Whenever I traveled to Mumbai in recent years, I always expected to see Chittarath Poovakkatt Krishnan Nair, the man whom everybody called, simply, “The Captain.”
I always expected to be invited to share a meal with him in his suite at The Leela, near the big new international airport. I always expected that the cuisine would be from his native northern Kerala, and that the dishes would always be delicious because they were prepared at Captain Nair’s nearby home and brought to him by liveried staff who were mindful of his fondness for food and his expectation of cheerful service. I always expected good humor and good talk from The Captain, for he was a raconteur with stories dating back a century to his childhood.
His age notwithstanding, I always expected that Captain Nair would be at The Leela – which he named after his wife, who also hailed from the Kerala town of Kannur.
I once got his calling card, which did not spell out his full name. It only said: Capt. C. P. Krishnan Nair. He looked and acted every bit the army captain he once was. He walked ramrod straight, and he sat up straight. He dressed neatly and fastidiously, paying attention to every item and accouterment of his attire, choosing carefully from dozens of gaily colored and well tailored suits from Italy, the United States and Britain. He invariably wore what Britons call braces and the more sartorially plebian Americans refer to as suspenders. He looked you directly in the eye. He spoke firmly and fluently, sometimes interjecting his native Malayalam into English to emphasize a point.
Everybody called him “Captain.” Some called him “Chairman.” Very few would venture to call him by his first name, even though he was tickled pink when close friends said “Krishnan.” The name, he would say, always brought to mind the way his parents addressed him when he was growing up in the small town of Kannur in northern Kerala. However, as an author writing his biography who spent a year following him around India, I never took the liberty of calling him by his first name – nor did he invite me to. Captain Nair commanded an unusual kind of respect, and he didn’t easily give permission – however implicit – for people to get too familiar with him. Moreover, amiable though he was, Captain Nair didn’t invite familiarity. One was always conscious that there was a perimeter around him, and that it was bad form to cross it.
Most people thought that he was of uncertain age. It was easy to assume that the yoga and rigorous exercise he undertook daily explained his unlined face and vigorous handshake. Very few people were able to ascertain that Captain Nair, in fact, marked his 93rd birthday on February 9, 2014. Should that we all look like Captain Nair.
If you believed in astrology, Captain Nair’s February birthday made him an Aquarius according to the Western zodiac.
According to the literature, such people are always in pursuit of excitement; Aquarius-born folks love to make people laugh as it makes them feel good about themselves. Most people felt nourished by a session with him. In their conversations with him, most people got the impression that, like Aquarius-born folks, Captain Nair would love to do whatever he could to make the world a better place. He was, in a manner of speaking, a natural philanthropist and humanitarian.
He was also, in a definite manner of speaking, an enormously curious man who, like many Aquarians, constantly searched for intellectual stimulation. You could run through each letter of the alphabet and come up with a subject with which Captain Nair was well acquainted. The man read exhaustively; but even more importantly for him, he engaged everyone who met him in lively conversation. There were great yields for him in such encounters – he absorbed new information, he obtained tidbits of knowledge, and – yes – he soaked up gossip.
As the literature also suggests about Aquarians, routine bored Captain Nair. Not only did he come up with inventive ideas in his business, his body language suggested certain impatience with the status quo. If an Aquarius gives his word, he will stick to it. Captain Nair’s loyalty to his colleagues and associates gained him an enduring place in people’s hearts and minds.
Of course, he could be a tough man to deal with, and not a man to be crossed. He was willing to forgive – or even overlook – a transgression or two on the part of his executives and other employees. But there was in his mind a line that simply couldn’t be crossed. And once an executive was asked to leave, it was virtually impossible for that person to regain admission into Captain Nair’s precincts. He could be stubborn, of course, and sometimes he could be downright obstinate. It’s not easy to convince an Aquarius to change his points of view, and this certainly applied to Captain Nair, as his subordinates would tell you – although not within his earshot.
He was also not easy to please. He micromanaged. He scanned every line of a ledger sheet. He scrutinized every publicity document. And, with his command of the English language, Captain Nair invariably improved the end product.
And he could show flashes of temper – as his subordinates will also tell you, and this, too, not within his earshot. He was much more guarded in the company of his biographer, but I learned quickly that a tight smile from Captain Nair signified impatience or irritation.
That smile was especially tight if you were late for an appointment, and tighter still if the appointment happened to be for lunch. Nair took his lunch very seriously. It was prepared at his home by his wife Leela, and sent across to his office suite. Solicitous stewards served the meal in the traditional Kerala style on a banana leaf. The menu always consisted of rice and fish, and some vegetable curries. You had to possess a sturdy palate to absorb the spices.
So who was this Chittarath Poovakkatt Krishnan Nair, whom everybody called, simply, “The Captain”?
He was born into a rural family of modest means in the village of Alavil Kunnavil. He was the fifth son of Appu Nair and Madhavi Amma; he had eight siblings, but two died soon after birth. After winning a life scholarship at the age of 10 from the Maharaja of Chirakkal in north Kerala, Nair obtained his education in Madras. He then became an aide – at the age of 14 – of Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose, and came into close contact with Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, Vallabhbhai Patel, and other leaders of India’s Freedom Movement. As a teenager, he was even put into jail by the British for agitating against them. These early experiences made Nair determined to make a contribution to the development of a free India.
After enlisting in the army’s Maratha Light Regiment, Nair rose to rank of captain, and was later befriended by giants such as Lord Louis Mountbatten, the British Viceroy and later the first Governor General of Independent India; and by V. P. Menon, the civil servant who was responsible for corralling various princely states into the Indian polity. At the insistence of his wife, Leela, Nair left the army in order to promote his father-in-law’s textile business. He transformed that Kerala-based business into a successful national handloom enterprise.
His success in reviving India’s handloom industry emboldened Nair to launch an export business. He invented “Bleeding Madras” textiles – which became the rage in the United States – and also sparked what would become a multi-billion-dollar garment export industry. His textile company, Leela Scottish Lace, became one of the most prosperous enterprises of its kind in India.
Nair was credited with being the “father” of globalization of India’s garment and textiles industries. He overcame thickets of bureaucratic and governmental regulations through a canny mix of intuition, charm, guile and foresight. His friendships with stars such as Gregory Peck, Marlon Brando, Elizabeth Taylor and the Rajmata of Gwalior, made him a celebrity – and attracted more business for his fabrics.
Acting on an idea that his “uncle” V. P. Menon had once planted in his mind, Nair started The Leela Group of Palaces, Hotels and Resorts. Bankers were unwilling to lend him money at first. But Nair persisted. Today, his super-luxury properties are considered among the world’s finest. More hotels are being built across India and abroad. But these are uncertain days for the hospitality industry in India, and The Leela hotels have a huge debt that is being currently restructured.
Did that mountain of debt worry him?
“I didn’t necessarily enter this business only for profit,” Captain Nair told me. “I wanted to put India on the world map in the hotel business. That has happened, I think.”
It may have happened, but his successors are unlikely to retain such a sanguine view. Capital markets are not easy to tap, and the luxury-hotel business in India – as in most developing countries – is often dependent on circumstances beyond its control, which is to say that global economic forces dictate how much disposable income travelers will spend on pricey vacations.
He was 65 years old when he launched The Leela hotels in Mumbai. Captain Nair often recalled that when his family had asked for the hand of his wife-to-be, Leela, in their native Kannur, an astrologer had predicted that the young man would multiply by thousands the kind of wealth Leela’s family already enjoyed.
Captain Nair, the Aquarian, was determined to act on that prediction. He acknowledged to me that he was always game to make good things happen. That’s what intrigued me about him when I decided to write this biography.
I had heard a great deal about this Keralite who called himself a Maratha before we actually met in Tamil Nadu’s capital Chennai in February 2013.[1] His good friend – and mine – T. C. “Kutty” Narayan of Kerala once told me, “The story of his life shows that if you dare to follow your inspiration, there’s no limit to what you can achieve. As he puts it himself, vision and determination are the keys to success. In my travels around the world I often tell people about the enduring core values of ancient Indian thought: tolerance and non-violence. To these perhaps I can add Captain Nair’s appreciation of the ancient Indian sense of hospitality, treating guests with the utmost respect and concern.”
Kutty Narayan was a friend of Captain Nair for decades, but the first time that I met the nonagenarian was on the 80th birthday celebration of a mutual friend, Dr. Prathap Chandra Reddy, founder and chairman of Apollo Hospitals. I was completing a biography of Dr. Reddy at the time, and had been invited for a gala dinner at Captain Nair’s glorious Leela Palace in Chennai.
I found him to be pleasant, but not overly so. He looked at me shrewdly, as if to assess my motives. I had read scores of articles about him, but wasn’t sure if there had been a full-scale biography done in English. There had been a highly successful one in Malayalam, and I’d heard that there were plans for an English-language translation.
But how to broach the topic of a biography to this distinguished gentleman? And was I prepared to devote a full year of my life – or more – to such an enterprise? Nair’s life story seemed so remarkable that not to attempt a biography would be unthinkable.
So I did what I thought was the smartest thing to do: I told Captain Nair that I would like nothing better than write his life story. He invited me to breakfast the next morning.
It was a sumptuous meal, consisting of dainty idlis, sturdy dosas, and a variety of condiments. It was a meal right out of a maharaja’s kitchen – which, indeed, The Leela Palace was. I discovered that Nair had a robust appetite. Since he’d not said anything about a biography, I was filled with trepidation. How to raise the subject again?
Nair did not make it easy for me. He ate his breakfast, and then ate some more. The food was so delicious that I, too, followed suit. I looked around the suite while the meal progressed and was impressed by the traditional Indian décor, the art, the artifacts, and the ambiance. I later learned that one of Captain Nair’s two daughters-in-law, Madhu, had been responsible for the interiors of all Leela properties.
In the event, discussions about a biography took the better part of the next five months. He allowed that Kutty Narayan had put together a manuscript of his life; eventually, I thought it most prudent to use important parts of Kutty’s research, and acknowledge his sterling efforts. I also used the Malayalam book as a reference.
And so it was in late June 2013 that I flew from my base in Dubai to Captain Nair’s native town of Kannur. We wound up spending more than a month there, enjoying the balmy breezes of the Arabian Sea, and driving through what remained of the old town where he’d grown up.
“In my early years, Kannur was a town of maidans – fields – which lay spread like the skies,” Nair said to me. “Large assemblies and protests to do with India’s freedom struggle took place in these venues. If one were to put one’s ears to the ground here today, one might hear the old rumbles again.”
Our conversational sessions weren’t continuous. There were many seafood meals to be had, interspersed with collations of savories. Most of all, there were many visits by townspeople who’d heard that Captain Nair was in town and wanted to pay their respects.
Paying respects to him did not mean merely exchanging greetings in Malayalam. Each encounter was long – at least half an hour – and so I waited patiently as these old friends chatted happily and reminisced. Occasionally they acknowledged my presence and helpfully translated the gist of their conversations. There was general agreement that, beyond its beautiful coastline, Kannur was no longer what it used to be; it had become a noisy town of electronic shops and malls, and traffic had become hazardous. Even the grand old buildings of Nair’s childhood were being torn down to make way for commercial and residential developments. If Kannur had once been pretty, it was certainly no longer so.
As we drove around town in his high-end BMW, Captain Nair himself lamented that the town had been allowed to deteriorate by the local authorities. Pointing to a large pond that was clearly host to swarms of mosquitos, he spoke about his hopes to get it drain and make it attractive for locals to swim in. But he also admitted that these were long-held hopes and that the authorities were the least bit interested in the biology of that pond. “When our development plans take form, there shouldn’t be mutilation of natural resources,” Nair said more than once.
He also referred to himself as his hotel group’s “Chief Gardener” on many occasions. Nair was a dedicated environmentalist, and his mornings didn’t feel right to him if he hadn’t strolled a garden wherever he might be.
“I’m an environmentalist who actually communes with the environment,” he said, and then told me about receiving a major award from the United Nations Environment Programme that was presented by the Emperor of Japan in Tokyo.
When he talked about his numerous awards, Nair didn’t sound boastful. But it was obvious that he enjoyed accolades and appreciation, especially because he viewed himself as entirely a self made man.
How did he make himself into that success story? What did it take? How did he re-invent himself at various stages of his professional life? What are the lessons that can be drawn from the way Captain Nair led his life? And what should today’s young people know about him that they could apply in their own lives, regardless of their profession?
That’s what I set out to find out. And hence this book, which is less a conventional biography than a travelogue of a journey through the life and times of The Captain. His journey has ended, sadly, but my story of his life has just begun.
It’s not been an easy journey to record. Authors are not supposed to cavil, nor are they supposed to tell readers about the difficulties they encountered during the writing process.
But this was an unusual project from the start, and so I feel that a word or two about the biography is warranted.
A mutual friend, Dr. Prathap Chandra Reddy, founder and chairman of Apollo Hospitals, had introduced me to Captain Nair. I had just completed a biography of Dr. Reddy, and was visiting him at his headquarters in Chennai. Captain Nair happened to be a guest at a reception hosted by Dr. Reddy in early 2013 at The Leela Palace. The doughty old Captain was initially reluctant to cooperate, arguing that so much had been written about him and that any laptop would yield tens of thousands of articles on him. My response was that a biography containing insights about what drove him, and anecdotes that illustrated special episodes of his long life had simply not been done. I also said that a biography did not mean a hagiography.
Such exchanges went on for six months, and it wasn’t until late June 2013 that Captain Nair invited me to fly from my base in Dubai to his hometown of Kannur in northern Kerala. From there onward, he was most cooperative.
Our sessions were interrupted for several months on account of quadruple heart surgery that I underwent at Apollo Chennai in late November 2013. There were major complications post surgery, and it wasn’t until late January 2014 that I was able to travel to Mumbai to catch up with Captain Nair.
He was very unwell. He had been going through several sessions of dialysis. He had lost weight, and his speech had been significantly affected. But he hadn’t lost the sparkle in his eyes, and he welcomed me with a smile.
“When will your book be out?” was his first question.