Requiem for a heritage lost

The Great Eastern Hotel in Kolkata passes into a new history.

Finally, Kolkata's Great Eastern Hotel is to be sold, ending a 30-year long misadventure with public sector management.

From being the premier watering hole of the city in the first half of the last century, the 200-room hotel situated in the heart of the city's business district had dwindled over the past three decades to a musty dump.

Set up by David Wilson as a hotel for "Families and Single Gentlemen", the Great Eastern passed into the hands of its desi partners in the 1930s. By the 1970s, infighting among them had brought the hotel to the verge of closure.

It was then that the West Bengal government stepped in, and by an act of the state legislature, took over its management from a Bengali family that had ended up as its last owner.

The arrangement worked for a while, though clearly standards were deteriorating. But it was another two decades before there was official confirmation that the government couldn't run it. In 1995, during his last term as chief minister, Jyoti Basu decided it would be sold to Paris-based Accor, but the furore among its staff put paid to the move.

In late 2001, the government made another attempt (once again, the buyer was to be Accor). The workers' agitation against the separation package, as also Accor's inability to come up with an Indian partner, led it to withdraw a year later.

In early 2003 a third attempt invited formal bids and of the three serious contenders then, the Kolkata-based Badshah Hotels had the best offer.

But this time the government backed out since Badshah, which runs a successful fast-food operation in the New Market area, was not considered qualified enough or armed with the necessary financial muscle to make a success of the venture.

The fourth process, which appears to have borne fruit, began in early 2004. Bids were invited, PricewaterhouseCoopers brought in to ensure a transparent sale process and evaluate the property, and a reserve price of Rs 30 crore agreed upon.

Twelve proposals were received including from Kolkata's Park Hotels, Kenilworth, Sinclair, the Oberoi Group, ITC and the two final contenders, the Unitech Group and Lalit Suri's Bharat Hotels (which has won the bid).

For the 165-year old heritage hotel, it's time to begin all over again. Whether it will ever again regain its former eminence, when it hosted visiting dignitaries, most notably Queen Elizabeth I's retinue in 1963, remains to be seen.

The hotel's 15 banquet halls and five restaurants (especially Maxim's) were the pride of the city. Even now, cakes from the hotel's bakery are sought after at Christmas.

Inside, it is not hard to make out that the now threadbare red carpet lining the handsome flight of stairs, the generously proportioned corridors lined with wood paneling, the chandeliers whose light has been dimmed by layers of dust and cobwebs, made for glamour and old-world charm.

But for the 425-odd workers, life has come to a standstill. There have been no fresh recruitments since 1995, so even the youngest among them is in their thirties. As the November 30 deadline for them to leave the hotel nears, a mood of despondency seems to have settled in.

All the workers have accepted the separation package and Suri will get a property free of trade union troublemakers, with the option of retaining as many as he would like to in order to manage the transition process and teach his team the ropes.

There is a kind of resigned anger. Receptionist Bidyut Daw says the writing had been on the wall ever since Jyoti Basu decided to hawk the hotel.

The government had not made the investments needed to run an establishment as old as the Great Eastern. As debts mounted, there was no move to recover outstandings, and every petty politician milked the hotel in the name of government and party.

There might be something in these allegations of deliberate neglect since the new owner has set aside as much as

Rs 120 crore for improvements. But the likes of Sheikh Alauddin will not be around to see them. A table boy at the coffee shop, Alauddin will probably go back to his village near Cuttack remembering those times when he served Indira Gandhi and Mujibur Rehman at the Raj Bhavan in 1971.

While he has no idea what he'll do with the close to Rs 5 lakh he'll get as settlement, he is thankful that he won't be sitting idle from 10 in the morning to 6 in the evening waiting for guests who no longer come.