Travellers' Checks | A relic of the Raj - Kolkata’s iconic Fairlawn Hotel changes hands
Located in the backpacker-friendly Sudder Street and once run by the eccentric Violet Smith, the hotel is now owned by a member of the Oberoi family
I haven’t been to Kolkata, or Calcutta as it was then, since the 1980s, but I can remember writing aerogrammes and reading the obligatory City of Joy (1985) over cold beers on the garden terrace at the Fairlawn Hotel.
Although I was staying in one of the more “backpacker-cred” dives on Sudder Street, the comparatively expensive Fairlawn was a pleasant escape from the sometimes overwhelming world outside.
Known even then as “a relic of the Raj”, the Fairlawn was owned and run by the eccentric, 60-something memsahib Violet Smith. She had inherited the hotel in 1962 from her Armenian mother, Rosie Smith (née Sarkies), who had bought it from two English women in 1936. Violet passed away in 2014, aged 94 and still greeting guests, whereupon her daughter, Jennifer Fowler, took over.
In its heyday, the Fairlawn hosted many well-known guests. The recently deceased actor Shashi Kapoor honeymooned at the hotel in 1958, with British actress Jennifer Kendal, whose more famous sister, Felicity, often also stayed there with the rest of the Kendal family of thespians.