Q. What interests you about the hotel trade in old-time Mumbai? Was there a colonial influence on its design and character?
A. I am interested in how early hotels of Bombay were small housing spaces, built in bungalows and buildings of the proprietors themselves. Because the clientele consisted of single British businessmen and officers, the hotels were designed on existing structures to look like Victorian homes, so that they felt comfortable. It's only since 1871 when the Esplanade Hotel came up in Fort that the dynamics started changing. The Esplanade, informally known as the Watson's Hotel, was the first structure built and designed specifically to be a hotel.

Great Western Hotel

Q. What can we expect from the talk?
A. It will be an audio-visual presentation with a slideshow of old hotels and how they were structured. There will be pictures of the proprietors and the street names, as I want the guests to have an immersive experience. I will cover the period roughly from the 1860s — when the hotel boom began in Bombay — up to the establishment of the Taj in 1903, which changed the face of the hotel industry in the city.