Chilling out on a weekend

STATE UPDATE/WEST BENGAL

When Arun Mukherjee and his wife Jyotsna feel bored over the weekend, they have a simple solution for their problem ""they drive from their south Kolkata home to spend the day at one of the many garden resorts that have sprung up south of the city on the Diamond Harbour Road.

"We get to enjoy the greenery of the countryside with the luxury of service that you can get only at a club or restaurant," says Mukherjee.

More than 40 such resorts have sprung up in the area that provides the Mukherjees with their Sunday afternoon break.

Several well known businessmen too have set up resorts. Harsh Neotia, the promoter of Gujarat Ambuja Eastern, has set up the Ffort Radisson at Raichak, the furthest destination from the city.

This is a swanky retreat with conference halls, lawns, serviced cottages and apartments for top-end visitors.

The Merlin group, one of the city's largest builders, has set up Ibiza, a sprawling resort. Closer to the city, it has equally usable infrastructure.

In all, resorts offer about 600 rooms, cottages and lawns. "We welcome every type of group, be it small family units or youth groups or office picnics," says Sanjay Kumar, manager of the over-a-decade-old Eastern Resort.

These resorts offer a couple of small cottages for the dad-mom-and-child unit, with breakfast, lunch and other meals being served from a central kitchen.

For larger groups, there are cottages with separate rooms and washrooms for men and women, along with a central dining and drawing area.

Food in such cases is always from the in-house caterer and is more often than not served on the lawns.

For more formal office picnics (or sales force workshops), a bundle of cottages are worked out, along with a formal hall for lectures, pep talks by the boss and presentations by any gurus who are invited to make them.

Hall charges range from Rs 750 to Rs 2500 a day, depending on seating capacity, with all equipment being charged extra.

"Companies are formal and the boss gets a special reception and facilities when he visits, like a complimentary cottage", says Sabyasachi Bagchi, marketing officer at Golden Retreat.

Some companies that have factories located in the area south of Kolkata often book cottages to house visiting managers or consultants who have to stay for months when projects are being set up or commissioned.

While cottages go for anything between Rs 300 and Rs 950 a day, depending on the sophistication of the resort, long term bookings are done at up to 40 per cent discounts.

Few discounts are on offer for the food though, and a typical vegetarian ready meal costs Rs 75 and Rs 40-45 more if non-vegetarian. Group catering charges are similar, but more elaborate, with snacks and pre and post lunch snacks thrown in.

"It's a very different experience living in the village-type environment while working at a factory site," says Chirag Jain, an engineer who stays at Golden and is helping set up a engineering components plant a short distance away.

Meanwhile, the resorts have spawned several new activities. Film shoots, for one. A large number of regional language television channels have sprung up and the resorts are ideal for outdoor shooting of serials or chat shows round the week.

Such bookings require minimal marketing costs and come bundled with large catering and related orders.

However, the TV channels demand steep discounts, resort owners complain. Thankfully, they keep the cash counters ringing on weekdays.

Secondly, marriage groups tend to flock to the resorts. "Families are choosing to have relatives and friends over for music and cultural programmes that are connected to the weddings but not part of the religious ceremony," says a resort manager. The spending on such events is lavish and the menus are elaborate, pushing up margins.

Still, it has been darkly whispered that malpractices abound at some resorts. Some resorts reportedly keep cellars though they do not have liquor licences and are marketed as family resorts. Others have been accused of not checking out the quality of guests.

However, the number of complaints has been minuscule compared to the number of resorts and the guests they accommodate on normal weekends.

Make no mistake "" Diamond Harbour Road is no longer a rural trail. Passing through the tony city neighbourhoods of Alipore and New Alipore as well as the Indian Institute of Management, it formerly housed large privately-owned garden estates (called 'bagaan-bari' in Bengali).

In the 1980s, businessmen started buying plots carved out of the sprawling estates as their owners were forced to sell land following the enactment of land ceiling laws, points out a former bureaucrat who was closely linked with the process then.

With the land came cottages and lakes - and the easiest way to earn money from them was to rent these out to people for breaks and picnics.

What started as a short-term arrangement to earn a quick buck has today become a booming and full-fledged business.