Dubby Bhagat

Kathmandu:

This is about vision and determination and how if you have both you can do almost anything, achieve dreams, fulfill wishes and if you want to, help people. Their lives came together in Kathmandu for a brief moment in time during the late seventies and things changed for the better just a tiny little bit. I first met Angur Baba Joshi as part of a magazine team that I was writing and designing in Kathmandu. Angur Baba Joshi was looking after poor women by running an extremely odd hotel in Tara Gaon and the proceeds were going to the women.

It was an odd hotel because there were detached rooms and they were round, a bit like a very large pipe. They were done by a very famous architect who insisted on curved curtains for the windows, beds in the middle of the room the only place you could stand straight before you lay down, and a host of horrifying details that Angur Baba had to look after in addition to the women in her care. She forged ahead but had a dream, which she shared with us. A completely normal five star hotel, which would reflect Nepal. So, we started designing her dream.

While we were making sketches a telegram arrived from Mother Teresa in Calcutta saying she was coming to Kathmandu. Angur Baba Joshi who knew her work wanted to meet her so we went together to the airport. When Mother Teresa and Angur Baba Joshi met they were so busy sharing ideals that we did not get much of a chance to talk to either of them so we trailed behind them looking busy. Mother Teresa had heard of an empty building at Pashupatinath and she wanted it for a Home for Destitute. She asked for Angur Babas help and the Nepali lady arranged a meeting with the late Queen Aishwarya. What happened at the meeting trickled out as rumour and myth. Apparently Her Majesty when asked for the building said formally that she would ask her government. Mother Teresa is reported as saying, “But your husband is the government.” She got the building and the Missionaries of Charity, Mother Teresas Order soon moved in.

We never could tell who was more pleased, the Hindu Angur Baba Joshi or the Roman Catholic Mother Teresa. I guess selfless work knows no boundaries. Many years later, and many dashed dreams later, Angur Baba Joshi saw her vision come to light in Hyatt Hotel. She never forgot our early designs and co-owner Arun Saraf said that she is still after a Nepali craft village, which we had planned thirty years ago. So, Anger Baba still has a lot to look forward and despite a illness that could have been crippling I hear she is going about the business of helping people with the same old vigor and determination. In one of Mother Teresa’s homes in Calcutta is a saying on a wall in a frame that is a Hindu proverb and a metaphor for life as it was lived for the late Mother Teresa and is being lived by the very alive Angur Baba Joshi. If you have two loaves of bread give one to the poor, sell the other And buy Hyacinths to feed your soul In the case of the two ladies the Hyacinths that blossomed were very different but were both a result of vision and determination, a home and a hotel.