Serving India's woosters well

The late jai singh, prince of jaipur, and his wife Gayatri Devi, would travel with six on their trips to London. Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the first governor-general of Pakistan, is said to have employed one. In fiction, another saved an Indian Parsi princess from being a sati in Jules Verne’s Around the World in Eighty Days.

India has certainly had a strong association with butlers, but with new millionaires not known to employ supremely skilled ‘Man Fridays’, the Guild of Professional English Butlers is hoping to rekindle the romance. It serves both private clients and major hotels, and has just managed to rope in its first Indian corporate client. The Trident hotel in Gurgaon near Delhi is training its first set of 25 butlers under one of the guild’s finest, Antonius Martinus de Wit.

From expert knowledge on wines, gourmet cooking, and sailing, Antonius, or Ton to modern lords of the manor, is also a natural on horseback and has a black belt in judo. “Butlering is the highest form of personalised service,” says de Wit, who has served the Dutch royal family at The Hague.

“There is nothing about a household that a butler does not know and there is little that the butler cannot do,” says de Wit. “He or she can be a maid, cook, stable boy, driver, financial assistant, and bodyguard. The rich have always needed us and will always need us.” This is what he learnt when he worked for eight years with Prince Bernhard and Queen Juliana of Holland, and also for a star rapper who needed advice on everything from buying a BMW to efficiently managing crowds of fans.

“India is moving up the value chain of luxury and people are beginning to demand higher and higher levels of service. At the moment, the demand is at luxury hotels, and soon it will be at homes,” he says.

His strong conviction comes from having trained butlers at hotels such as the Grand Formosa Regent Taipei, The Peninsula in Tokyo and Hong Kong, as well as the Four Seasons Resort and Aynana Resort and Spa in Bali. “It’s the way many of the rich in China got acquainted with butlering,” says de Wit. “The demand for luxury is moving from the West to the East. First they experience it at a luxury hotel and then they want the same service at home.”

The Guild never reveals details of private clients but lists two major hotels in China—the Landmark Shenzhen and the Pangu 7 Star Hotel in Beijing—where it has trained butlers.

At The Trident, de Wit teaches his students “the ballet of service”, which refers to the art of serving dinner over multiple courses to scores of guests at a table. Between courses, every piece of cutlery is placed and removed in perfect synchronisation.

However, de Wit says his biggest concern is that Indian students will blindly follow rules. Butlering, he says, is seen to be all about the stiff upper lip and following tradition, and therefore very regimented. “My biggest task is to teach them to think on their feet,” he says.

For 24-year-old Parul Chaudhary, who opted out of her English Honours course at Delhi University to follow her passion, “butlering is the highest art in hospitality”.

“There is a certain style and panache to the whole thing that appeals to me. It represents the highest skill set in hospitality, and is almost a science. The idea is to make it look effortless and be there, silently doing the right thing, each and every time.”

A butler, though, comes at a price, and one trained by the Guild can earn anything between $5,000 (Rs 2.26 lakh) and $200,000 a year. While new clients are most often the first-generation wealthy, de Wit believes they could do with lessons from old money.

“People with old money not only hold on to formalities but also take care of you when you are old or ill,” says
de Wit. “Employers with new money will pay you well, but after 12 hours of work, they could ask you to drive them 30 miles across town. Remember, a butler never says ‘No’.”

Traditonally, the profession was male dominated. Not any more. “I would gladly hire a woman butler any day,” says art entrepreneur and television anchor Fatima Karan. “What you need is someone with 60% intelligence and 40% subservience. The biggest challenge is to get intelligent help, which is impossible to find and train in our cities.”

According to adman, gourmet cook, and restaurateur Prahlad Kakkar, as people get wealthier they need sophistication in every aspect of life. “Just any domestic help won’t do. You need someone who, without being told, knows what goes with what in clothes, food, just about everything,” he says.

“Temperature is one of the things that I would love to hire a butler for,” adds Kakkar. “You need the chap to know the different temperatures you prefer at different times at home and in the car. It should be adjusted without one having to ask for it.”

If Kakkar comes across as the modern-day Phileas Fogg, who fired his manservant for bringing his shaving water at 84°F instead of 86°F, you can be sure India’s again warming up to possibilities.