Prospect in Panchgani

Still going strong at 100 years, "The hotel that made Panchgani a tourist destination” (as its logo proclaims), Prospect Hotel was built on a plot of land purchased by the Satarawala family on the hill station’s highest point adjoining the Tableland, Asia’s largest plateau. Construction began in 1909, with the mountainside being leveled in steps on which various buildings of the Hotel would come up. Human labor was used to cut into the mountain and local red laterite stone used in place of bricks. Construction was completed in 1912 when the Hotel opened for tourists, reveals an e-mail received by Parsiana from the current proprietor, Shahram Javanmardi, who runs it along with his mother Homai and wife Parvaneh.

View of Prospect Hotel and its gate (inset)

Prospect Hotel was taken on rent by the Javanmardi family in 1961, when the Satarawalas reportedly could no longer manage it on their own. Shahram recounts that his father, Meheraban Bahmard Javanmardi, fondly known as Merwan Seth, and uncle Kaikhosrow owned a restaurant in Bombay called The Viceroy of India which, after India’s independence, was renamed The Voice of India. Around 1948, Merwan was diagnosed with tuberculosis and doctors advised him to go to the Parsi run Bel Air Sanatorium in Panchgani to recuperate. After being cured, Merwan decided to stay on in Panchgani which he had come to love and became a partner of Lucky Stores, a well known chemist and general stores. In 1953 he visited Iran where he married Homai and returned with her to India. In 1961 he took over the Prospect Hotel on rent, buying it at a later date. After his demise in 1989, his family has continued to run it, notes the e-mail.
In its early years the central dining room of the Hotel was converted into a ballroom on weekends, with live music and dancing, Shahram’s e-mail reveals. The restaurant was famous for its cuisine and during a recent reunion of students of a local school, one of them, now 88-years-old, recalled that "their games teacher always tempted them with a non-vegetarian meal at the Prospect if they won a match against their rival school team.” They would then go all out to win this meal — it being more important to them than the trophy!
Shahram informed Parsiana over the telephone that he is a qualified hotelier with a degree from the Dadar Catering College, work experience at the Taj Mahal Hotel and in Switzerland. His son Adib has also qualified in the field from the Taj hotel management institute in Aurangabad and is at present doing his internship. The family was originally Zoroastrian, his grandfather being a mobed in Iran, but they later embraced the Baha’i faith.