Menar, Udaipur: A village of family chefs of India’s billionaires

Located on the Udaipur-Chittaurgarh road, about 30 km from Udaipur, Menar looks like a typical sprawling Indian village marked by its potholed approach road, muddy streets, half-finished, constructions and mud-bathed cattle. From the looks of it, Menar does not flaunt its connection with Dhirubhai Ambani, the Hinduja brothers, Lata Mangeshkar, Vinod Khanna, Juhi Chawla and other Indian billionaires settled across Dubai, Muscat, Abu Dhabi, Qatar, Nairobi, Antwerp, Hong Kong, London, and various cities in Canada.

Till you bump into Poonamchand Aklingdasot, a retired cook whose present vocation is to take his family’s cattle out for grazing. Aklingdasot (78) cooked for Lata Mangeshkar’s family before joining Dhirubhai Ambani in Mumbai in 1997. For ten years, he baked millet and wheat rotis, steamed khaman dhoklas and pohe and fried samosa and kachoris for the Ambani household. “Seth (Dhirubhai) and Kokilaben loved my cooking,” he recollects, sitting on a chair in a neighbour’s house.

Aklingdasot never did a course in cooking. In fact, he has only attended primary school for a few years. He picked up culinary skills from his seniors, peers and books of Tarlaben (late Tarla Dalal), who was renowned for her recipes of Gujarati cuisine in particular.

Many of Aklingdasot’s seniors in the village also cooked for billionaire businessmen. Late Bhairulal Rupjot, a Menaria (many residents of Mewar region, particularly Brahmins use this surname), had worked at the Ambani household before Aklingdasot. Bhairulal’s wife still receives a monthly pension.

Aklingdasot’s generation and the generation after him is also in the same profession. Vijay Lal Dahot (65) and Kamlesh Menaria bear testimony to the domination of Menar cooks in celebrity homes.

Dahot hung up his boots in 1996 after working in the house of Maghanmal Jethanand Pancholia (92), an Indian expatriate in Dubai, for 15 years. Pancholia’s empire, which extends over gold, currency exchange and textiles business, does not pay pension to Dahot. But Pancholia has done something of much more significance. The nonagenarian businessman, who is credited with having introduced electricity to Dubai, has constructed a hospital, a school and a community centre in Menar village, spending over ₹1.42 crore. There is a possibility that he may spend another ₹25 lakh for construction of more rooms in the school and the community centre. “Sethji phoned me on Diwali and said he had received my letter about construction of five more rooms in the school. I also informed him we need ₹10 lakh more for the community centre. His son Rajkumar is likely to visit us next month,” Dahot told this correspondent.

Pancholia has spent all the money on request of his former cook, whom he still treats like a family member. “I had seen my Sethji doing a lot of philanthropic work. When he prompted me on my retirement to ask for something, I told him there was no hospital in my village. He spent ₹90 lakh on its construction,” he recalls, pointing towards the hospital from his first-floor balcony.

The Senior Secondary government school, built by Pancholia, is looked after by the Overseas Indian Education Trust, where Dahot is a member. Likewise, the community centre and the government hospital are also managed by a village committee.

Though Menar produced celebrity cooks before 1987 also, since then they have proliferated around the world and started earning very well. This was the year when Prabhulal R Joshi, a resident of Menar, floated his company Hina Tours and Travels in collaboration with a Gujarati trader Jitendra N Shah.

The company has trained hundreds of cooks till now. In fact, 200 Menarias from Menar and neighbouring villages are employed with the company, many of them as cooks. “Celebrities come to us looking for good cooks,” says Sunil Menaria, head of Hina Tours and Travels’ North India region. Joshi has constructed a towering Shiva statue on the bank of the main pond in the village.

Kamlesh Menaria, a young cook employed with an Indian diamond businessman Girdhar Bhai in Antwerp, Belgium, draws an impressive salary apart from free boarding, lodging, air travel and shopping. “Since my employer takes care of all my needs, I only transfer my salary to India when the Euro rate is highest vis-à-vis the Indian rupee,” he reveals during a month-long vacation in Menar, standing outside his 300-square yard bungalow.

Menaria cooks are also employed with owners of Ambuja Cement and Fevicol groups.

Recently, they added a new celebrity to their list when Bhanwarlalji Mangilalji Menaria (not from Menar village but from Mewar region), prepared a host of Gujarati dishes for Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi during the latter’s three-day visit to Tokyo from November 10 to November 12, 2016.

Mangilalji, who is a chef with the hotel in which Modi stayed, also shot a selfie with the PM.