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As a child travelling by train from boarding school in arid Rajasthan to home in Kolkata, the lush paddy fields and ponds that form the expansive approach to Howrah station always seemed like milestones on a route to happiness. For that reason when a busload of us drove into Ganga Kutir in Raichak, a couple of hours drive from Kolkata, and found brick buildings surrounded by lotus-filled pukurs or ponds, I felt immediately and comfortably at home.
Few hotels could be more religiously reverent of the Bengali countryside than Ganga Kutir. For starters, it is built on the banks of the Ganga. Every pond that the builders encountered has been left untouched, every palm tree undisturbed. The hotel's architect turned out to be Channa Daswatte, whose work pays tribute to Sri Lanka's languid tropical settings, so he understands what makes Bengal special. The hotel rooms felt like independent cottages, if rather well appointed ones with old furniture and knick-knacks and four poster beds.
I have tried not to write about Ganga Kutir and the House of MG in Ahmedabad, two of the loveliest hotels I have stayed at in India, in part because I took no notes while staying at each of them. I was at the first for a birthday celebration last November and at the second, reporting on the Gujarat model, in early May. But, both offer important insights into how mid-sized hotels could operate in India, which is already home to too many establishments that offer Arctic airconditioning and carpeted corridors and look like poor cousins of Holiday Inns elsewhere in the world.
Ganga Kutir and the House of MG, by contrast, are true to their roots in a way that makes you fall in love with Bengal and Gujarat instantly. The formal dining room in Ganga Kutir is a feast for the eyes. The ceiling is adorned with poems of Tagore, the walls have depictions of the Goddess Durga. The centerpiece is a chandelier somehow made of brass pots. I was travelling with boisterous childhood friends and I recall all of us being momentarily stunned into silence. The interior designer, Narayan Chandra Sinha, has used old cupboards and knick-knacks that look like they have been hauled out of a garage sale and rich colours that suggest he loves the Fauvist art of Paul Gauguin. He has had a little help in another theatrical dining room from fashion designer Sabyasachi Mukherjee.
The House of MG in Ahmedabad turns out to be - among a certain design-conscious and media set - the city's worst kept secret. When I visited Ahmedabad, just about everyone suggested I stay there. I arrived there after a day's reporting on people voting in and around Naroda Patiya, the scene of gruesome killings during the violence in the city in 2002. One Muslim woman recounted seeing most of her family, including her less than six months old nephew hurled into a fire, while an old man took us to a shallow, disused well which had been the scene of mass killings.
