Forefather’s legacy reinvented with honesty of heritage
Golpark:
A Calcuttan whose forefathers had migrated to the city from Rajasthan more than 150 years ago has returned to his roots to turn an ancestral haveli into a boutique hotel.
Bhanwar Niwas, one of the famous mansions owned by the Rampuria clan, stands in the old walled city of Bikaner. The haveli had been built in the late 1920s by Seth Bhanwarlal Rampuria, heir to a textile and real estate fortune in Calcutta. It became a boutique hotel in 1993 at the initiative of Bhanwarlal’s grandson, 61-year-old Sunil Rampuria.
Sunil, an alumnus of La Martiniere for Boys and St Xavier’s College, is now based in Bikaner but keeps visiting Calcutta, which he calls “home” and where his parents and in-laws remain.
“The Calcutta I grew up in has made me the person I am. The city is steeped in tradition but that has not stopped it from being liberal. Calcutta moulds you,” Sunil said.
He remembers going to a kindergarten school on Royd Street that used to be run by a Spanish woman and an Iraqi man. “I always wondered why their surnames were different. Back then, living in was not a common thing,” he quipped.
Sunil had sold a house in Vizag, where he had worked in a construction company for several years, to fund the facelift of Bhanwar Niwas.
Although the property is more than 90 years old, it did not need much renovation. The architecture of the three-storey mansion is a mix of Indian and European styles with a majestic facade and a sprawling courtyard in the middle. Multiple staircases and large rooms complete the heritage look.
“People from my native place came to work in Calcutta and eventually settled down. But there were relatives back home. They built large houses because they were a status symbol,” Sunil told Metro before returning to Bikaner last weekend.
Several bhujia makers in the city trace their roots to Bikaner. The Rampurias are one of the oldest among these clans with several havelis spread among Sunil’s distant relatives.
His great grandmother lived there until 1988. Sunil left Calcutta in 1992 when he was 27 and started the project the same year. He was married with three children and his parents were apprehensive about the decision because of the risks.
In Bikaner, people were surprised that Sunil was reversing a trend. While his forefathers had migrated from a provincial town to a booming business centre, he was returning from Calcutta.
Before the hotel opened, Sunil made changes like carving attached bathrooms out of the large rooms. He did the stencil-painted wallpapers himself.
The hotel has done well over the years. “I don’t have go to Delhi to solicit business,” Sunil said.
Bhanwar Niwas offers a wholesome period experience in its own way. It is located in the middle of a locality and guests can see people celebrate local festivals. There are no TVs in the rooms because Sunil wanted to be “faithful to the period when the mansion was built”.
It is hard to miss the connection with the Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, the 2012 film about a young Sonny Kapoor (played by Dev Patel) who wants to realise his father’s dream of restoring a grand hotel in Jaipur.
Sunil downplays the comparison, but is proud that his eldest son Prashant now looks after Bhanwar Niwas.
Calcutta is dotted with centuries-old buildings that are caught in the conservation conundrum.
A little over a month ago, the Calcutta Municipal Corporation allowed the building that housed the old Kenilworth Hotel to be demolished by its present owners after downgrading its heritage status. Heritage conservationists alleged a builder-official nexus.
Metro reported last week that Tripura House, the stately Ballygunge Circular Road mansion, will have a residential highrise share a portion of its 100-cottah compound after the West Bengal Heritage Commission gave its nod to a project rejected by the civic body.
Heritage has to be relevant to make conservation viable, Aishwarya Tipnis, an architect working on French heritage structures in Chandernagore, said in a lecture at the Indian Museum last Wednesday. “Conservation is no rocket science. It is far from a NASA code that can’t be cracked,” she said.
Sunil seems to have cracked the code.
source: http://www.telegraphindia.com / The Telegraph,Calcutta,India / Home> Calcutta / by Debraj Mitra / April 12th, 2018