Tailor made hospitality

By Lukose Mathew
This interview originally appeared in The Week

From a short distance, the rumble of the waves sounded like faint drum beats. The evening sun started its downward journey in comfortable pace, soaking the lagoon and the stretch of sand that separated it from the sea with glowing orange-red paint. All around, young couples, having travelled thousands of miles to start the New Year in the splendour of silence, lay back under the coconut trees and took in the spectacle wide-eyed.

Sitting in a cane chair set in sand and leaning forward to get full attention, Davina Taylor, 62, uncorked the events that made her abandon a cosy life in London and settle down in serene Pachalloor, a hamlet off Thiruvananthapuram. In her bright-red, pleated long skirt and white T-shirt she looked radiant and full of zest. Why not? Lagoona Davina, the 16-room, sea-facing resort she started in 1998, is already a big hit with well-heeled tourists. Couples flock here to spend their honeymoon or get engaged and enjoy a candle-lit dinner on a canoe. From writers to diplomats, Lagoona Davina has hosted them all. With the tourist traffic increasing, Davina broke even last year. All these, without even putting out a single advertisement. Word-by-mouth publicity did the trick.

“We have fallen in love with the place, said Illy Jaffer and Gillian McConnell from London. “It is the view, the service, the people and the food that make this place so special. It is amazingly personal. You have a 24-hour attendant waiting on you, who would meet you at the airport and look after your every need.” Living under a thatched roof, in rooms with hand-painted motifs and romantic setting, can be quite an experience. Add to that the exquisite south Indian food modified to suit western taste buds.

Davina set up the resort surmounting many obstacles. Apart from the bureaucratic hurdles (there was even an attempt to pull down the resort), she had to contend with unruly elements in the neighbourhood. She stood up to the challenge, though at times she felt like abandoning the project. She first rented out the property and later floated a company, in which she owned 51 per cent of shares, and bought it. When the Centre changed laws allowing foreigners to own land, she acquired full ownership (and gifted 1 per cent share to an Indian friend).

“My friends and relatives who knew about my venture were my first customers, Davina recalled. ‘They went back and spread the word. Slowly, more and more people started coming in. They loved the ambience and the personalised care. Many of them keep coming back and remain in constant touch. I can’t yet claim I am making a huge profit.” Her turnover isn’t much to talk about, though her resort is booked for most of the season (November to April). She pays her employees well and looks after them like a mother. The feeling is mutual and they call her ammachi (mother).

“She is so considerate,” said Sunil Kumar, who has been working for Davina for the last five years. He was a construction worker before he joined her. His parents, wife and aunt now work for the resort.

Profit is the last thing on Davina’s mind, having made quite a lot of money, first as a dress-maker and then a real estate developer and interior decorator in London. Born in York, north of England, she moved to London at the age of nine. She had to drop out of school to look after her ailing mother. “I have never seen my father, who died in World War II,’ she said, her kohl-rimmed eyelids fluttering. To supplement family income she started making dresses, employing a few women. It was a success but bigger things were in store.

Davina got married in her early twenties but the relationship did not last long. The couple separated after the birth of two daughters and, after a while, Davina decided to try her luck in real estate development and interior decoration. “I love anything connected with design,” she said. She became immensely rich and moved around with the who’s who of London’s party circuit. For four years Prince Michael of Kent courted her. “Because I was a divorcee, the law stopped us from getting married,” she said.

Among her friends was the legendary rock star Elvis Presley. “Elvis was my hero and my heart almost stopped the first time I met him during one of his concerts,” said Davina. “He gifted me his scarf during the performance and later, when we were introduced in the green room, he gave me a little book, Impersonal Life, and we talked for almost 6 hours. I was like a silly little girl. He came across as a nice person who was deeply religious.”

After the high of the 70s, Davina was hit hard by the economic slowdown of the late 80s. She lost a considerable amount of money and was left with two huge houses, one of which won the Financial Times House of the Year award. She finally managed to sell them, but at a loss. Her daughters having got married, Davina wanted to do something which was not quite business-like”. “I loved cooking, I loved entertaining people, she said. She zeroed in on India because of her earlier association with the country- in her youth she had stayed in north India twice-and her Indian friends who spoke to her about Kerala. She did a bit of research and finally came down to Thiruvanan-thapuram. A waiter took her to Pachalloor. “It was a rundown building which had just four rooms,” she said. Davina has turned it into a haven.

She is also trying to help the local people by giving them employment. Most of the utensils, made out of locally available material like coconut shell, are procured from them, so are the table cloth and the designer clothes she sells. Her doctor treats the villagers free of cost. Besides funding an orphanage, she has set up a trust for the needy children of the village.

Davina loves reading and is in the process of writing three books-on losing weight (Fat Cells Have A Mind of Their Own), on cookery and on some interesting chapters of her life. ‘Ten years from now, I don’t know whether I will still be running the resort,” she said. “1 miss my grandchildren and might return to England one day.’ When that happens, the local people who have benefited from her generosity, the guests who have enjoyed her hospitality and the animals whom she has been looking after will certainly miss her.