Hotel Ajantha stares at uncertain future

Hotel Ajantha has halted its operations at the MG Road property it has occupied since 1971, following a Supreme Court order. The hotel ceased room bookings on December 25 and took its last food order on December 31.

According to the owner S Bagilthaya, the closure stems from a dispute within the family that owns the property. “Our 30-year lease expired in 2004. We couldn’t renew it because the property was already in dispute. We continued operating due to the status quo of the case. We want to resume business, but whether it will be at the same location or elsewhere, we are not sure,” said the 68-year-old.

The hotel was known for its Mangaluru-style vegetarian food, banquet halls and rooms for wedding functions, and a Lakshmi-Ganpathy temple on the premises, earning it the tag of a “traditional hotel”. After hearing the news of the closure, some long-time customers called him to ask if they could collect hotel towels and bedsheets as keepsakes, as a memory of “Old Bangalore”.

Mangalore bajjis

The hotel’s no-frills restaurant, Ajantha, was the go-to place for lunch and snacks for people working on M G Road. Banking professional Raghavendra Singh recalled, “I loved their meals, pakodas, and coffee. The prices were reasonable, and the portions were just right.” Software professional Jyothi G fondly remembered the masala dosa, sambhar, and Maddur vada. “The queue was always long, service quick, and the staff friendly,” she said.

A journalist who worked in central Bengaluru in the 2000s often ordered the hotel’s most popular snack, Mangalore bajji, with a “ginger-infused juice” on the side. “The Mangalore bajjis came with two chutneys — coconut and tomato. Both were excellent,” said hotelier P C Rao, who would frequent the establishment for work meetings.

Temple visits

On Monday afternoon, Metrolife saw two women return from the gate, now affixed with a notice of a temporary injunction. “We used to come here for walks daily,” one said, referring to its leafy and open campus that is cut off from the noise of the main road. 

Therapeutic and cultural activities at the HeyBrewty Wellness Studio, located beyond the reception area and run by Bagilthaya’s daughter Swathi, also stand disrupted. 

Some are disheartened that they can no longer attend Friday pujas and their monthly “sankashti puja” at the temple. “An elderly woman travels from Chennai with her family every year-end to offer puja at our temple. This year, because we had closed room bookings, she stayed at a nearby hotel but came for the puja on December 31,” he shared.

Because of the central location and ample parking, the hotel was also preferred for holding business meetings. 

From a British Inn to a traditional Indian hotel

S Bagilthaya says Hotel Ajantha was originally Ashley Park Hotel, a seven-bedroom inn run by a British couple. “The couple had to leave India due to an emergency in the early 1970s. My father, P J Bagilthaya, worked in the police department, and they visited him to help find someone to transfer the lease to.”

It was a difficult task because M G Road, then South Parade, was desolate and dark in the evenings. “Auto drivers would refuse rides to the inn because it was tucked inside a lane. Webb’s, a garage for servicing Mercedes-Benz vehicles, was the only commercial operation in close distance,” he added.

Seeing their helplessness, his father asked his uncle, Govind Rao, who was in the hotel business, to check out the inn. His father, uncle, and Ramakrishna Rao, owner of the now-shut Brindavan Hotel, took over the lease. They renamed it Ajantha and introduced Mangalurean food, as they all hailed from the coastal town. Bagilthaya was in PUC then. 

They added a 60-room building, a restaurant, and two banquet halls (named after constellations — Rohini and Swathi). The temple was built 33 years ago to facilitate wedding functions, thread ceremonies, and death rituals held in the hotel’s halls. North Indian food was added to the menu in the early 1990s as the city’s working population became cosmopolitan.