’s portrait of Mumbai in the 1970s

ABOVE alex Prager’s portrait of a woman in a store. The american photographer’s images are stylised and often large-scaleBELOW chinese photographer Liu Xiaofeng’s work was first shown internationally at Paris Photo, 2010

Internationally, among the biggest photographers-

artists are Andreas Gursky, whose evocative image, Frankfurt

of the Frankfurt Stock Exchange’s trading floor, sold for a record

$2.1million at Sotheby’s New York auction, a couple of years ago.

Chinese photographer Liu Xiaofang, was chosen for reGeneration

2, a selection of 50 photographers of tomorrow curated by Swiss

Musée de l’Elysée. Yet another one is American photographer and

filmmaker, Alex Prager, a self-taught photographer who takes her

cues from pulp fiction.

India’s love affair with photography is centuries old. Our

maharajas first discovered the medium which helped them

preserve their family history and their ancestry through exquisitely


PhoTograPhy

The LeeLa Magazine – SuMMer 2012 47The LeeLa Magazine – SuMMer 201246

FACING PAGE (CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT) a photograph by derry Moore; The great Migration, Serengeti, by Paul Souders; works of T S Satyan and raghu rai ABOVE Madhuban Mitra and Manas Bhattacharya’s photography of an abandoned camera factory in kolkataTOP RIGHT Frankfurt by andrew gursky which sold at $2.1 million at the Sotheby’s auction, new york

PhoTograPhy

shot photographs. In India, shutterbugs like Lala Deen Dayal

photographed rare images of the maharajas. Besides, our royalty,

like the Maharaja of Kapurthala, Sirdar Charanjit Singh, and the

ruler of Mysore, Yuvraja Sir Kanthirava Narasimharaja Wodeyar

Bahadur got themselves captured on film for posterity at photo

studios like the Hamilton Studio in Mumbai and the Lafayette

Studio in London.

In later years, Indian photographers like T S Satyan, Raghu

Rai and Dayanita Singh took photography to great heights by

capturing everyday life and Indian landscape through their lens,

but in a way that transformed these intimate portraits into works

of art. Agencies and photogalleries like Tasveer and PhotoInk in

India promote the fine art of photography in India. In recent times,

contemporary photographers like Karen Knorr and Pushpmala

N have turned photography into performance art, where the

images are set up through detailed intervention. Much like Cindy

Sherman, considered among the important post-modern artists of

our times, Pushpmala masquerades as characters in front of her

own camera.

In India and internationally, wildlife photography has also

moved from mere images of beauty to art, and ones that help

in conservation efforts. Sweeping portraits of the landscape and

beautifully shot photographs help tell us the story of a world we

rarely encounter in our urban lives, but one which contributes so

richly not just to the beauty of the planet Earth, but also to its

ecological health.

PhoTograPhy

RARE VIEW — THE LEELA FINDTheyyam, a popular hindu ritual form of worship practised in the north Malabar region of kerala in south india, is also a rarely photographed event, in keeping with the norms

laid down by the temple. We managed to capture the beauty of this celebration in its full regalia and bring you an interesting snapshot (BELOW RIGHT) of the holy dance

or invocation performed in front of the Muchilottu Bhagavathi, the nair family temple. The dancer is dressed in red clothes and his face, shoulder and chest is covered in red

sandal paste. Theyyam artists are from low-caste communities and once dressed, even the high-caste people worship them as they are supposed to be gods in the form of

Theyyam. The dancer, along with the drummers, recites the ritual song, which describes the myths and legends of the deity of the shrine

PhoT

o co

urTe

Sy: T

aSVe

er a

rTS

corB

iSPh

oTo

cour

TeSy

: TS

SaTh

yan

arc

hiVe

S / T

aSVe

er a

rTS

PhoT

o co

urTe

Sy: r

aghu

rai

On a high noteThe Symphony Orchestra of India has transformed India’s musical landscape by introducing Western classical music to a country known for its strong folk and indigenous classical music traditions

muSIc

RIGHT Zane Dalal, Resident conductor of the Symphony Orchestra of India, during a performance

Pietro Mascagni’s Cavalleria Rusticana and Ruggero

Leoncavallos’s Pagliacci — euphemistically known as

opera’s heavenly twins — were recently presented by the

Symphony Orchestra of India (SOI) at the National Centre for the

Performing Arts (NCPA) in Mumbai. At the concert, apart from the

sophisticated opera regulars, there were a considerable number

of young, first-time opera goers. The spellbindingly impassioned

music of the orchestra smoothly took the audience through the

many stories of love, jealousy, betrayal, murder and societal

privation that the verismo (true to life) opera unfolded. There was

no real need to demystify the opera for the Indian audience who

was not exposed to Western classical music as the music did

the needful. “Opera orchestras are supple, fluid and attentive,

and create the homogenous sound for the whole production. It

makes our musicians better musicians, and provides a sense of

pride that we can accomplish this very complicated art form and

take it to a high standard. We hope to continue to bring opera

to local audiences for years to come,” says Zane Dalal, Resident

Conductor, SOI.

Founded by the NCPA Chairman Khusroo N Suntook and

the international virtuoso violinist Marat Bisengaliev in 2006, the

SOI is the country’s first fully professional orchestra. “Players are

recruited from an international field, with a core of instrumentalists

drawn from Kazakhstan and many other countries of Europe and

the UK. Many of the principal players are also teachers and the

orchestra places great emphasis on developing musical potential

within India,” says Dalal, who himself was educated in England

and holds a masters degree in music from the University of Oxford

and Indiana University. “There is a growing number of Indian

players representing the finest local talent and providing a solid

foundation for the future of orchestral playing in this country. We

have recently expanded our search for talent to include players

from Kolkata and Darjeeling, adding to our already diverse group

of performers from Goa, Bangalore, Mumbai and Kerala. We are

proud that the SOI is taking on a truly national spirit,” he adds.

With its formation, Mumbai has joined the ranks of

major international cities that support a professional performing

ensemble. “Since the time we started, we have been greeted

with tremendous enthusiasm by Mumbai’s Western classical

music fans. Beyond providing the audiences with a chance

to listen to good Western classical music, the idea was to also

expose them to a genre of music that’s loved and played all over

the world, so on occasions when they are travelling abroad, they

feel right at home,” says Dalal. Apart from their national tours and

concerts in Mumbai over the course of two seasons each year,

the SOI has also performed internationally at the Fifth Festival of

the World’s Symphony Orchestras in Moscow. “The SOI played on

the concluding night as part of the Grand Finale, which incidentally

was also the eve of Russia Day, in the presence of the highest

echelons of Russian society. The performance of Beethoven’s 9th

Symphony was indeed a great success,” shares Dalal.

Talking about the special methods and techniques taught to

make students develop a strong bond with music, Dalal says, “The

NCPA is providing teachers for the successful Suzuki Method,

which introduces players as young as four-years-old to the basics

of string technique, providing a foundation for their future musical

development. The project was started in 2008 and till date it has

nine participating schools with over 300 children enrolled,” he

says. The Suzuki Method, which has already transformed the

musical landscape of Japan and China, is based on the principle

that all children possess ability, which can be enhanced through a

nurturing environment, like the way they learn to speak their own

language with relative ease. “There is also a quintet in residence,

which represents the various sections of the string orchestra. They

The LeeLa magaZIne – SummeR 201248 The LeeLa magaZIne – SummeR 2012 49

“Players are recruitedfrom an international field”

— Zane Dalal

By Kriti Sharma


top gear

The LeeLa magaZIne – SummeR 201250

muSIc

form the core teaching staff of the SOI and with them, the NCPA

plans to provide for the future of the orchestra with talent that has

been nurtured over the years in India,” he adds.

Though it may be an elementary phase for India in the

operatic history, Mumbai is no stranger to this ancient performing

art. The Royal Opera House in the southern part of the city stands

testimony to the importance the British gave towards popularising

this internationally acclaimed music form in the country.

“The first truly professional opera staged in India was in 2008, in

Mumbai, when the NCPA produced Puccini’s Madama Butterfly

at par with international standards. This piece had a heavy

element of foreign participation but the great advantage of staging

an opera in India was the easy availability of stage craftsmen,

costume makers and technical assistance due to the presence of

Bollywood and the theatre community, which avails their services

constantly. These were also available at affordable prices. Our

second opera, TOSCA, which was produced in September 2010

was a major undertaking and turned out to be quite successful,”

says Dalal.

Since 2008, every opera performed by the SOI is

accompanied by sub-titles to help audiences understand what

is going on the stage. “Audiences need to come to all artistic

performances with an open mind and open ears. Indian audiences

are no strangers to subtlety or appreciation of good sounds, drama

and the grand spectacle. If we can bring people to listen, the opera

will do all the magic on its own, as it has done for the last 415

years,” says Dalal.

With the growing popularity of opera and orchestra in India,

the NCPA’s concerted efforts are to bring the best of international

music to Indian shores. “We are in the process of providing an

artistic choice that will widen horizons for our local audiences —

and make them appreciate all that it is happening here,” he says.

The orchestra has worked with internationally renowned

soloists including Michael Collins, Raphael Wallfisch, John

Lenehan and Andrei Gavrilov. It has also collaborated with eminent

conductors including Adrian Leaper and Alexander Annisimov. In

the last seven seasons, the SOI presented great masterworks

including Strauss’ Don Juan and Stravinski’s Firebell Suite and the

Beethoven: symphony No. 9 in D-minor, showcasing its virtuosity.

Speaking on his musical journey in India so far, Dalal

says, “The process so far has been miraculous. The rewards far

outweigh the obvious challenges — and I am extremely gratified

that the orchestra has grown from strength to strength. Our visiting

international musicians look forward to coming here because

they know the standards will be worth their effort. Our growing

number of international supporters are recognising the value and

the standard of the orchestra, and India can take much pride in

what we have accomplished. When people hear the orchestra we

don’t want them to say “That is a great orchestra for India. We

want them to say ‘That is a great orchestra.’ And they do.”

ABOVE LEFT maestro alexander anissimov conducts Beethoven’s 9th Symphony at the ncPa

RIGHT Indian musicians performing at a SOI concert

“audiences need to come to all artistic performances with an open mind and open ears” — Dalal


Photographer Sebastian Cortes goes beyond the clichéd images of this former French colony, to explore private spheres, homes, spaces and routines, which exemplify a culture

remain true to the same criteria only on a much wider scale, that

of a city, which is criss-crossed by many different influences. The

challenge on this book was to avoid and incorporate the obvious. I

had to go beyond the walls and penetrate into the private sphere,

into homes, spaces and routines, which exemplified a certain

culture or cultures, where I could perceive and record a series of

recognisable messages.

The photographic approach was essentially that of ‘straight

photography’ as opposed to journalistic style photography. I have

not used the large or medium format but remained with the

simplicity of the 35mm camera, but almost always on a tripod

and with long exposures. The images are captured digitally and

in colour, so I have, in a sense, only tried to keep the discipline of

straight photography but not all the aesthetic criteria. The access

to certain locations and the time needed to photograph what I was

interested in forced me to return many times to the same location.

The project was in continuous evolution as to what it would

ultimately produce. I kept all doors open and placed no limits.

Besides the photographs, the books have essays on

Pondicherry written by some very talented writers, who offer

readers an alternative view of Pondicherry — always from a very

personal and perceptive position. It was clear for me from the

start of the project that I wanted to have a cross-cultural view so

I contacted writers of very diverse backgrounds. Pascal Bruckner,

a French intellectual with a good understanding and love for India,

shares his observations on Pondicherry and how the photographs

affect his perception of a city he visited several times. Akash

Kapur, an Indian, who has deep roots in Pondicherry but has

travelled and lived abroad for many years, shares with the reader

his worldly Pondicherian view — his observations on south Indian

transformation may surprise many people. The third author is

Amin Jaffer, an Indian, who is both an art historian and director of

Christie’s in India. He recalls the time he spent in Pondicherry as

a student researching Indo-French furniture.

Photographing is a way of imprisoning reality, understood

as recalcitrant, inaccessible; of making it stand still. One can’t

posses reality, one can posses (and be possessed by) images —

as, according to Proust, one can’t posses the present but one can

posses the past. To posses the particular world of Pondicherry,

as experienced by me, was my objective and sharing this in the

form of images — to re-experience the unreality and remoteness

of the real.”

CLOCKWISE FROM FACING PAGE an interior shot of the rue Dumas, a colonial heritage guest house in Pondicherry; a house at ananda rangapillai Street; La Clinique; The Chamber of Commerce as seen on the book cover

an alt view of Pondicherry

LiTerary

Seven years ago, Sebastian

Cortes moved to Auroville

in Pondicherry from Milan,

where he worked as a lifestyle

and fashion photographer and

had a studio. Over the years,

Cortes has travelled across India,

photographing the life and times of

a country under transition, often for

international magazines, even as

he pursued his artistic practice on a

personal level. Among his long-term projects is an extended photo

essay on the former French colony of Pondicherry, now known as

Puducherry, which was recently published by Roli Books.

Here, he writes about what

went into the making of the book,

Pondicherry:

“It (the book) is a further

step on my exploration of ‘the

place’, my perception of a specific

environment and how it’s lived by

individuals. My last book, Poetic

Places, was an extended photo

essay composed of a series of

panoramic portraits of 21 major

Italian poets photographed in their space of artistic activity — the

key to discovering each poet was again ‘the place’— in a literary

and metaphorical sense. In my Pondicherry book I have tried to

Pondicherry is at a distance of about 160kms from the upcoming The Leela Palace Chennai. The drive from the hotel to the

beautiful French colony, along the scenic East Coast Road, takes roughly two and a half hours.


In 1986, he planted an acorn and called it The Leela Mumbai.

Now, 25 years later, this acorn is a full-grown oak tree and has

spread itself to Goa, Bangalore, Kovalam, Udaipur, Gurgaon,

New Delhi and now, also to Chennai. Meet Captain Chittarath

Poovakkatt Krishnan Nair, the founder of The Leela Palaces, Hotels

and Resorts. In a short span of time, Captain Nair has built not just

a landmark hotel chain — The Leela, but also shown to the world

what traditional Indian hospitality is all about.

A visionary in the true sense of the term, Captain Nair

is a living example of dreaming big and what living a dream

really means.

From being an army officer in Netaji Subhas Chandra

Bose’s Indian National Army, fighting for the country’s freedom,

joining his father-in-law’s handloom business at the insistence

of his wife Leela (The hotel is named after her), pioneering the

‘Bleeding Madras’ fabric and

making it the most sought-

after cloth and a huge success

in the US, to venturing into the

hospitality industry at the age of

64, when most Indians dream

of retirement, his life is guided

by the grit to constantly take on

challenges, risk everything on a

dream, test his limit and push it further.

“One should dream big and dream unfettered,” says

Captain Nair, as he looks through the round-rimmed spectacle

frames. It’s this dream of showcasing Indian hospitality and its

ethos — Atithi Devo Bhava (Guest is God) — to the world that

made him start a hotel, close to the airport at Sahar, Mumbai.

He had stayed in some of the best hotels across the world and

desired to have a similar hotel in India someday.

“As a young officer, seeing the country’s struggle to

gain freedom and being part of the historic moment when the

country finally gained independence from the British rule, was

a big motivating factor in my life. I saw how a nation gained

freedom by translating its thoughts into action. At that moment,

I too felt like doing something positive to make this country

proud,” recalls Captain Nair, while sitting in the plush living

room of his suite.

Establishing The Leela was his way of displaying India’s

inherent hospitality to the world. There was a growing need for

more hotels in the country and Captain Nair realised that he could

do his bit, along with the others, and make India gain worldwide

recognition for its hospitality.

He gave wings to his dreams and what began as a

getaway to Indian hospitality with the setting up of The Leela

Mumbai, has now gone to attain dizzying heights of success.

Captain Nair has been feted with the Padma Bhushan, one of

the highest civilian honours given by the government of India.

He has been conferred the Lifetime Achievement Award by The

American Academy of Hospitality Sciences (AAHS), an award

few from the hotel industry have been honoured with. He’s

won the Global 500 Roll of Honour award in 1999, conferred by

the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP); has been

awarded the Hotelier of The

Century by International Hotels

and Restaurant Association,

based in Geneva, in 2009, and

has been even felicitated by

the House of Commons, UK.

His hotels have gone on to

win coveted awards from the

government of India, earned

plaudits from the global hospitality industry, and received

rave reviews across media publications. He has been featured

alongside millionaire investor Warren Buffet and media

moghul Rupert Murdoch in the American business magazine

Business Week in its Top 50 septuagenarian business heads

across the world.

All this, in a span of just 25 years!

One wonders how.

It’s a mid-week morning and I’m told that the Chairman

has several back-to-back meetings: a photo shoot with a business

channel on his pioneering journey, a lunch with some guests and

a last-minute meeting with a corporate honcho of an MNC firm

thereafter. Not to forget the evening car ride with wife Leela, which

he religiously undertakes every day. It’s all-in-a-day’s work for the

90-year-old veteran, who has defied age and all its trappings and

still continues to work for long hours daily. He is completely up-


as The Leela group reaches the 25 year milestone and celebrates its silver anniversary, Captain C.P. Krishnan Nair, the founder and Chairman of

The Leela Palaces, hotels and resorts, shares his vision of india, the hospitality industry and its future in a freewheeling chat with Sujata Dugar

Location: The Chairman’s Suite, The Leela Mumbai

Captain nair: Leagues ahead

TêTe-à-TêTe

“if hotels, airports and ports are given the infrastructural

status, it will give a big boost to the indian economy”Padma Bhushan awardee

Captain nair has been honoured with three Lifetime achievement awards: the Times Travel honours, hotelier india and the Condé nast Traveller, for his outstanding contribution towards the hospitality industry


to-date with all the happenings in each of The Leela properties

across the country. Nothing misses his sharp mind and keen eye

for detail. Yet, when he meets you, his warmth and smile takes

over and he indulges you with his life’s many memorable events,

highpoints and feats with such alacrity and relaxed disposition

that never even for once do you feel he’s in a hurry and has a tight

schedule to meet up with.

Such is his genuine warmth, amiability and ability to

befriend one and all. Little wonder, in his lifetime, he’s made

friends that most individuals would take several lives to achieve.

He’s touched a chord with people he has met even once. His

list includes the Dalai Lama, Congress President Sonia Gandhi,

Venezuela President Hugo Chavez, former US President Bill

Clinton and former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher,

among many others.

“I speak from the heart and put things across in a very

simple way, one that touches the other person deeply,” he

reveals. Citing an example, he says, the vast acres of green that

surround his home in Mumbai and across all his properties is

always covered in grass, courtesy, a simple talk he had with his

gardeners one day on seeing a patch of barren strip.

“I told them that the lawn was like Mother Earth. I asked

them if they would like to see their Mother Earth lying uncovered

and naked.” This was enough to touch a chord in the gardeners’

heart and till this day, not a patch of the greens surrounding any

of The Leela properties, including Captain Nair’s home, lies barren

and bereft of grass.

In fact, he is a keen environmentalist and both his home

and hotels are surrounded in vast acres of greenery. He is also the

only Indian representative on the United Nations committee for

Global Code of Ethics for Tourism, established in 2004.

Ask him about his journey as a hotelier so far and he

candidly admits, “It’s a big milestone. I never realised that The

Leela Group would achieve such success and fame in such a short

time. We were rank outsiders when we got into the hospitality

business and it’s amazing how we still managed to create such a

profound impact. I remain grateful and truly indebted to our guests,

patrons and thankful to every individual, including the government

officials and ministers of tourism, who have supported us in our

endeavour and co-operated with us all these years.”

An icon for showcasing Indian tradition, hospitality and

its richness of culture through his stunning hotels, Captain Nair

feels the road ahead is exciting for the hospitality industry and

the country at large.

“India has reached unimaginable heights of success,

and I truly believe that it will evolve as a superpower. I see that

dream coming true soon. The youth are its strength and today’s

younger generation is extremely intelligent and ready to compete

with any advanced country’s youth, anywhere in the world,” he

feels. He believes that information technology, agriculture, textile

and tourism will be the cornerstones of the country’s economic

growth in the future.

“Earlier, the political system did not allow the hospitality

industry to grow rapidly as they thought it to be a luxury and not

an essential requirement. Now, things have changed and with the

world looking at India and its economy growing, hotels and airports

have become a necessity and this infrastructure is instrumental

in the overall growth of the country. If hotels, airports and ports

are given the infrastructural status, it will give a big boost to the

Indian economy and generate employment for millions of people

and these will become the single largest employer,” he advises.

On his part, Captain Nair is already doing his bit by adding

yet another Leela hotel to his credit — The Leela Palace Chennai.

For a man like him, there is little time to stand and stare as he has

many dreams to fulfill and miles to go.

TêTe-à-TêTe


viewPoinT

What are the new milestones you

have set for the company?

We subscribe to the India growth

story and are therefore focused

on achieving a pan India presence

in all the key locations. We are

already RevPAR (Revenue Per

Available Room) leaders in most of

the destinations we operate in. In

the near term, we look forward to

stabilising operations in New Delhi

and Chennai, and completing our

projects in destinations such as Agra,

where we already own the land. We

are also in the process of evaluating

joint venture and management

contract proposals in the remaining

destinations in India such as

Hyderabad, Pune and Jaipur, where

an investment in a hotel of The Leela

brand standard is warranted. Our long

term plan is to realise value from our

non-core assets through divestment

and focus on our core competency of

managing hotels.

What have been the achievements of

The Leela Group in the last 25 years?

Over the last 25 years, The Leela Group

with its eight properties, has focused

both in the business and leisure sectors

and has successfully created a pan

India presence with hotels that are

synonymous with high-end luxury and

international standards. Our vision to

innovate and excel has enabled us

to develop and operate hotels with

consistency and quality over the years.

What are the new milestones that you have

set for yourself and the company?

Being involved in the day-to-day hotel

operations and standardising operational

procedures of the company have

been my core focus areas to steer the

company towards growth in both the

domestic and international market.

Additionally, paving the way for the

development of our five star entrant

category brand with a presence in India

is our current focus.

How do you see the company moving ahead

in the next five years?

Brand Leela shall further consolidate

itself as the luxury hotel leader. We are

in an exciting growth phase, which shall

maintain momentum over the next many

years. In the forthcoming two years, we

expect to take Brand Leela overseas

and also launch a secondary brand in

the upscale tier market. We presently

operate eight hotels with another two

newly acquired management contracts

are on line by the year-end. Our

development pipeline shall add another

five hotels in the next five years, growing

our portfolio to 15 properties. Our growth

ambitions are calculated, and we shall

ease our asset burden through pursuit of

more management contracts.

What are the core strengths of the group?

It is the staff of The Leela combined with

sophisticated design, state-of-the-art

technology and innovative partnerships

that have made The Leela brand unique.

Vivek NairVice ChairmanThe Leela Palaces, Hotels and Resorts

Dinesh NairJoint Managing DirectorThe Leela Palaces, Hotels and Resorts

Rajiv KaulPresidentThe Leela Palaces, Hotels and Resorts

way to go

ABOVE Captain nair (sitting) with sons vivek nair (standing at the centre), Dinesh nair (right) and rajiv Kaul (left)

LEFT Captain nair with his wife Leela, who has been his inspiration and the reason for his stepping into the hospitality industry. he has named the hotel after her

Which was the first Leela hotel you stayed at? I first stayed at the Leela Mumbai during a trip that combined

business and pleasure and after some days, I spent some additional time at The Leela Goa.

How was your first interactionwith Captain Nair?

I first spoke to Captain Nair after publishing a book I had written on India. Captain Nair contacted me with a wish to buy it for the hotel.

Since the book was not for sale, I offered him some copies. What impressed me most was his genuine love and passion for India and

especially for the people that are the country’s real treasure.For me, seeing him is like entering a sunny place after being in the

shadow, his words warm my heart. He is a leader who inspires people around him and makes them believe in themselves. Apart from his

unique enthusiasm and energy, he is a true visionary, inspiring belief through his actions in a loving and joyous way. That’s why all the

people close to him adore him — from the doorman or the driver of the hotel, to the general manager.

You were present at his 90th birthday celebration. Describe your feelings on being a part

of such a milestone event?It was an honour and a great pleasure for me to attend his 90th

birthday. I consider myself a very lucky person to have such a friend. Lifetime relationships teach us lifetime lessons, things we must build

upon in order to have a solid emotional foundation.

Name one thing about The Leela hotelsthat strikes you the most?

The Leela Group has landmark hotels in India. What impresses me most is the attention to the smallest details, the charm and quality of service and the exquisite decor. One can find little need to leave the

hotel if he desires not to. Anything he chooses, from dining, relaxation in the swimming pool to spa services, they are all excellent.

Camillo ProntiFashion Designer & Managing Director,

Asja SRL

The Leela Palace New Delhi“Glamour,

elegance, style and exceptional

service.“

Dr. G. BerendtFormer member of

board of management, Kempinski Hotels

The Leela Mumbai “The hotel is a jewel.

There are very limited international hotels

which are able to match such standards.”

Hrithik RoshanActor

The Leela Kempinski Gurgaon (N.C.R.)

“Thank you for a wonderful stay. See

you again soon.”

Naomi CampbellSupermodel

The Leela Kovalam“You have taken such great care of me. Everyone is so wonderful. It’s for sure, I will come back. Your hospitality is one of the best.”

Colin A GurleySenior Manager, National Bank of Abu Dhabi, London

The Leela Goa“The new restaurant is world class and the Thai chef’s dishes are better than some of the best I have had.”

Dr. Amartya SenNobel laureate, economist, professor

The Leela Palace Bangalore“Great stay — wonderful service. A most enjoyable occasion.”

Guess the Leela property in this photograph and win a luxurious monogrammed bathrobe from The Leela. Send in your entry along with your contact details to [email protected]. All entries must be sent before June 10, 2012.

A lucky draw from all the correct entries will declare the winner.

Previous contest’s winner is:Irfan VazirallyPharmamatch B.V.Vittal Mallya Road,Bangalore

contestsnapshot

Guest speak

jet set Go

Dimitra StasinopoulouAward-winning photographer

the LeeLa MaGazine – suMMeR 201258 the LeeLa MaGazine – suMMeR 2012 59

accoLades

I have one wish should I ever become 90 years old:

Everyone shall call me Captain and I will show young

hotel and restaurateur-sailors, where the ship is cruising to.

You ask why I am so declamatory today?

Because I am a big fan of Captain C.P. Krishnan Nair. At

65 years of age, the Indian gentleman started his innings

in tourism. Long before, in 1947, he was a young freedom

fighter, served in the Indian army and then went on to

become a major textile exporter.

Today, at the age of 90, the founder of the Leela

group is travelling from one of his resorts to the next:

Captain Nair is opening yet another five star hotel in

Chennai this year, flying to Goa, Bangalore, Udaipur and

Mumbai, and to Delhi to visit The Leela Palace New Delhi.

At The Leela Palace New Delhi — from a culinary

point of view — he has founded a new India. With the

opening of Le Cirque, he has introduced for the first time,

an international restaurant concept from the US into one of

his five star hotels. Leela’s co-operation with the American

brand Le Cirque is unique in India and a showcase project

for fine dining in New Delhi.

Besides Le Cirque, there is another food concept

from New York at The Leela Palace New Delhi: Megu,

which represents modern Japanese cuisine. Its signature

dishes include kanzumi shrimps, salmon tatar as well as

Kobe and satsuma beef in diverse variations.

And all of this in India. Sounds like a revolution from

the Captain — a culinary one.

(This is a translated version of the column which appeared in

the European trade magazine Rolling Pin, a German publication,

on February 2012)


By Robert Kropf

Le Cirque, the internationally renowned

French and Italian gourmet restaurant,

which set foot in Asia at The Leela Palace

New Delhi in 2011, was adjudged the winner in

the inaugural edition of the Travel+Leisure India

& South Asia’s India’s Best Awards. It won in

the Best Hotel Restaurant India category.

Yet another winner is the world-class

Japanese cuisine restaurant Megu, which

opened this year at The Leela Palace New Delhi.

It has been conferred the Six Star Diamond

Award given by the American Academy of

Hospitality Sciences.

The Library Bar at The Leela Palace

Bangalore has been awarded the 2012

Whisky Bars of the world Gold Medal-India

award for outstanding presentation, promotion

and knowledge of great whiskies from around

the world.

The Rubicon Bar at The Leela Kempinski

Gurgaon (N.C.R.) also received the 2012 Whisky

Bars of the world Gold Medal-India award.

Joining the league is The Library Bar at

The Leela Palace New Delhi. It received the

Best Whisky Bar of India by Icons of Whisky

2012. The gold certification was given in

recognition of its unrivalled guest experience

and for offering the best whisky collection in

the country.

Restaurantspar excellence

in golden league new milestoneThe Leela Palace New Delhi has been voted amongst the

top hotels across the Asia-Pacific region for the highest

standards of service excellence by the internationally

acclaimed DestinAsian magazine.

Adjudged by the readers of DestinAsian magazine

across Asia including Singapore, Hong Kong, Malaysia and

India, The Leela Palace New Delhi has been acclaimed

for its grand opulence and contemporary sophistication,

impeccable guest service and convenient geographical

location, making it the preferred destination for discerning

business and leisure travellers. The DestinAsian reader poll

results also recommended the Kiziswedhna Spa Ritual at

ESPA — a synchronised Ayurveda-inspired massage — as a

must-try at the hotel. This seventh annual Readers’ Choice

Awards was conferred at a star-studded event in Hong

Kong in the presence of major players of the hospitality

industry in the region.

Joining the winner’s list is the The Leela Palace

Udaipur. It has been selected in the World’s Best Hotels

category — Gold List 2012 by Condé Nast Traveller.

culinary revolution

in india

LEFT the Library Bar at the Leela palace Bangalore

LEFT Le cirque restaurant at the Leela palace new delhi ABOVE Ronald Liem, publisher, destinasian presenting the award to amit chopra, director of sales and Marketing, the Leela palace new delhi

events

Legendary hotelier Captain C.P. Krishnan Nair, Chairman

and founder of The Leela Palaces, Hotels and Resorts

turned 90 this year and what better way to celebrate than

to be amidst family, friends and the extended Leela family.

The Nair family organised a glittering party to celebrate

the occasion at the poolside of The Leela Mumbai. While

younger son Dinesh Nair and his wife Madhu looked into the

décor and food arrangements, granddaughter Aishwarya

created a uniquely designed birthday cake. The Nair family

was in full attendance and grandson Aushim, who flew

down from Switzerland to be part of the celebration, was

seen welcoming the guests.

1: chairman captain nair receives a bouquet of flowers from union Minister for tourism shri subodh kant sahay 2: captain nair with his wife Leela 3: captain nair’s daughter-in-law Madhu nair with her daughter samyukta4: captain nair with shreeji arvind singhji Mewar, Maharana of udaipur5: captain nair flanked by filmstar Mammootty and sons vivek nair (second from left) vice chairman and dinesh nair (extreme right) joint Managing director, the Leela palaces, hotels and Resorts6: captain nair with shashi tharoor, Member of parliament and wife sunanda 7: captain nair with M. veerappa Moily, union Minister for corporate affairs8: captain nair along with his sons greet film director priyadarshan 9: (Left to right) vivek nair with daughters aishwarya, amruda, wife Lakshmi and son aushim

Glorious90!

1 5

7

9

2

3

4

6

8


events

The party was well-attended by businessmen,

corporate bigwigs, celebrities from the Malayalam film

industry, prominent cabinet ministers, close friends and

relatives of the family. Prominent among these were

Maharana of Udaipur Shreeji Arvind Singhji Mewar,

Union Minister of Corporate Affairs M. Veerappa Moily,

Member of Parliament Shashi Tharoor with wife Sunanda

and Malayalam film superstar Mammootty, among

several others.

12

16

18

1110 13

1714 15

10,11,13,15,17: the poolside at the Leela Mumbai was beautifully decorated with flowers and the entire property was lit up for the birthday celebration. sumptuous food and a musical evening added an extra edge to the occasion12: captain nair being greeted on his birthday by Ram kohli, chairman and Managing director, creative travel 14: k.k. unni, board member of Bilag industries pvt. Ltd. with the chairman16: chairman flanked by Rajiv pratap Rudy, Rajya sabha member and shri subodh kant sahay 18: praful patel, union Minister for heavy industries and public enterprises with Madhu nair


pRoMotion

the LeeLa MaGazine – suMMeR 201266

Re-engineer your lifeDr Jyotsna Changrani, co-founder of Meta Wellness, tells us how our lifestyle impacts our

health and how Meta Wellness programmes weave in the science for good health

younger, but you may fit into larger sized clothes when you hit

middle-age. Why? Fat is approximately four times muscle volume.

As your body’s muscle is replaced with fat, you may continue to

weigh the same, but the volume has expanded.

Track your body’s fat along with your weight. You may weigh

normal but still have high body fat. The World Health Organisation

(WHO) defines obesity as more than 25 per cent body fat in men

and more than 35 per cent body fat in women. High body fat

increases risk for heart disease, osteoarthritis, stroke, gall bladder

disease, sleep apnea and some sort of cancer, even for normal

weight people.

Meta Wellness solution: Conduct regular assessment of the body

fat. Design a weight-training programme to build and maintain

muscle.

Poor quality of sleep = high blood pressure

New research has shown that lack of

deep resting sleep at night can increase

the risk of high blood pressure. It is not

just hours, but the quality of sleep at

night that matters. Normal individuals

enter into nearly two hours of deep sleep

every night. The normal nightly dip in

blood pressure is considered beneficial.

Individuals who have the least deep

sleep are the most likely to develop high

blood pressure.

Meta Wellness solution: Screen for

factors that may influence the quality

of sleep and address through medical

management and lifestyle change.

Mindful eating

As a child you may have been told to chew your food slowly.

Science tells us that if we gobble down our food, we will end up

consuming more calories than if we ate slowly.

We now know that the hormonal signals that alert your

brain when you are full are swung into action if you chew slowly

but don’t respond if you’re eating quickly. Research shows the risk

of being overweight is tripled if one is eating quickly.

Meta Wellness solution: Eating for health should be pleasurable,

not adversarial. Practice mindful eating while at The Leela, and

sustain it in your regular eating routines.

Artificial sweetener and weight gain

You may switch from sugar to artificial sweeteners to lose

weight, and in the short-term, you may

show some success. But recent studies

have hinted that artificial sweeteners

may actually be causing weight gain in

the long-term. It has been suggested

that sugar substitutes desensitise

people to sweetness because they are

excessively sweet. Nutritious foods such

as fruits and vegetables fail to appeal

to the desensitised palate, and the

unhealthy cravings are magnified. There

is also some research linking artificial

sweeteners to stimulating development

of fat cells.

Meta Wellness solution: Indulge in delicious

food that is also heart healthy and made

entirely with natural ingredients.

Health is not something gained by a visit to the doctor or

at an annual health check-up. Everyday choices — what

we order at a restaurant, how we spend time with our

children, how we commute to work — all add up. Our lifestyle is

the single biggest factor in determining whether we are healthy

or not. Luckily, it is all within our control.

Meta Wellness is a New York-based innovative healthcare

company offering a range of physician-led programmes to prevent

and treat diseases caused by one’s lifestyle, such as heart disease,

diabetes and obesity. It has partnered with The Leela Group in

India and offers lifestyle change programmes for health based on

internationally-proven experiential models.

Do you have sitting disease?

Latest research is focusing on the harm done by a sedentary

lifestyle. Two or more hours a day of leisure screen time doubles

the risk of a heart attack compared with those who spent less

time. Unfortunately, a few hours a week at the gym does not

offset the harm.

Recent studies have shown that inactivity leads to blood

sugar levels spiking significantly after meals. The unused muscle

needs less energy, and draws less sugar from the blood, causing

the spiking.

Meta Wellness solution: Creatively convert sedentary time into

active time based on work-life routines.

What’s the bare minimum for exercise?

Figuring out ideal exercise dosage is not simple. The US

Department of Health and Human Services reviewed dozens

of studies and concluded that the minimum amount of exercise

required for health benefits is 500 MET (Metabolic Equivalent of

Task) minutes of exercise a week. 500 MET minutes of exercise

does not mean 500 minutes of exercise. A single MET is the

amount of energy a person uses at rest. Two METs is twice

the energy burned at rest, and so on. The MET minute varies

according to the intensity of exercise. Approximately 150 minutes

a week of a moderate, three to five MET activity, such as walking,

add up to about 500 MET minutes.

Meta Wellness solution: Resting metabolism and your heart’s

response to exercise is measured for personalised exercise

prescriptions.

Your weight is only part of the story

You may weigh approximately the same as you did when you were

Meta Wellness re:verse is a 90-day programme combining intensive in-person treatment with remote follow-up delivered either in a convenient in-city weekends format or as a rejuvenating retreat.

re:verse in-city, available at The Leela Mumbai, begins with a weekend stay at the Meta Wellness Re:newal Centre at The Leela.

There are four day-long weekend sessions at Week-3, Week-6, Week-9 and Week-12.re:tune, available at The Leela Kovalam Beach, Kerala, begins with an intensive 10-day stay at the

Meta Wellness Re:newal Centre, in the luxurious environs of the property. It offers spa therapies, exercises and gourmet meals perfected by leading nutritionists and weight-loss programmes.

Both the programmes offer personalised monitoring of the clinical team.

HEAL

THY

HEAR

T

ABOVE a sedentary lifestyle, coupled with leisure activities which involve sitting for two hours and more, doubles the risk of a heart disease ABOVE dishes prepared with natural ingredients are beneficial for the heart the LeeLa MaGazine – suMMeR 2012 67


LeeLa

Quintessentially famed to be a British style wine,

Port has an extremely interesting history. Made for

the British as a result of a political embargo on the French

wines, the wines from Portugal and Spain became much

sought-after due to their proximity with England.

The Methuen treaty, signed between Britain and

Portugal in 1703, fortified and boosted trade between the

two nations. It is said that two English wine traders on a

mission to select wines to take back home discovered one

— slightly sweet, light and a red varietal that they thought

was appropriate to buy for the English consumers. When

asked how the wine was made, they were told that it had

been fortified by the winemaker with a touch of brandy,

making its palate slightly off dry and higher in alcohol. This

higher alcohol percentage appealed to the merchants as

they were in search of a wine that would travel well across

the Bay of Biscay, from the Douro region in Portugal to the

British homeland.

The fortification of port wine is a result of the

addition of a neutral spirit to stop the fermentation process

in the wine. Its addition creates the residual sugar in the

wine, which results in its sweet and luscious palate. In the

vinification process, a very unique process is the pressing of

the grapes in large granite troughs, which is carried out for

optimal extraction of tannins and colour. In certain quintas

or houses, manual trodding of the grapes is carried by

skilled labour. These houses have the more traditional and

expensive of the Ports.

The modern and preferred blend of grapes used

in the Port are Tinta Roriz, Touriga

Nacional, Touriga Franca, Tinta Cão

and Tinta Barroca, amongst 75

other traditional varietals that are

permitted in its production. The

various Port styles include White

Port, Ruby Port, Reserve Ruby, Tawny Port, Reserve Tawny

Port, Crusted Port, Late Bottled Vintage Port, Colheita Port,

Vintage Port, and the last but not the least, Single Quinta

Vintage Port.

My pairing recommendation for cheese would be the

classic Stilton, Roquefort or Azeitão, an ewe’s milk cheese

from Portugal.

Aishwarya NairFood & wine merchandising,The Leela Palaces, Hotels and Resorts

Grapes of port

oenoLoGyinteresting history, unique vinification

process and its sweet taste makes the fortified port wine, produced in the

douro valley in portugal, a must-have

The Leela Palace New Delhi partnered with FINE

Wine & Chamapgne magazine to celebrate the FINE

Life award. Dirk Niepoort of Niepoort Vinhos from

Portugal, a legendary Port maker from the Duoro

region, was conferred the FINE Life Award 2012 for his

exceptional contribution.

The event also saw the FINE Iconic Tasting being

conducted by Niepoort. It had Port wines of vintages

from the last three centuries — 1863, 1900, 1912, 1917,

1937, 1947, 1952, 1957, 1970, 1976, 1977 and 2005.

RAISE A TOAST

ABOVE port wine of vintages from the last three centuries were part of the tasting session held at the Leela palace new delhi

in sea-swept kovalam — the land of palm-fringed beaches,bountiful verdant greenery and traditional ayurvedic massages,

a visit assures to soothe your every frayed nerve. Aji Padmanabhan at The Leela Kovalam gives you a ready reckoner

What are the must-do things for a guest staying at The Leela Kovalam?Start your day by soaking in the beauty of Kerala’s largest

beachside resort, cradled between two sweeping beaches.

Perched on a rock-face, it offers the most panoramic view

of the famed Kovalam shoreline. Take your camera along as

you might spot the resident peacock family posing for you.

Enjoy a sumptuous breakfast at The Terrace, which serves

a buffet breakfast, both international cuisine and authentic

Kerala home-cooked delicacies. If you are keen to try the

fresh catch of the day, a visit to the Tide restaurant, located

on the beach, is a must. Eating apart, you can enjoy indoor

and outdoor games, attend cookery lessons conducted by

the chefs and pamper yourself with a host of traditional

Ayurvedic massages at the Divya spa. It is a sure shot way

to help you destress and rejuvenate.

Of Kovalam’s tourist sites, which are the must-see places and why?The Padmanabhaswamy Temple, around which the city

has literally developed, is an architectural

wonder and a must-see. Situated in

the heart of the old city, the massive

structure has a staggering 100 feet

high gopuram, the main temple

tower. Dedicated to Lord Vishnu, the

family deity of the royal family of Travancore,

to whom the temple belongs, the massive idol in

the sanctum measures 18 feet in length and is

covered with gold and other precious stones.

The Horse Palace Museum is a rare specimen

of workmanship in the traditional Travancore style of

architecture with exquisite wood carvings. It displays

priceless collections belonging to the royal family.

The Napier Museum is yet another attraction and

houses a rare collection of archaeological and historic

artefacts, bronze idols, ancient ornaments, a temple chariot

and ivory carvings. The premises also houses the zoo, one

of the oldest in the country and the Sree Chithra Art Gallery,

which has on display a rare collection of paintings by Raja

Ravi Varma and Nicholas Roerich, among many others.

Where can one shop for traditional goods?Handicrafts: SMSM Institute, Kairali and Natesan’s Antiques

on M.G. Road.

Handlooms and silks: Parthas, Khadi Emporium, Jayalakshmi

Silks and Pothys Silks on M.G. Road, Kalyan Silks on East

Fort and Karalkada at the Karalkada junction.

Gold: Josco Jewellers, Jos Alukkas & Sons on East Fort and

Bhima Jewellers near the overbridge.

Spices: Kerala Spices on Bypass Road and Chalai Bazar

at Chalai.

concieRGe speak

TOP a picturesque view of the Leela kovalam ABOVE the vishnu idol in a sleeping posture is the main deity

at the padmanabhaswamy temple

70 The LeeLa Magazine – SUMMeR 2012 71

Which photographers have

given a unique perspective of

Delhi through their works?

the early years of photography

in india is inextricably linked

to the colonial regime in the

mid-19th century. among the

photographers who have offered

interesting insights into the

city, i especially like the works

produced by h.a. Mirza & sons,

Bourne & shepherd, Lala deen

dayal, Robert tytler, Felice Beato

and Motivala, an amateur parsi

photographer, who was present

in delhi at the time of the 1911

British durbar.

Among the contemporary

photographers, whose works

do you find intriguing?

i like shahid datawala’s work

on Mumbai titled Where the

city Rests, adil hasan’s the tv,

Ronny sen’s a tale of three

Rooms and probir Gupta’s series

on cinema.

If you had to pick some

interesting spaces in Delhi

that are great views for

photography, which ones

would you choose and why?

i find agrasen ki baoli near

connaught place quite

fascinating. this historic stepwell

juxtaposed against the modern-

day highrises has an element

of starkness, which is quite

captivating. shahjahanabad or

old delhi is another such place.

it exudes a sense of history and

shows how modern life runs

seamlessly against the backdrop

of the historical monuments.

nizammuddin, known for the

dargah (mausoleum) of the

famous sufi saint nizamuddin

auliya, is another compelling

space. the modern-day Bus

Rapid transit (BRt) transport

system, the fast-paced urban life

running parallel to the dargah,

all showcase the transition of

the city.

Which are some of the best

museums in the country to

view works on photography?

some of the royal palaces have

an invaluable collection of

photographs, which are now

on display for the public. these

photographs give an insight into

the history, culture and society of

those times. the chowmahalla

palace in hyderabad, the city

palace at udaipur and the

Gwalior Museum are a few such

places worth a visit.

Are there any interesting

cultural hubs in Delhi that

promote photography?

the nazar Foundation, begun

by two senior photographers

— prashant panjiar and dinesh

khanna, hosts the nazar ka

adda, an interactive session on

photography at the kunzum café

at hauz khas. it also conducts

workshops on photography and

holds a biennial photo festival.

photoink, the delhi-

based photograph agency

established by devika daulet-

singh, runs a gallery which

presents contemporary as well as

vintage photographic works and

also hosts talk shows.

our photography

quarterly pix, too, hosts lectures

and exhibitions on photography

at the Max Mueller Bhavan.

curator of the new delhi-based alkazi Foundation for the arts, Rahaab allana oversees a world-class repository of over 95,000 photographs in the archive, collected by his grandfather, the renowned theatre doyen, ebrahim alkazi. he has been associated with the field of photography through writing, curating and exhibiting over the years. he also edits a photography quarterly pix, which provides a platform to budding photographers and also sensitises the younger generation towards the evolving medium of photography

RahaaB aLLana

By Sujata Dugar

insideR’s Guide

deLhi With

the LeeLa MaGazine – suMMeR 201270ABOVE the agrasen ki baoli is rated by allana as a great photographic site

LEFT a photograph of the jantar Mantar taken by Lala deen dayal shows the open spaces that defined the city of delhi before it became the country’s capital

Rahaab allana

LeeLa

I landed from the cold, grey, windy and silent six years

spent in Germany, performing and teaching contemporary

dance, into a new chapter of my life called Incredible India.

The Indian Council for Cultural Relations awarded

me a special six years scholarship to study the classical

South Indian dance form Bharatnatyam, which originated

in the temples of Tamil Nadu. It is, perhaps, the most

evolved dance form and encompasses music, rhythm

and expressional dance. Using narrative movements called

hasthas or mudras, the dancer depicts stories based

on the Indian epics and literature. Bharatnatyam is a

perfect medium to bring people closer to Indian mythology

and spirituality.

For me, all those amazing pictures, fragrances and

perceptions I had visualised and imagined, just became real

and a part of my life.

My dance performances have given me a deep insight

into the rich Indian culture. I’ve performed Bharatnatyam

in some of India’s greatest dance festivals and venues

such as the ancient temples of Thanjavur, Kumbakonam

and Brihadeswara; against the backdrop of the place

where Arjuna sat in penance at Mahabalipuram; at

Kurukshetra’s battlefield; Ganga Mahotsav

at the ghats of Varanasi; at the

magnificent Taj Mahal; at Rajgir,

the abode where Lord Buddha gained enlightenment, and

at so many other magical, breathtaking destinations.

Everywhere, the response of the audience has been

overwhelming and warm, and I’ve felt a deep sense of

respect and amazement towards me. They admire seeing

a foreigner like me coming all the way from Croatia to learn

and professionally perform classical Bharatnatyam.

Such opportunities have also allowed me to promote

Croatia. Indians are very curious and like to learn about other

cultures. So, I feel like a perfect cultural bridge between my

two homes — Croatia and India. I call India my home and it

has been the most beautiful nine years of my life.

The city of Delhi is so complex, buzzing and ever

so demanding. There is a rush for time and for space, yet

in this maze-like urban jungle, one can still connect and

recharge in those hundreds of cultural programmes that the

city has on offer. India is culturally so rich and superior.

I simply enjoy walking into the theatres every

evening and viewing the innumerable concerts, dance

performances, exhibitions, talks… It’s overwhelming.

New Delhi is a great melting pot where traditional

Indian culture so easily communicates contemporary and

classical Western art.

Besides my Bharatnatyam performances, I

enjoy performing contemporary dance at so

many different events like the Italian Opera, the

Wills Lifestyle India Fashion Week, etc. All this

right here in a metropolis that is changing its face

and features every passing day. It has been a joy

watching Delhi change and evolve so much in the last

nine years.

I look forward to welcome many more

changes as we grow together in sharing

and bridging cultures through the universal

language of dance.

peRspectiveNikolina Nikoleski is a professional Bharatnatyam dancer presently living in New Delhi. A Croatian by birth, Nikoleski learnt Bharatnatyam at the Ganesa Natyalaya Dance Institute, New Delhi, under the tutelage of Padmashri Guru Dr. Saroja Vaidyanathan. Nikoleski is also a dance professor at the French Embassy School — Lycee Francais de Delhi. She has learnt contemporary dance in Germany at the prestigious dance school of Pina Bausch and is well-versed in rhythmic gymnastic, classical ballet, contemporary dance and yoga.

nikolina nikoleski in striking Bharatnatyam poses

Footsteps to incredible india

nikolina nikoleski in a striking Bharatnatyam pose

M ag a z i n e - The Leela Palaces, Hotels and Resorts...The Leela Group going all out to ensure...

Documents

Transcript of M ag a z i n e - The Leela Palaces, Hotels and Resorts...The Leela Group going all out to ensure...