Ashvin Kumar - No, I did not work in Beeran Kaka’s tea shop

 No, I did not work in Beeran Kaka’s tea shop

Ashvin Kumar FRAS FRGS

When the admission list of IHM Chennai was published, some bright spark mocked me - “He is going to join Beeran Kaka’s tea shop”.

For the ones who didn’t make it to engineering or medicine, the next choice was law or maybe even politics. The remaining, a vast majority, wandered around aimlessly or left Kerala for any opportunity elsewhere. The luckier ones whose father or an uncle was in the Gulf (aka ‘Persia’) got a visit visa, precursor to a guaranteed job, any job, in the Middle East. 

 

Hotel management or rather, catering, as it was slightly disparagingly referred to then was for the failures. But where I came from, small town India, no one had even heard about this career option. It was a childhood friend who inspired me to write the national entrance examination. I remember being interviewed by a panel headed by a sweet old lady; the legendary Ms.Thangam Philip. Luckily, not realising who she was till much later, I managed to mumble something unintelligible and clear that round!  

 

Landing up at IHM Taramani in 1985, the first time away from home, the family didn’t trust me to be safe in the hostel, so I was a day scholar for the first year before moving into the hostel for the next two years. Vacation training was for a month each in summer and winter, where we more or less selected which hotel or resort to go to, or not at all, because it was not mandatory then, unlike the six-month industrial training for later batches. 

Memories of IHM Chennai continue to be a blur. The ragging, the very short haircut, having to call all seniors Sir and Madam, and the faculty, many of whom we still keep in touch with. Cooking and baking, cleaning and French, communication and engineering, whatever life was, it certainly wasn’t boring. My classmates and I still keep laughing about the hilarious incidents from back then. Funnily enough, there was nothing truly remarkable about hostel life, apart from the drink parties and the occasional all night binge movie sessions.

 

Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately, I did not get selected in any of the campus interviews but managed to start with the Taj before moving on to various other companies and countries including Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Thailand, Oman, the UK, the UAE and even the Caribbean. Sometime in the early 90s I joined a leather export agency before coming back to hotels, my terra firma, so to speak, after a few months. Along the way, a Bachelor’s degree in Arts from Osmania University and Management from Yale University tagged on. 

  

Also became a Life Member of both the Indian National Trust for Art & Cultural Heritage and the Kerala Council for Historical Research. It was a great honour to be awarded Fellowships of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain & Ireland and the Royal Geographical Society by their respective Councils recently. But then one might wonder how a (prospective) tea shop employee pursued such vastly different interests. 

While my professional career continued in hospitality, focus on lifelong passions like history, anthropology, sociology, culture & travel never waned. The evolution, rise and fall of civilisations, their customs and costumes, cuisines and languages have continued to be a source of endless fascination. Our line of work with its long hours averaging 12 to 14 hours every day might feel like an impediment, but the flip side is that I got to meet so many different nationalities and travel to various countries, opening up opportunities to learn more about art, architecture, antiques and even pottery, textiles and so on.

 

Reading has always been of interest to the family, our library having books dating back 300 or 400 years, and the Hindu newspaper once featured an article on my palm leaf manuscript collection. Thus it was almost a natural progression to writing. My first work published in 2016 was a translation from Malayalam to English of the Vadakkan Aitihyamala (literally, ‘Garland of Northern Legends), a compilation of lore, legends, myth and history of northern Kerala. Passed down over centuries as part of an oral tradition before being consolidated in its written form, very few people had even heard of it.

 

After more than five years of on & off effort, ‘Lore & Legends of North Malabar’, about the Gods, Goddesses, dynasties, temples, mosques, warriors and sorcerers of the land of my ancestors, is now in its 8th edition. The Hindu again did a feature on this book. A proud moment a year or two back was when someone sent me a photograph of a copy at the library of the University of California-Berkeley.  I am now working on a second book while developing two more different themes. 

 

Having travelled to more than 85 countries and made friends the world over, I decided long ago that if life had a ‘ctrl’ ‘alt’ ‘del’ button, I would still choose hospitality. 

The best part of IHM is that almost all of us still keep in touch with each other and value the friendships from those years of bonding. And for those wondering whether we have time to chase the dream, the answer is a resounding YES. 

For, like Vonnegut said, “Of all the words of mice & men, the saddest are, ‘It might have been.’  

 

Ashvin, Class of 1988