Meet Tushar Roy:
Ritz-Carlton
Bengaluru, Karnataka
Meet Tushar Roy. Twenty Seven years old. Manager of the club lounge on the fifteenth floor at the Ritz-Carlton in Bengaluru. Mr. Roy conducts evening art tours showcasing the highlights among the 1250 pieces of artwork at the hotel. He calls it “The Bubbly Art Tour”; drinks are served and the tour is followed by the Mashal (torch) lighting evening ceremony, out on the hotel portico, adjacent to the entrance’s decorative pool and right next to the Picasso lifelike sculpture, with the artist bored in his rocking chair. The Mashal lighting is a Jaipur tradition, Mr. Roy informed me.
(Photos of the Mashaal ceremony courtesy of Mr. Tushar)
Photo below from the hotel Facebook page:
Mr. Roy very kindly agreed to give me my own private viewing of the collection, before my afternoon flight. Our tour took place at 11:30am, after breakfast was served at the lounge and just before lunch started. Tushar’s presence at the lounge is an important part of its charm. He greets guests personally, comes over to the table to answer questions and direct patrons to Bengaluru highlights and events.
As interested as I was in the art work at the hotel, I was also intrigued by Tushar Roy himself and his story. How did a twenty-seven-year-old end up as manager at one of the best hotels in India, especially after the dry pandemic years?
Tushar Roy was born and raised in Assam. When he finished his schooling he trained at the Institute of Hotel Management in Calcutta. After graduation, Mr. Roy hopped from one top tier five-star hotel to another, and from one charming Indian city to another. Despite the interruption of Covid, when many hospitality professionals veered to other industries, he managed to remain firmly planted in hospitality and even secure promotions - with only a short hiatus during each pandemic peak in India (and there were two). While on Covid “break”, he focused on improving his English, aware of it being a strong asset.
Immediately after graduation from IHM in Calcutta, Roy started work at the Jaipur JW Marriott, in January 2019. He was twenty two years old and worked at the front desk. Towards the end of 2019, he started hearing rumors about the pandemic in China, and was getting concerned. It took a few more months for the virus to creep into India, but creep it did! In March, the Hotel shut down, as did much of India, and Roy went back to Calcutta to be with family.
After a few months’ break, he secured a job at the executive lounge of the Andaz Hotel in Delhi; Andaz is the Hindi word for style and it is one of Hyatt’s luxury brands.
In April 2021, the second Covid outbreak hit India hard, with over 150 thousand covid deaths during the two months of April and May alone. The situation in India made global news, and migrant workers’ slow and perilous march back to their rural cities provided haunting images in international newspapers.
After the 2021 Covid Hiatus, Roy secured a position at the Taj Chia Kutir Resort & Spa. One of Darjeeling’s perhaps only true five-star hotels, it is nestled among the famous Makaibari tea estate, producers of the famous Darjeeling tea, rumored to be a favorite among the British royalty. Roy asserted that Queen Elizabeth specifically loved the Makaibari Darjeeling tea.
In 2022, Roy reached out to his former boss from Jaipur, Mr. Jasvir Belwal, who was working at the Weligama Bay Marriott Resort & Spa in Sri Lanka at the time. By the time they made contact, Mr. Belwal had joined the Ritz-Carlton in Bengaluru and invited Roy to join the team. Mr. Belwal is currently the Director of Rooms at the Ritz-Carlton in Bengaluru.
Roy started out as assistant manager of the club lounge and is now club manager of the prestigious 15th floor lounge. He takes to heart welcoming and engaging with guests. He says it also improves his English.
Our tour began on the bedroom floors, where most floors have a series of pieces from two main artists: Seema Kohli and her “Tree of Life” collection, large canvases laced with gold and silver leaf; about 6 or 7 on each private access floor. The other artist featured on the private access floors is Poonam Paralkar and her collection of fabric collage.
In the public areas, artwork is large scale, modern, colorful, eclectic, and includes a wide variety of artists from all over India as well as many renowned international artists. Sculptures, paintings, collages, whimsical candy pieces, big red Sumo wrestlers, ‘Couples in Love’, big pink murals of lotus flowers, and copper autumn leaves are among the 1250 pieces that welcome hotel guests, along with the famous life-size Picasso.
The art collection includes pieces by such famous Indian artists as: Paresh Maity, Satish Gupta, Sujata Bajaj, Revanti Sharma Singh, Bose Krishnamachari, Shahla Vinita Karim, Seema Kohli,
International Artists include: Prama Libralesso, Manual Carbonell, Lim Khim Katy, Agus Yk Priyono, Shola Carletti, Mario Velez, Alexandra Gestin.
Functional pieces at the hotel also add to its aesthetic feel. Hanging glass and bronze chandeliers, wood and concrete latticework, intricately carved doors, fresh flowers (overseen by the hotel’s own florist), and antique pieces laced into chains holding the swinging benches at the bar all attest to the attention to detail and add to the hotel’s ambience.
Tushar also pointed out the thick coffee table book about the hotel and its collection. A limited edition hardcover, the book itself is a piece of art, with gold section-divider pages echoing the hotel’s lattice work, and with large vivid color photographs of the art pieces and the hotel highlights.
Not all the art pieces are photographed below. If you would like to see the rest, head to the Ritz-Carlton in Bengaluru, enter through security, walk by the seated Picasso at the entrance, wave to the ‘Couple in Love’ both outdoors and at the lobby, approach the front desk and ask for Tushar Roy. I am sure he will be delighted to give you his tour of the public art on view at the hotel. And he may include a few of his anecdotes, here and there.
And once you meet him, you may understand how a twenty-seven-year old young man got this far. He credits the general culture of Assam where he grew up, a warm culture of hospitality, which may explain why so many hotels and restaurants favor employees from the Northeast. I credit his hard work, ingenuity, and social intelligence.
On my way to my car to get to the airport, the entire concierge team met me with beautifully wrapped gifts. They knew my hunt for Channapatna wooden toys around Bengaluru had been unsuccessful and they didn’t want me to leave empty handed!
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Art Tour with Tushar Roy:
Seema Kohli Tree of Life
Poonam Paralkar: Fabric Collage
‘Couples in Love’ by the world famous Cuban artist Manuel Carbonell who fled the Castro regime and relocated to the United Stated in 1959. He was born in 1918 in Cuba, died in 2011 in MIami, yet continues to be considered a Cuban artist, not an ‘American’ artist. Another Carbonelli masterpiece can be glimpsed at the entrance garden, behind the pool that
The 15th floor club lounge flaunts a large abstract painting with vivid colors by Revati Sharma Singh, an artist from India who works with multiple media, and produces ceramic pieces, as well as abstract paintings and sculptures. “Clay, handmade sterling silver, 18 karat gold, cast metal, tapestry, embroidery, pigment and paints,” and grains are among the many materials she uses in her work.
A series of decorated eggs by Vinita Karim are among Tushar Roy’s favorites. The eggs are made with acrylic, gold, and various other media painted on fiberglass. Vinita is an international artist, originally from India but who has traveled all over the world and her website says: “No matter where Vinita goes, through her paintings, sculptures, and installations, she carries with her the rest of the world.”
L’observation by Alexandra Gestin. Lacquered Bronze.
This is one of the pair of Gestin’s Contemporary Sumos that now dwell at the Ritz-Carlton in Bengaluru. Gestin is a French sculptor, currently residing in Belgium, with four series on sumo wrestlers: Contemporary, Stylized, Monumental, and Classic Sumos. Le Maitre is the companion Sumo to L’observation: another red, full-sized sculpture that catches the eye from any angle in the room.
Paresh Maity’s work speaks for itself. He has been referred to as the “William Turner of India”, according to the bio on his website. This art piece carries no title, but Tushar Roy gave it his own story: He calls it “Luxury behind the walls”. He imagines the lady in Blue to be the queen, surrounded by her servants and attendants, and her horse - which I would have missed, and which appears to be sniffing the hotel yellow flower in this picture.
This article tells us about Maity’s love for drawing faces and his Picasso inspiration.
Furthermore, the article proceeds to say: “Maity takes the lines of faces and eyes and breaks down traditional artistic motifs into geometrical components, as well as almond and tear shaped eyes, often striving to capture the subjects from multiple angles at once, as if to create a cameo of conversations.”
Sujata Bajaj Mixed Media with Sanskrit writing embedded in the works. A detail I would have missed had Tushar not pointed it out.
Sujata is an Indian artist from Jaipur, who studied in Pune and in Paris. She is deeply influenced by tribal art and indian folklore.
Bonbons: Whimsical oversized candy
Satish Gupta: Lotus Flower series with the poem:
A flower does not talk… In silence it blooms, in silence it falls.
Hear his TED TALK about the beauty of silence
More vidoes on Gupta’s website show his live painting process in situ, such as this video about his painting Live Painting of "Roaring Sea - Still Mind"
In 2018, he painted a 1.6 km long canvas live at Pondicherry beach. It is purported to possibly be the longest painting in the world. He painted with live dancers accompanying his process, as can be seen in this video.
Satish Gupta: Autumn. “Dream Upon Dream, Falling”. Sculpture in copper leaf with copper, silver, and Gold Plating. Lobby level. Gupta’s website has the following blurb about the artist/poet:
“A versatile artist, Satish Gupta is India's celebrated painter, sculptor, poet, writer, printmaker, skilled draftsman, muralist, designer, calligrapher and ceramicist all in one.”
His zen poetry can be felt in the way he entitles his paintings.
High Summer
Still Winter
Vietnamese artist Lim Khim Katy‘s ‘seasons’ series greets hotel guests at the spa level
Indonesian artist Agus Yk Priyono’s ‘Butterfly Garden’ guides hotel guests to the area.
Internal Migrations by Mario Velez. Velez is a Columbian artist who studied in Vienna, Berlin, and New York.
And, last but not least: The bored Picasso ushers visitors in to view these masterpieces of modern art.
Which of these statements do you think he appears to be saying? Or write your own in the comments:
“Come in, come in. Behold the work of contemporary artists. I paved the way for them at the turn of the Century. But I am now dead, yet they keep on creating.”
“Come in, oh tired traveler. I know what it is like to be bored on a plane for so long. It took me a long time to get from Florida (where the statue originates from) to Basil to Bengaluru”.
Mr. Tenwar and his concierge team seeing me out with a surprise gift of Channapatna wooden toys
Mr. Punjab Singh Tenwar, Chief Concierge, Member of Les Clefs D’or, an international professional association of elites hotel concierges
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