Shenanigans in Ooty

visits a palace-turned-hotel in beautiful Ooty and attends a very strange fashion show.

There is a swing that hangs from a 200-year-old fir tree, moss covering the ancient trunk. I scramble to take my place on it, much before anyone of the group has spotted this lovely perch, and then, leisurely, take in my surroundings: a magnificent forest of pines looks down upon us from a hillock on the left, the dandelions are smiling in the grass below and Ooty is as lovely as ever, the temperate climes undisturbed by invading tourist armies.

This is an ideal setting for a home "" or a hotel, which is what the Fernhills Palace, formerly a summer palace for the Mysore royalty, recently refurbished and now set to open as a Welcomheritage property, is.

The hotel stands at the back. A charming medley of Victorian-Edwardian-Gothic styles, dubbed confused or wedded elsewhere, and full of rich, teakwood interiors. This is the memory of a picture-postcard morning I could have taken back with me "" except for the fashion show!

7 pm. The rich and distinguished of Ooty, Mysore and Bangalore are making their way to "Fernshills" Palace "" for some strange reason everyone is talking in plurals this evening. The cars have to be left some distance away from the porch; Maharaja Srikanta Datta Narasimha Raja Wadiyar of Mysore, hotel owner, does not want to disturb the sylvan surroundings, and everyone hotfoots their way to the main entrance.

Enter the now main hall/reception, formerly ballroom/durbar hall and you are in another place, another time: psychedelic lights, a ramp half the size of what you see at fashion shows, and some fabric attempting to form a backdrop of sorts. Have we strolled into one of those fashion weeks?

This is clearly going to be a big moment for the maharaja "" several kilos lighter, I am told, and with fashion designer aspirations "" apart from interior designing ones. The buzz is Fernhills Palace has taken so long to refurbish because the former royal was not happy with the size of the baths.

Now these are almost as big as the bedrooms in this all-suites hotel, except the common loo which could well compete with airline ones, both in terms of space and style. But let us not stray. We scramble to our front-row seats, look forward to the wine and wait for the show to roll.

It doesn't. The Ooty gentry is fairly punctual but an hour-and-a-half later we are still reaching out for papadams and masala peanuts with white wine-in-wrong-glasses. The models (the maharaja's guests, all the suites have been taken-over by them, with the result that we have had to stay elsewhere) are nowhere in sight.

"They've been told by his highness to redo their make-up," is the latest piece of information that comes my way. The only activity is some men squeezing their way past us to put up four fans at each end of the ramp! Why? "... for a Marilyn Monroe", a male neighbour hopes.

Mr Wadiyar himself sits in his royal chair right in front of the ramp (that morning, we'd all had to drag our own ones to surround him in a mini-durbar of sorts), looking at his watch from time to time, and just as we Delhi journos decide that this indeed has the makings of a fashionably-late event, he yells, "Hey, get out of the way..." A waiter has just been told off; smoke-pumps backstage sputter to life, there're some deafening chants which we don't quite understand, which give way to Latino beats and the first of the models arrive "" from the wrong end of the ramp!

The collection, Mysore silks, crepes, chiffons, sarees, lehngas and even cocktail dresses, is supposed to be inspired by ancient Indian texts and Mysore ("eysore", my neighbour giggles) motifs. The outfits, the maharaja has foreseen, "will be snapped up by anyone from Delhi or Mumbai".

All I can see are impossibly draped quarter and half sarees "" that's the only way I can describe these "" worn over leather boots, shockingly bright socks, net stockings and the like. Traditional and young at once, that perhaps is the concept. The maharaja says that he will be designing everything from jewellery to accessories to sports shoes. But what I am fascinated by is the footwear on the models "" open buckles, wobbly pencil pink heels. This is the only sense of coherence one gets here.

The Ooty elite are possibly spellbound. No one stirs, no one walks out. And even as we are yet to recover from the shock, on comes the emcee. A Punjabi from Bangalore educated at DAV, Chennai, he informs us, before letting out how hard his majesty has made them all practice for this event.

He rolls out entertainment more suitable for school socials or small-town clubs, but that could just be my Delhi sensibilities. "So, sir, could you introduce yourself and say something about this pretty city," he coaxes one member of the audience after the other.

This fashion show is going to be punctuated by many such acts, including one where selected men and women are made to do a "limbo dance", walk under a pole, legs straight, backs curved, blindfolded!

By now the king is in a good mood. He is clapping for his favourite models (he will even mimic a girl's accent, or that's what I think it is, when she is introduced later) and is enjoying a leisurely smoke.

The show has stretched on for almost two hours now and there have been segments on "the reformation of renaissance" or "renaissance of reformation", I don't quite know which, some printed sarees, Karol Bagh kitsch and zardozi... and, yes, male models with (saree?) fabric draped over denims. "What is the idea?" we wonder but Wadiyar will not say. So we tuck into a substantial dinner and walk back at Cinderella hour with memories set to a background score (including Abba) chosen by our host. What now? Musical ambitions too?

OOTY'S OWN FAWLTY TOWERS

The heritage hotel is quite pretty really, retaining much of its original colonial charm. The palace, which used to be quite a famous country club-hotel before being a summer cottage for the British, was bought in 1873 by the 12-year-old Maharaja Chama-Rajendra Wadiyar X for all of Rs 10,000. By 1884, it was converted to a rambling summer palace, with later descendants adding their own wings and architectural styles.

The famous Ooty fox hunt started here. The present Wadiyar heir converted it into a hotel in 1975 and it ran as such till 1999, when it closed down for "renovations". In 2004, an agreement was signed with Welcomheritage and the palace-hotel is now finally set to reopen again in a "few days".

The present "king" has been supervising these almost decade-long renovations himself and says that he has spent almost Rs 5 crore in the process till date. There are 19 suites in this all-suites hotel. All these have been recreated under instructions from Wadiyar "" the earlier 33 rooms were broken down "" and some new cottages too are on their way.

On the other hand, the exteriors and parts of the interior including the ballroom and lobby are older structures. Rich teak panelling, papier mache (and plaster of paris-moulded) ceilings complete the Raj-look of the place, along with terracotta chimneys, rusted, ornamental cannons and old cast iron chairs in the garden. In fact, most of the furniture is old here. But the ornamentation on the walls "" including some murals on Raj life and 24-carat gold motifs "" is new.