Trailblazers

Women in the wild

By Gustasp and Jeroo Irani

Anjali Tolani

Rati Karwal is not someone to trifle with considering the fact that her eyeball to eyeball encounter with a tiger on her own turf left her unfazed. We met the plucky 38-year-old at Mahua Kothi, the swish wilderness lodge in Bandhavgarh which is a joint venture between Taj Hotels Resorts & Palaces and CC Africa, an eco-tourism company in Africa. (Over a month ago, she moved to Bagvan in Pench National Park which is also a Taj Wilderness Lodge.)

As its operations manager, Karwal, who once wanted to specialise in genetic engineering, goes into the nuts and bolts of the resort, dealing with everything from reservations, front office, F&B and housekeeping to interacting with guests. She had presided over the property at Bandhavgarh even under the earlier dispensation when it was a tented camp called Churhat Kothi. When the Taj group took it over, Karwal elected to stay on to ensure smooth transition. That was when her 11-year-old son had come to stay for a brief while and was playing in the vast, tawny grassland around the property. Bored after a while, he returned to the property. A few minutes later, a staff member reported that he had seen fiery eyes glinting in the bush on the fringe of the resort, not too far away from where her son had been playing. Karwal too saw the huge head of the feline. All she could think of at the time was that her son had been playing, not too far away. On another occasion, a snake had walked over her foot and a staffer accompanying her had exclaimed, 'Stop, devta jaa rahe hai!' She had ground to a halt, one leg in mid-air. Karwal exclaims, half in jest, "I'm not afraid of anything on four legs but I am a little wary of the two-legged variety." Her smile indicates a can-do attitude and a love for the wild - an ideal mix for running a jungle resort.

Slipping into different roles

Rati Karwal

Equally at ease with CC Africa top honchos and naturalists as with the gifted chef who works in the display kitchen, roasting chappatis on a chulha and churning butter for that unique earthy flavour, Karwal brings to her job a wealth of feminine detail. For instance, she helped embellish the resort designed in the local idiom with thoughtful and attractive touches - the introduction of the rose and khus sherbets in the guestrooms, the tulsi chaura or courtyard with a tulsi plant, once an integral part of Hindu homes, was incorporated as a design element and each kutiya has a courtyard. For good measure, oil lamps are lit at dusk, enhancing the play of light and shadow and the mysterious beauty of a post-sunset landscape. Attractive and ingenious table settings, and venues for dinners and cocktails were some of her other contributions.

Her grandmother's favourite recipes found their way on the menu and impart an unmistakable homemade accent to the culinary offerings - the lip-smacking pickle, the velvety dal and the traditional dessert with an innovative twist tango on the exhaustive bill of fare. The latter in any case is a marriage of different cultures - the Taj group's and CC Africa's.

Clad in a simple salwar kameez during the day and a glittering sari at night, she networks with guests with consummate skill, exuding genuine Indian warmth and charm. At cocktails on the terrace, overlooking the glorious expanse of the 40-acre resort, Karwal would circulate among her guests, swapping a wildlife story here and a personal anecdote there.

Later seated under the large hospitable mahua tree where long tables were set, she would discuss the virtues of Indian cricket vis-a-vis American baseball with a curious American tourist; and homemade cures with the wife of one of the guests who was feeling unwell. Her healing concoction had the elderly lady on her feet the next morning, feeling well enough to embark on an early morning safari.

As wine glasses clinked one evening when we sat for dinner in the open-sided dining room that brought the outdoors indoors, Karwal told us how she got back into the workforce after a long spell of raising a family (her children are now in boarding school). With the encouragement of her family and friends, Karwal, whose passion for wildlife is reminiscent of the shikaris of yore, found her sense of self in the wild. Now she shares the soul-enlarging vistas with visiting family and friends, her staff and passing strangers with the joy that comes from living in an Eden-esque area.

She knows her sound

She may be young and urban in her outlook but Anjali Tolani is breaching new frontiers with almost Wild West flair. With her elfin looks and air of vulnerability, she reminds one of Ally McBeal stirring a cocktail of success and loneliness.

The aura of solitude is far removed from reality, however. Tolani is in her element at SwaSwara (meaning 'know your sound') located near Om Beach in North Karnataka. As its general manager, she has to oversee every aspect of the wellness resort which is the only outpost on a cluster of five beaches. She runs it with aplomb like the conductor of a symphony orchestra who knows his cues and the score. A marketing major with an MBA from the Narsee Monjee Institute of Management Studies, Mumbai, Tolani jettisoned a high-flying corporate career because, after a point of time, she could not take the grime of city life and the punitive schedule.

"The idea of moving out of Mumbai kept growing stronger in my mind and I realised that I was willing to do anything to make it happen - wait tables, cook as long as I didn't have to live in a city where one only lived to work and there was a lot of money to be made but no quality of life," she confided.

A year and a half ago, Tolani packed up her life in Mumbai and started anew at the back-to-nature resort of the CGH Earth group. The young manageress, clad in her signature T-shirt and trousers, was almost ubiquitous. Her friendly, loose-limbed approach to the job includes doing yoga with guests, chanting with them and intoning Sanskrit sholakas during meditation, with the fervour of a young acolyte.

Indeed, she networks with her staff not like an invisible diva but like an integral part of a team - quite a feat considering, as she says, "Even today more than 50 per cent of the people in my team do not understand anything apart from their mother tongue - Kannada, Malayam or Tamil - and I need a translator in our meetings." The CGH Earth group's philosophy of hiring local staff and empowering them can have other consequences too. "Most of these people have never worked outside of a small town or a village and reporting to a woman who has no experience in their industry does not come easy. This was quite challenging since I was also learning on the job."

She had to build bridges with people in the neighbourhood too - bidding a local bank manager goodbye when he moved on to another posting, hobnobbing with civic officials when there was a water problem. "What was more challenging was perhaps the move from Mumbai to SwaSwara. Mumbai is more similar to a big city in another country than it is to a village in India; a village with a population of less than 15,000, ancient banking, tenuous dial-up connection, where everybody knows everybody and their business; where you inherit not just the last name but even professions," she elucidates. Tolani also brings a feminine touch to her job - an interactive kitchen where one can not only watch the chef create his magic but also try one's hand at it. Her in-born culinary prowess is evident in the imaginative menus where healthy drinks like kokum and brahmi juice drinks jostle delicately-spiced vegetarian and seafood fare. She has also harnessed local talent and has young blades showcase their culture by way of music and dance for guests.

Tolani's love affair with her job is not likely to be short-lived despite doomsday declarations made by well-meaning friends. As she declares, "Today, I have a problem going back to Mumbai and staying longer than a week. SwaSwara has spoiled me with its unpolluted air, its peace and tranquility while enabling me to lead a more dignified life. Here, even if I work at a stretch without a day off, I don't feel like a break because I love what I do."

Photo credit: Gustasp and Jeroo Irani