Borders to Boardroom: A Memoir

By Habib Rehman

From gentleman cadet to a near-miss as manager of an ice cream factory-to becoming a pioneering figure in the hotel industry, destiny has led Habib Rehman down many unexpected paths. When a cardio-vascular ailment contracted after many high-altitude postings compelled 31-year-old Rehman to seek voluntary retirement from the Indian Army in 1975, he had no plan B in place. It was a chance meeting with Pishori Lal Lamba, owner of Gaylords restaurant, at a social gathering in Pune that led to a job offer. Lamba, together with his partner I. K. Ghai of Kwality, then dominated the hospitality industry. He invited Rehman to take over as manager of an ice cream factory he was setting up in Pune, when the project fell through, he bailed out Rehman from prospective unemployment by sending him to hotel Rama international in Aurangabad as manager in-residence. Thus was born Habib Rehman, the hotelier. It was another chance meeting with Ajit Haksar, the visionary first Indian chairman of ITC, that propelled Rehman to the next stage of his career. So impressed was Haksar by the young manager of the Rama international, that he offered him a job with the fledgling ITC hotels division – Haksar’s brainchild. Rehman joined ITC hotels in 1979. The rest is history. From a three-property enterprise-the chola Sheraton in Chennai, the Maurya in Delhi and the Mughal Sheraton in Agra, ITC hotels has grown to more than 100 properties in 70 destinations worldwide.

Much of this growth took place under Rehmans stewardship and close personal involvement. His love of food, a natural outcome of his Hyderabadi genes, led him to nurture and lead several iconic restaurants amongst many ITC properties across the country.

Though hobnobbing with the likes of Bill and Hillary Clinton, Peter O’Toole and Elizabeth Taylor was just part of the job, Rehman never lost the common touch-a lesson learned in the army, an institution he loved and never ceased to draw inspiration from throughout his career in the hospitality industry-two worlds seemingly poles apart but surprisingly complementary when it came to the management of men and resources. Borders to boardroom is a memoir that educates and delights in equal measure. For those in the hospitality industry, or keen to learn about it, this book provides invaluable insights. It could also serve as a primer in the art of management, telling as it does the story of ITC, one of the country’s most professionally managed corporate houses. Above all, it is a warm, human account of a man, a well-regarded figure in the hospitality industry, who has lived many lives and loved them all-and is not afraid to write about it with honesty and subtle humor.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Roli Books
• Release date: Nov 15, 2014
• ISBN: 9789351940531

Book preview

1

Hyderabad in My Genes

There’s food in the DNA of Hyderabad. As the story goes, the dynasty that was to rule the sprawling kingdom from the city of the Charminar, and attain worldwide fame for its immense wealth, was born at a frugal meal that a Sufi saint, Hazrat Nizamuddin Aurangabadi, served to a tired and hungry Mughal nobleman with a weighty name — Nizam-ul-Mulk Mir Qamar-ud-din Khan Siddiqi Asaf Jah.

A little bit more of history, which you can’t escape when you’re in Hyderabad.

In the years when the Mughal empire was hurtling towards its inevitable end, Farrukhsiyar, one of the lesser names of the great dynasty, reportedly sent a 41-year-old soldier of distinction, Mir Qamar-ud-din Khan Siddiqi, as his Nizam-ul-Mulk (Administrator of the Realm) to the Deccan. He was to be his ruler’s first line of defence against the insurrectionary Marathas and the fractious minor rajas who were ruling parcels of the vast stretch of land to the south of the Vindhyas.

On his way to the Deccan, legend has it, the Nizam-ul-Mulk went to seek the blessings of Hazrat Nizamuddin Aurangabadi of the Chistiya order, who invited him to a meal. Tired out by his long trudge, the Nizam-ul-Mulk polished off seven of the kulchas (unleavened bread) that the saint served him. At the end of the meal, the saint tied some more kulchas in a yellow cloth for the Mughal viceroy to eat during the rest of his journey. He saw him off with a prophetic declaration: The Nizam-ul-Mulk was destined to be an independent ruler and seven generations of his family would follow him to the throne. The march of history was to prove the saint right.

When he established his own state in 1724, the Nizam-ul-Mulk, who had by then acquired yet another imperial title — that of Asaf Jah — from the profligate Mohammad Shah ‘Rangeela’, chose the colour yellow for his state’s flag to immortalise the cloth in which the kulchas had been wrapped, and the saint’s kulcha appeared in the form of an all-encompassing orb both on the flag and in the royal coat of arms.

The Nizam-ul-Mulk chose Aurangabad as his capital, to be in close proximity to the saint and because of its strategic location as the khirkee, or window, to the south and the west. It was only in 1763 that Mir Nizam Ali Khan Siddiqi Bahadur Shah Asaf Jah II moved his court to Hyderabad, the city that the poet-king, Mohammed Quli Qutub Shah, had built in 1589. The city was born out of necessity because the Qutab Shahi citadel, the sturdy Golconda fort, was getting too crowded for its own good. It was reborn as a city of refinement.

The new capital was soon to become the south’s first city of gastronomy. The feasts hosted by its rulers, known as the Nizams (shortened from Nizam-ul-Mulk), and the kitchens of its famous families, including the Kayasthas who controlled the levers of administration and the books of accounts, were the envy of gourmets across the country. The well-known Urdu writer of the Guzishta Lucknow, Abdul Haleem Sharar (1860-1926), had observed, Each culture is known by its gastronomy. Hyderabad’s all-embracing culture certainly was. And it continues to be so.

That may be why I am wary of being called a foodie.

I am not a foodie. I never went to a hotel school or attended a formal culinary course. My home was my culinary school; my mother and, later in my life, my friends and colleagues were my instructors. Hyderabad did not have a restaurant culture when I was growing up, so families took pride in calling each other over and serving the best food. As they say in Hyderabad, "Khate waqt aata hai dost / Sote waqt aata hai dushman (Friends drop in during your meals / Enemies come when you are asleep)." Food in those days was at the centre of our universe of entertainment. Each home was a nursery of gastronomy. Every mother was the upholder of a unique culinary tradition, as is common to every Indian home to this day.

India’s billion kitchens have acquired layers of complexity and finesse because of the constant interplay of a myriad influences across millennia. The Arabs, Turks, Mongols and Persians have left their indelible imprint on our society and our indigenous cuisines. The Columbian Exchange — or the new world commodities market opened up by the accidental discovery of the Americas by Christopher Columbus — revolutionised the way we cook by introducing chillies, potatoes, tomatoes and maize to our national storehouse of ingredients. Even our colonial masters — the Portuguese, French and English — have left us with their edible treasures.

Is it a wonder, then, that every Indian home has an evolved kitchen? Or that every Indian can engage knowledgeably, and passionately, in a conversation centering around food? Or that our chefs are prized around the world for their global orientation and multiple skills? Culinary catholicity comes naturally to us.

Take the Hyderabadi table. Just as four and a quarter centuries of Hyderabad’s history can be viewed in its distinctive architecture and in the innate courtesy of its citizens, its delectable cuisine mirrors this pluralistic ensemble of cultures that have come together and blossomed in the southern metropolis. As Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, our first prime minister, had so aptly said, Hyderabad is a microcosm of Indian culture.

The region’s original Telengana cuisine; the legacy of the Qutab Shahi sultans who nurtured nascent Hyderbadi culture with Persian refinement; the entry of the Mughals in 1687, and the continuity of Mughal traditions under the Nizams, who ruled the city till Hyderabad’s accession after the Indian Army’s four-day Operation Polo, launched on 16 September 1948 — these discrete influences, with gifts from the Arab, Abyssinian, Turkish, French and Anglo-Indian kitchens, have melded to define the city’s gastronomic heritage.

There’s history in every Hyderabadi dish. Many years ago, I was surprised to learn from Maharaja Gaj Singh of Jodhpur, or Bapji, as he’s fondly called, that a delegation of Rajputs and Marwari notables of Hyderabad had met him during one of his visits to the city. I asked the maharaja how the two communities landed in Hyderabad and he said their presence possibly dated back to the Siege of Golconda, which lasted for eight months, starting in January 1687. The Rajputs had come as generals and troops of Aurangzeb’s army, which met with stiff resistance from Abul Hasan Qutub Shah but eventually vanquished the sultan and secured the historic fort and its muchcoveted Kollur mine, the source of thirteen of the world’s most precious eighteen diamonds today. Much later, when Hyderabad thrived as the Nizams cashed in on the benefits of British protection, Marwari bankers, most famously the Ganeriwalas and the Pitties, arrived and introduced mirchi pakodas, choorma, guar ki phali (cluster beans) and more to Hyderabad’s inclusive kitchen.

The prolonged Siege of Golconda, according to a popular story, also enhanced the repertoire of influences on Hyderabadi cuisine. It was summer and the invading forces were running out of rations. Hunger pangs gave rise to innovative cooking. The Mughal soldiers would hunt for game and slap chunks of the freshly procured meat on the hot boulders that abounded in the region. The chunks of meat cooked in the sun soon became a hot favourite and were given the poetic name shamsi (sun) kebab, which eventually took form as the famous patthar kebab cooked on heated lava stones. It was not the first time that meats were being cooked in this fashion by invading armies. The Mongol hordes, who carried chunks of meat under the saddles of the horses they rode across scorching plains, also resorted to ‘barbecuing’ them on rocks heated by the sun. That is said to be the origin of the Mongolian barbecue, as noted by some inventive observers.

The Marathas, who fought intermittently with Hyderabad till the Nizams joined the East India Company’s Subsidiary Alliance system, also left their imprint on the city’s culinary culture. The puran puri, a more refined version of the better-known puran poli, is one of the dishes that the Hyderabadis have inherited from the Marathas. In Hyderabad, the rustic layered roti, filled with dals cooked in jaggery, evolved into a royal dish — a roti in seven or eight layers with the standard filling embellished with khoya and nuts, dum-cooked in a lagan (round and shallow copper utensil with a slightly concave bottom).

The construction of the Grand Maratha in Mumbai was completed in January 2001. In that year, on 1 May, which was also Maharashtra Day, I celebrated the milestone by sending boxes of puran puris to the city’s prominent personalities. Promptly, I got a call from the late Shiv Sena supremo, Balasaheb Thackeray, to say how much he appreciated my gesture. It gave me an opportunity to explain to him the Maratha roots of this Hyderabadi delicacy. I also explained to him our intention to honour the Great Maratha (Chhatrapati Shivaji) by building the Grand Maratha (now the ITC Maratha). He acknowledged the news with evident pride and extended all possible support to our project.

As the legend goes, Hyderabad started its life in 1589 as Bhagnagar, named after Bhagmati, the Hindu courtesan who became the royal consort of Mohammad Quli Qutab Shah (1565-1612), whose immortal gift to the city is the architectural wonder, Charminar. Bhagmati, it is said, became Hyder Mahal after marriage and the city also got a new name, Hyderabad. Historians don’t buy the Bhagmati theory — they say the city was named in honour of Ali-ibn-Abi Talib, the first imam of the Shia Muslims, who was better known by his moniker, Hyder, or ‘the lion’ — but the story reflects the city’s composite culture where Persian and Turkish legacies and the ancient Hindu heritage of the Hoysalas and Kakatiyas, who had built the mighty Golconda fort, blended in a gracious mix in the society I grew up in.

Mohammad Quli Qutab Shah, the city’s founding father, wanted Hyderabad to be a replica of paradise itself , better even than Isfahan, the Persian city that set architectural benchmarks for the rest of the Islamic world. He also prayed: Let millions of men and women of all castes, creeds and religions make this city their abode like fish in the ocean. Hyderabad seems to have heeded the prayer and has jealously guarded its secular heritage so lyrically bequeathed by Mohammad Quli Qutab Shah. This untutored sense of harmony was apparent in the Hyderabadi style of dress. Religion did not dictate what common people wore, so the men, irrespective of their religious affiliations, were proud to be seen in the achkan and Muslim women sported the mangalsutra like their Hindu sisters. The Hyderabadi table was another fine expression of this marriage of evolved cultures.

It was in this society that I was born and raised, and I was fortunate to have grown up at a time when Hyderabad was still the repository of all that was desirable in a decadent society.

This coexistence of contradictions — high thinking and hedonism — was best articulated by Mohammad Quli Qutab Shah, an accomplished poet equally comfortable in Dakhani Urdu and Telugu. We are entirely off our senses and this is verily the time to get lost in drinks, he wrote in his famous anthology, Kulliyat-e-Quli Qutab Shah. Now we have only to enjoy to our heart’s content the presence of the cup-bearer, the goblet, and the condiments to make us merry.

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I was privileged to have grown up in a vast house with twelve bedrooms and several living areas, spread well over an acre of land in Himayatnagar, which was then the bridge between Old Hyderabad and the upcoming Banjara Hills. Our house had been designed by Hashmat Raza, who had the distinction of being the first Hyderabadi to have qualified from the Royal Institute of British Architecture. A part of the house and its artefacts had to be stripped later when the family lost much of its land holdings to the Zamindari Act or to encroachers. Some of these holdings continue to be under litigation, including a chunk in the new district of Cyberabad.

After he retired as chief architect of Hyderabad, Raza set up his private practice and his office was at my friend’s house. That gave us the licence to move around in his house and seeing him at work left me with an abiding interest in architecture. Of course when you grow up in Hyderabad, it is impossible not to be attracted to the architectural landmarks of the city.

Years later, when I joined the fledgling hotels division of ITC, I remember the company’s chairman, Ajit Narain Haksar, telling us that each hotel we built must have a personality rooted in the city’s soil and history. Spurred by this advice, my lifelong interest in architecture expressed itself in the hotels I subsequently commissioned.

I have always taken a personal interest in the work of our architects and never lost sight of the connection between our history and heritage and our present. It also makes branding and marketing sense to take advantage of the enormous equity attached to the proposition. The façade of a great hotel must incorporate the touch and feel of the past into the architecture of the present, for the lessons of the past must influence how we look ahead into the future. Architecture must convey both a sense of history and a connect with present-day society. In a sense, it must preserve the best of the past and hold out the promise of a desirable future.

When I was building ITC Sonar Bangla, for instance, I realised that the Palas, the famous ruling dynasty of Bengal whose writ ran in the tenth and eleventh centuries, had left behind no tangible architectural heritage, so we started examining the elements of a nineteenth-century bagan baari (country house) of a Bengali bhadralok (gentelman). It so happened that the plot came with a water body that we could not disturb, so the layout fitted the bagan baari plan perfectly and Sonar Bangla evolved as a hotel where the bhadralok’s country house met a businessman’s resort. The upcoming extensions to the hotel will reflect the vertical colonial architecture of Hong Kong and Singapore, which were the other famous British colonial outposts in Asia.

Coming back to the Hyderabad of my childhood days, our family mirrored the diversity of cultural influences that shaped the city’s high society. My mother, Amjad Unnisa Begum, was from an old Hyderabadi aristocratic family. She was given the title Dulhan Pasha (Ruling Bride), though my father, unlike both my grandfathers, never married twice (it was left to me to carry forward the family tradition!). Accommodated in a government job after a series of failures in businesses as diverse as film distribution, road transport, textiles and trading, where everybody seemed to have achieved success except him, Fidabhai, as he was known, usually found comfort in clubs and race courses. Of course, he was fond of food and drink, the only legacy he left me with.

My paternal grandmother was from Lucknow and had a talukdari lineage, and was married to a Hyderabadi. Between them, the two women knew well the finer points that distinguished kormas, kaliyas, saalans and shabdegh. The presence of two cultural traditions in one home naturally meant animated discussions, much to our delight, on the superiority of Hyderabad’s biryani over Lucknow’s pulao. My mother would call the kitchen bawarchi khana or chulha khana, but my paternal grandmother would insist it was the pakwan khana.

The ubiquitous kheema (mutton mince) was an inescapable part of our daily diet and in its many forms it kept making an appearance in our conversations. There were days that would start with piping-hot, ghee-drenched paranthas and kheema kaleji, or mutton mince with liver. We would hotly discuss the cuts of meat that yielded the best mince as if our life depended on it — at that point in time, it seemed like it did indeed! And we would heartily recite the doggerel, "Khichdi ke chaar yaar — kheema, ghee, papad, achaar (the khichdi has four friends — mutton mince, clarified butter, poppadom and pickles)." We would also devour several kinds of egg preparations. My personal favourite was the khagina (eggs fried with sautéed onions), which we ate with sheermal or roghini roti, and which was followed by halwa with a dollop of cream on top. When life moved at an unhurried pace, we had the luxury of engaging with food more closely and more passionately than the children of today.

From the debates at home, I also learnt about how different dishes were named. It is not a unique experience. All of us would have gone through it. And if we care to remember, we could download a stream of such memories. Dishes would typically be designated as aam or saada (common); those prepared a little more elaborately, with yakhni or almond paste, for instance, or with a selection of spices such as nutmeg, mace and saffron, would be called shahi (royal) or khas (special). Likewise, sometimes the textures would define the dishes, such as the golden-hued Kundan Qaliya, garnished with gold leaf, or the silver leaf-quilted Chandi Qaliya.

Dishes could also be named after certain aromas or tastes (zafrani, for instance), or after persons, as in the case of the Bakarkhani roti, named after Aga Bakar Khan, one of the able generals of Bengal’s Nawab Murshid Quli Khan who had a tragic romantic entanglement with a courtesan. At times the names were derived from the vessels in which they were cooked, such as karahi, lagan, balti, and so on. A melange of ingredients would invite the adjective, navrattan; a non-vegetarian dish would be named after a man (Shahjahani) and a vegetarian dish invariably after a woman (Noorjahani or Mumtaz). Preparations with ingredients that were reputed to have aphrodisiac qualities would be known as fauladi, or by the more sophisticated word qavi.

Each name came with a story, but the funniest, though not necessarily true, much like the tale of the mythical Nawab of Kakori, was that of the do pyaaza. It is said that a nawab who had fallen on bad days would instruct his cook before every dinner party not to add more mutton if the number of guests exceeded expectations. The cook then came up with an ingenious way of adding volume — he would keep adding two onions per additional guest to pump up the body of the gravy. The nawab’s guests started loving the preparation so much that this creative chef ’s solution to his employer’s problem of scarcity became a much-loved dish.

On the finer nuances of food, there may have been animated discussions in our family, but on certain matters, there was no room for any disagreement. My paternal grandmother, who had an exaggerated sense of pride because she was the wife of a talukdar, was dismissive of my mother’s lineage, but on the norms of social etiquette, they were on the same page. The rules were defined by three words — tameez, tehzeeb and tamaddun, which can be translated as manners, culture and civilisation. This code of honour meant, for instance, that the informal word ‘tu’, which is used quite commonly among siblings and friends elsewhere in India, was regarded as an abuse, the slightly more respectable ‘tum’ as a derogatory usage, and ‘aap’ as the only acceptable form of address. I followed this rule till I grew up, but the army taught me to be a little more experimental in more informal and colourful ways in multiple dialects.

The rules were numerous. Clothes, fragrances and menus, for example, had to follow the seasons and conform to occasions. We could not wear a white sherwani in the winter evenings, nor dab ourselves with the essence of jasmine or kewra (screwpine), though the essence of agaru (a kind of musk) and rose were fine. We could only salute with a salaam or an aadaab. Hugging was infra dig. The first time my mother hugged me was when I went home on leave in April 1966 after the India-Pakistan war of 1965.

We were not supposed to drink any beverage, including water, in one gulp, but in short sips. It was also considered impolite to polish off all the food that was served to us. That would be considered a sign of gluttony. We were required to leave just enough on the plate so that it was not construed as wastage. It was considered normal for us to attend dance and music performances or even mujras, but we couldn’t be heard singing. It was fine if we broke into applause to show our appreciation for a performance, but if we clapped for no ostensible reason, we could be pulled up for making an inappropriate gesture. Today, the Manyawar Apparels and Diwan Saheb ads and their well-groomed models remind me of the Hyderabadi glitterati of that era.

When grandmother passed away, for us young siblings it was an occasion for unspoken relief and not of grief. We had to grow up to realise the importance of her lasting contributions to our formative years.

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My love for food, which seems to have been programmed into my genes, fuelled in me an intense curiosity to partake of the meals of our domestics, who lived in the same compound in quarters away from our main home. They made soups with rice starch, keeping some for clothes, and jowar (sorghum) rotis with a fiery chutney made by grinding red and green chillies, which were tempered but not tamed with chopped copra, the dried coconut kernel. They took away the sugarcane fragments that stuck to the containers of jaggery coming into our house, to fry them in oil with sesame seeds, and make coarse chikkis. And they would de-shell and de-seed tamarind, grind it into a paste, roll it in sugar and add salt to make a candy, which took me by surprise when it showed up many years later on the Jet Airways menu. The poor man’s means of sustenance had become the frequent flier’s mouth freshner.

These interactions made me get closer to the world of the less fortunate majority and empathise with their concerns. The affluent must never lose sight of the fact that they are served by the underfed, underprivileged majority. Even as we would fuss over the way we had our eggs, I would wonder whether the children of our domestic staff ever got to eat eggs. I had to deal with this question throughout my career as I was working in an industry that glorified the commercialisation of food and the extravaganza surrounding it. It made me intensely aware of the class distinctions in the culinary world, which were even reflected in terms such as saadgi or aam to describe the food of the common people and khasgi or shahi for the table of the fortunate few. To resolve my inner turmoil, and to foster camaraderie, I would insist on eating with the juniormost members of the staff at the cafeterias of the hotels I headed, or visited, as frequently as possible. And today, nothing gives me greater pleasure than the sight of common labourers enjoying their eggs and paranthas served from pushcarts.

The kitchen of a typical Hyderabadi upper-class home used to be located away from the main house to insulate it from the smoke and the smells. It would have a bank of coal- or wood-fired chulhas (stoves) interspersed with angeethis (traditional braziers) and out-of-work cast-iron stoves and ovens. Appropriately, it would be called the chulha khana or bawarchi khana. The groceries used to be stacked in the modi khana and the ab khana would store water, slabs of ice wrapped in gunny bags and earthen pitchers full of aam panna (spiced raw mango juice), which went by the name of aab shola, or the water that douses the fires of summer. Various other sherbets and buttermilk would also be housed in this room, and these libations would be transferred to Thermos flasks and kept in our rooms. Adjacent to the kitchen were coal