A journey through four decades of Indian hospitality – from the silverware age to the globalisation era – told by a man who lived every moment of it
By Ravisankar KV
I owe Mohanji an apology, and I owe this review to every reader who loves Indian hospitality. When P.K. Mohankumar’s memoir first arrived, I promised him I would write about it. Months passed. The book sat on my desk, occasionally picked up, always put down by the demands of deadlines and daily journalism. Now, having finally turned every page, I find myself unable to explain the joy it has given me except to say this: some books are worth being late for.
PKM – as he is warmly addressed across the industry – belongs to that rare generation of hospitality professionals I encountered in my earliest years as a travel journalist, when I was finding my own footing in an industry I was only beginning to understand. He was already a presence of considerable stature, one of those figures whose reputation preceded every introduction. What struck me then, and what this book confirms completely, is that his greatness was never about authority. It was about character. He is an inspiration not merely to hoteliers and tourism professionals, but to anyone who has ever tried to build something meaningful through consistent, unglamorous devotion to their craft. Moth to Flame is his account of how that devotion was shaped, tested, and ultimately vindicated across more than four decades of service to Indian hospitality.
The Boy from Trivandrum and the Road Less Taken
The story begins in the Trivandrum – now Thiruvananthapuram – of mid-century Kerala, a city of deep cultural roots and firm expectations about what constituted a respectable profession. Medicine. Engineering. Civil services. These were the destinations mapped out for ambitious young men. Hotel management was barely a recognisable category, let alone a credible aspiration. That Mohankumar not only chose it but pursued it with the full force of his considerable intelligence and energy was, in its social context, an act of quiet rebellion and genuine courage.
His journey from that modest beginning in Kerala to the highest echelons of leadership within one of the world’s most respected hospitality brands – the Taj Group – is the spine of this memoir. From his early years at the legendary Taj Mahal Palace in Mumbai, learning the grammar of great hospitality at the feet of masters, to his later appointment as Managing Director and CEO of Taj Gateway and Ginger Hotels, every chapter reflects a belief that hospitality is not a job. It is a calling. And callings, as this book makes abundantly clear, demand everything you have.
Mohankumar himself captures the spirit of this journey with characteristic warmth at the book’s launch. “I have had an incredible time reminiscing about my journey as a child from a small town in Kerala to the luxury and glamour of working at premier hotels around the country and the world,” he wrote. “It has been a journey where I have had the opportunity to work with fascinating individuals, meet renowned personalities, and most importantly touch the lives of many and leave a lasting impression.” He ends with a thought that is both a personal reflection and a challenge to the nation: “Indians by nature are hospitable. How do we leverage this natural instinct into a world-class talent resource? I hope Moth to Flame will inspire and groom future Indian CEOs to lead global brands. Yes, we can. We will.”
That aspiration runs as an undercurrent through every chapter of this book. It is what elevates it from a personal chronicle to something larger.
Learning Hospitality in the Age of Silver and Ceremony
The India that Mohankumar entered as a young hotel professional in the 1970s was one in which great hospitality was built on craft, ceremony, and an almost devotional attention to the physical world. The Taj Mahal Palace was not simply a hotel. It was an institution making an argument – daily, in every polished surface and precisely folded linen – about what Indian service could aspire to be.
The figures who shaped Mohankumar during these formative years read like characters from a more deliberate and exacting age. J.R.D. Tata moved through his hotels asking staff the names of the flowers arranged in the lobby – not to humiliate but to keep alive the conviction that nothing in a great hotel is accidental, that everything present has been chosen and understood. The legendary interior designer Mrs. Kerkar could enter a newly completed banquet hall and order its ceiling demolished over a structural misalignment invisible to the untrained eye. These were not eccentric personalities. They were the embodiment of a philosophy: that the difference between good and genuinely great lies entirely in the territory most people dismiss as detail.
Mohankumar absorbed this philosophy until it became indistinguishable from his own nature. The result was what colleagues came to call Tajness – a quality more easily recognised than defined, a standard that was simultaneously about perfection and about warmth, about discipline and about humanity.
The Globalisation Years: When India Woke Up
It is in the period stretching across the late 1980s and through the decade of liberalisation that Moth to Flame becomes something beyond a personal story. It becomes a record of an industry in transformation.
When India opened its economy in 1991, the hospitality sector found itself at the intersection of every major force reshaping the country simultaneously. Foreign capital arrived. International brands entered. Business travel surged. A newly prosperous Indian middle class began to discover domestic luxury in ways that no previous generation had imagined. And into this extraordinary moment walked a generation of hoteliers – Mohankumar among them – who had been trained in an older, more meticulous school and were now charged with building something that could hold its own against the world while remaining distinctively, unapologetically Indian.
His accounts of turnaround leadership during this period are among the finest passages in the book. There is the episode of a failing hotel in Sri Lanka, operating amid civil conflict, its staff dispirited and its fabric deteriorating. Rather than arriving with a restructuring plan and a set of directives, Mohankumar organised a Sunday of collective cleaning. Every employee – accountants, managers, kitchen staff – drew tasks from a hat. He drew broom duty. The General Manager swept the floor alongside the people he was there to lead. The transformation that followed was not merely physical. It was one of collective belief, restored through the simplest possible demonstration that leadership means participation, not distance.
The Human Geography of Great Hotels
The celebrity encounters in Moth to Flame are narrated with exactly the quality one hopes for: genuine warmth, precise observation, and complete absence of self-congratulation. What these stories reveal, beneath their entertainment, is the philosophical core of Mohankumar’s understanding of hospitality. The famous, the powerful, and the celebrated who pass through great hotels are not merely guests requiring efficient service. They are people living under conditions of relentless public scrutiny who need, above almost everything else, a space in which they can simply exist without performance. The great hotelier provides that space. He anticipates before the need is spoken. He removes friction before it is felt. He keeps confidence as a matter of personal honour.
This is the hospitality that no algorithm can replicate and no delivery app can approximate. It is the expression of a human being paying full, unhurried attention to another human being.
A Manual for the Young, A Mirror for Veterans
Moth to Flame is not simply a memoir – it is an inspiring manual for young professionals entering the industry and a nostalgic mirror for veterans who built it. It invites every reader to reflect on what it genuinely means to serve, to lead, and to find lasting fulfilment not in titles or compensation but in the illumination of other people’s journeys.
Throughout his career, Mohankumar drew immense sustenance from his family – his wife Geeta Menon, and their daughters Avehi and Naomi – who provided the emotional and moral foundation that made everything else possible. He is honest about the cost of his vacation. Birthdays missed. Years spent in transit. The steady accumulation of absences that a career of this intensity inevitably produces. He presents this not as a grievance but as a conscious and considered trade-off, made with clear eyes and sustained by mutual understanding and respect. It is among the most valuable things this book offers a young person considering a similar path: not a warning, but an honest account of what devotion actually requires.
Honoured with the Hall of Fame Award by the Institute of Hotel Management, Mumbai, and the Lifetime Achievement Award by the Taj Lifers Collective, Mohankumar’s legacy is both personal and institutional. His current roles as an Independent Director with Orange County and Prestige Hospitality speak to a commitment that did not retire when his executive career concluded.
Why This Book Belongs on Every Hospitality Professional’s Shelf
Indian hospitality today stands at a point of unprecedented scale and ambition. New destinations are opening. New talent is entering. International attention is arriving in volumes that would have been difficult to imagine even a generation ago. At such moments of rapid expansion, the risk is always the same: that institutional memory – the understanding of why something became great and what it cost – gets diluted in the momentum of growth.
Moth to Flame is, among its many other qualities, a document of that institutional memory. It is a record of the values, the discipline, and the humanity that built Indian hospitality into something the world respects. Venu Srinivasan, Chairman Emeritus of TVS Motor Company, describes Mohankumar as having become synonymous with the essence of Tajness, always embodying the qualities of a true statesman – prim, proper, and ever-popular among leaders from every field. That is not simply praise for a colleague. It is a description of a life’s work.
The moth that chased the light, Mohankumar writes, was not destroyed. It was illuminated. For anyone who has ever given themselves fully to something they believed in – in hospitality, in journalism, in public service, in any field that asks for more than a job description – that line carries a weight that has nothing to do with hotels at all.
This book stayed with me long after I finished it. It will stay with you too.
Moth to Flame by P.K. Mohankumar is available now. https://www.flipkart.com/moth-flame-consuming-story-small-town-roots-hospitality-heights/p/itmf50b7e3889235
