This Indian's intuition led him to abandon thoughts of engineering anything but a comfortable life for himself in the former Soviet Union.
What’s the first thing Dehli native Bhanu Sahni remembers about his first few days in Moscow back in the late 1980s?
“Bad food,” says the merchant and importer.
The words leave his mouth as if by reflex; the Russian capital still makes that sort of impression on him, despite that he’s lived in Eastern Europe for half his life, or 17 years, by now.
“Moscow was the city of the ‘nyets,’” Bahnu recalls. “Everywhere we went: ‘Nyet!’”
Bahnu arrived in the capital during the period of Indo-Soviet cooperation, and spent four days sitting around with his fellow foreign students – from Peru, Morocco, Ghana and elsewhere – waiting to find out where the top-secret Soviet lottery system would send them to study for the next five years. To kill time, they would go for long walks together throughout the capital. He remembers these days as the beginning of his affair with that city; how he came to like Moscow for its magnificent avenues, its old buildings and – shocking from our perspective now – its being remarkably free of traffic. Owning a car then was avoided by Russians, and the absence of autos made the city easier to get to know. He admits, however, that Moscow has to grow on you. Then too, that was a long time ago. (For the record, he was sent to Kharkiv, to study engineering.)
Today, 17 years later, Bahnu sits serenely opposite me at Tequila House, sipping a glass of fresh-pressed carrot juice (Hr 9), his chicken chimichanga (Hr 48) having just arrived. The restaurant was chosen for him by a friend of a friend who thought his own choice – someplace Indian – would be too obvious. Yet in general, Bahnu relies on his own intuitions in life. Intuition, he would say, has taken him far, prompting him to do lots of things in an unconventional manner. For example, instead of working as an engineer after university, like you would expect, he took a job with Unilever, selling cosmetics and pharmaceuticals in post-Soviet Russia. In the heady days after the fall of communism, this line of work allowed him to travel – something he still loves to do – and to meet all kinds of people.
“I traveled like crazy,” Bahnu says of his time with Unilever. Still in his early 20s, he crisscrossed the Ural Mountains and other far reaches of the new Russian Federation. “I don’t think there’s any Russian who’s seen more of Russia than I have.” He’s met ballerinas and fashion models and even got to know the grand niece of Joseph Stalin, who happens to cook great Georgian food, he says.
Perhaps it was his capacity to spend 15 days a month, for five years in a row, working away from home that gave him such an appreciation for the world. Bahnu lives in a modest Kyiv flat that his friends have called “very sober,” a cobbler’s home without all the shoes. But he doesn’t worry about material kinds of things anyway. Instead, he concerns himself with matters that have a greater impact on his sense of well-being.
Take Kyiv, for example, the place he’s called home now for the last five years. Bahnu likes it for fairly simple reasons, like the views that the city streets afford him of the golden-domed cathedrals, or the monasteries that appear over the next hill when he’s walking about. Walking around Kyiv has become a luxury to him since he started the Silk Route Indian textile and gift shop in 2000, but that’s only given him a greater appreciation of Kyiv’s magic.
“Kyiv is a beautiful city by itself,” he enthuses as I tie into my bean burrito (Hr 34) and iced tea (Hr 12). After discussing the money being spent to make over Maidan Nezalezhnosti, Bahnu turns to lamenting the traffic problems Kyiv now faces. “The city needs more practical things than beautification,” he says, meaning traffic overpasses, or, as he calls them, “flyovers” (that’s his Indian schooling talking).
But usually Bahnu is thinking about the fabrics he deals in. In fact, that’s almost all he thinks about these days: bed sheets, linens, curtains, dresses, napkins, you name it, and all from his beloved birthplace, India.
Not long after Bahnu arrived in Kyiv, he couldn’t get away from this nagging desire to do something different for himself. The idea of opening Silk Route came when a friend from Switzerland called on him one day and complained that he couldn’t find any good silk scarves in Kyiv for his wife.
“So I called up my good friend from France, Didier,” Bahnu explained, “and asked him to take me to find all the French cafes and oriental silk shops in Paris.” He sized up the shops, schooling himself in everything from how they were painted to the selection of materials each kept, got in touch with suppliers in India and some local interior designers, and not long after Silk Route was born.
“I have a fetish for fabrics,” Bahnu admits. “Once I saw a friend’s dress and remarked how it would make a great set of curtains. I immediately felt something hard come down over my head.”
But he wasn’t kidding, and fabrics give this well-spoken and well-educated man a great deal of pleasure.
“I love my products more than the business,” he says after sipping his cappuccino (Hr 10). Often he orders materials on a whim, to help out a friend’s home decorating project, for example.
In his new shop, One World, he brings in handloomed table linens, silk and chiffon scarves, silk paintings, exclusive Indian teas and other items from India, which he visits three or four times a year. His business and business acumen have given him a healthy, laid-back lifestyle that allows him to enjoy the finer things in his life, like his friends and the people he’s made connections with through the years. He still calls his Russian teacher from his university days in Kharkiv every year on March 8, International Women’s Day, to wish her well, and he supports up and coming designers, helping them spread their new esthetic ideas. When he was sick in the hospital last year, a friend from Italy brought him tiramisu, another from India brought him chapattis, and still another, a Ukrainian, brought him borscht.
“Kyiv has given me very many good friends,” Bahnu says. “I feel at home here.”
Tequila House
8A Spaska,417-0358.
Open daily from 11 a.m. to 1 a.m.
English menu: Yes
English-speaking staff: Yes
