Saris, marigold garlands and poached eggs…
“There are two good reasons to visit Amritsar.
One is to see the Golden Temple, the holiest shrine of the Sikhs; the other is to stay at Mrs. Bhandari’s.”
This perfectly preserved late-Raj family residence is situated off a leafy road in Amritsar’s Cantonment area. Yet, in the enclosed world that Mrs. Bhandari and now her daughters have created, something of that dream world lives on.
Definitely not for sybarites but, for those happy to rough it a bit, this place is fun.
It owes its merry, relaxed atmosphere to the warmth of Mrs Bhandari Junior and her family (To whom the original Mrs B. has handed on the baton).
The house is 1950s and unassuming, in a quiet area on the outskirts of town, not far from the magical Golden Temple.
It’s presiding spirit, the original Mrs. Bhandari, is now living on through her daughters.
Mrs B had been living in the house since 1930 and took pride in the fact that “nothing has changed” – apart from such newfangled additions as air-conditioning in some of the guest rooms, and a fax machine in the office.
Fax and telephone/internet facilities are available in the office. However regretfully, no collect calls are possible.
It is true: to go through the red brick gatehouse marked No.10 is to enter a time warp.
The main house is in colonial style with Art-Deco touches, softened by climbing bougainvillea.
It is surrounded by an English garden with brick paths, pergolas and arches, the whole screened off from the hubbub of the outside world by mature trees.
Dinner is served either in the garden or the parlour.
With its Army & Navy Stores’ stoneware water filter, its orderly piles of patterned crockery (including Mabel Lucy Attwell children’s plates, circa 1945) and vast soup tureens, this room would have made an impeccable set for The Jewel in the Crown.
The menu is pure Anglo-Indian; cream of vegetable soup, butter chicken and roast potatoes with three veg., followed by crème caramel.
Mrs Bhandari serves excellent Punjabi food – she’s quite likely to ask what you fancy for your three-course dinner – and you’re welcome to go into the big kitchen and watch meals being prepared.
The family’s green credentials are impeccable, the mango pickle is superb, and everything is organic and home-grown.
Large, pleasant gardens – and a family of buffalo for milk and butter – surround the house
Breakfast at Mrs. Bhandari’s tends to be a leisurely process.
Sit on a terrace beside the sunken rose garden, watching a flock of electric-green parakeets assemble on their favourite branch, while plates of papaya with fresh lime, and toast with home-made jams, and perfectly poached eggs follow each other in slow succession.
The guest wing is a long single-story affair, with a verandah looking onto lawns. The layout of the rooms is similar to “chummeries” – the bachelor quarters allocated to junior Raj officials and box wallahs. Furnishings are simple, almost Spartan, with colonial-style furniture and faded prints.
There are 12 double rooms with bathrooms attached, running hot and cold water. Extra beds are available.
These rooms have individual air-conditioning units which function on the mains power supply. This also applies to any heaters.
In case of a power-cut or general power breakdown, the generator is switched on for the use of fans and lights.
All rooms have functioning fireplaces, there is a small extra charge for their use, in your room there will be a new bundle of wood to build up the fire.

The sheets will be fresh from the dhobi and will have had the sun on them that afternoon.
Plain, basically furnished bedrooms vary in size and colour and each has an open fire. The bed linen is spotless and the no-frills bathrooms are clean.

The rooms do not have telephones or televisions, however, general viewing of cable television is possible in the communal guest area .
Laundry/dhobi services are of course available.

A cupboard full of books in the sitting room ensures that you don’t run short of reading material.
There’s an outdoor swimming pool, which has a filter. it is open from March to November for residents only and there is a well-maintained children’s play area.

A small lawned area is available for a tent or two, as occasionally fellow guests may be backpackers.
Credit cards (3% surcharge) are accepted for any extras.
She rebelled when it was unheard of for a girl not to conform.
She may have been old enough to have heard the shooting on April 13, 1919, the day of the infamous Amritsar Massacre, but Mrs. Bhandari remained in her last years, a frail but very lively lady.
Guests have sat entranced as she spoke of the “old days”, before the partition of India and Pakistan, when she used to “pop over” to Lahore for shopping and a the-dansant.
“Oh, Lahore used to be such a beautiful city,” she sighed, “but those days are gone… I haven’t been back since 1947… It’s like a dream now.”

In a letter written on January 19, 1948, a few months after Partition, Lady Edwina Mountbatten, wife of the first Viceroy, Sir Edward Mountbatten, praised her for her relief work for Partition-ravaged refugees. Later she was invited by the lady to Shimla, says her daughter Rattan.

In fact, Tehmi met the challenge of attending to the refugees during Partition in 1947. She stitched clothes for the refugees who arrived in Amritsar and were given shelter at the Govindgarh Fort and other camps. The cloth was provided by the government and the All India Women’s Conference (AIWC).

“I worked with nearly 25 tailors at my residence in the cantonment and stitched clothes. I saw ‘kaflas’ of penniless and semi-clad refugees crossing over to Amritsar,” she says.
Tehmi completed her 100 years in January 2006, and had been abstaining from medicines, says her favourite granddaughter Shirin Tehmina Bhandari.

Born in a rich, conservative Parsi family in 1906, Tehmi continues to live in the city, though her children are abroad. She was the second child in a family of five sisters and a brother. Her father, Adeshwar Bogga, was the owner of ice factories in Amritsar and Ludhiana. She had rebelled when it was unheard of a girl not conforming to social norms. She was a woman who has been much ahead of her times. Perhaps, she was the first woman to own and drive a car. She drove it herself for her sojourns to Lahore and back. Her uncle, Rustomjee Mulhaferot, always chaperoned and accompanied her and later bequeathed to her the sprawling mansion at the cantonment as he died issueless.

Owning a Lincoln 12-cylinder car in the mid- 1930s, she used to drive in the open car to Lahore. She shopped at Anarkali, went for silent movies, and after coffee at Fallty’s Restaurant, which is still in Lahore, returned to Amritsar before the “forbidden hour”.
She was lovingly called “guldasta” by her friends and admirers, among whom were writer Mulk Raj Anand, and Surjit Singh Majithia, who went on to become Deputy Defence Minister of India in 1958.

While she was studying for her Masters in English at Khalsa College, Amritsar, she fell in love with a Hindu gentleman Padam Chand Bhandari and married him. He was an executive officer (EO) in the Improvement Trust. She says, “The famous ‘Bhandari Bridge’ was named after my husband in 1954. He had executed the marvellous vision of a multi-lane bridge, a modern concept of a flyover, which connected the walled city areas with the Civil Lines.”

Ostracised by many, including family and friends, for a love marriage, and that, too, outside her community, Tehmi had to fend for herself and her family after her husband died when she was just 48. She had three daughters and a son to look after. Undeterred, she rose to the challenge and converted her palatial “red bougainvillea home” into a guesthouse with the help of an engineer D.D. Kaila.
She became the first woman in these parts to run a business. To ward off unwanted attention, she took on a tough demeanour. She says she had to use “abusive” language so that she could protect her own self and her children.

Four years after losing her first husband, she remarried at a time when remarriage of widows was unheard of. She married D.D. Kaila, an engineer, who provided the transport and conveyance service to her guest house. In 1962 during the Chinese aggression, the flow of tourists lessened and Tehmi’s business suffered. The 1965 Indo-Pak War, too, took its toll. She lost her second husband to a heart attack just before the Indo-Pak War of 1971. Family and friends urged her to move to a safer place, but she preferred to complete her swimming pool.

The decade-long terrorism in the 1980s caused loss to her business; however she struggled to maintain her guesthouse for more than ten long years.

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