Masala Dosa to Die for - NYTimes

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MAGAZINE | NYT NOW

Masala Dosa to Die For

By ROLLO ROMIG MAY 7, 2014

Saravana Bhavan doesnt look like a house of secrets. Its dining room at

the corner of Lexington Avenue and 26th Street is clean and bright and

often attracts a line out front. It doesnt advertise because it doesnt

need to the fact that its one of the worlds largest chains of vegetarianrestaurants 33 in India, another 47 in a dozen other countries is

considered too obvious to its core clientele of Indian expatriates and

tourists to be worth trumpeting. In a city overwhelmed with

underwhelming north Indian food, Saravana Bhavan is the standard-

bearer of the delicacies of the south, but it makes no effort to educate

the uninitiated. If you dont know what a dosa is or how to eat it, youre

on your own.The man behind the chain is an elusive 66-year-old named P.

Rajagopal. Among his peers in the restaurant business in Chennai, the

south Indian city where Saravana Bhavan is headquartered, Rajagopal

is a legend. He brought prestige to the vegetarian business, said a

restaurateur named Manoharan, who runs a competing chain called

Murugan Idli. He made a revolution.

Born into a low caste in a remote province, he came to rule a field

that was once the sole domain of Brahmins, cleverly updating their

traditional fare in a setting that was both respectable and

unpretentious, thereby catering to Indias middle class at just the

moment it emerged. Today he employs morethan 8,000people in

Chennai alone. His workers enjoy benefits fantastic enough for Silicon

Valley (pensions, TVs, education), inspiring among them fierce loyalty

to Rajagopal. Every day thousands of pilgrims come to pray at the

temples he built in the village of his birth, and a hundred thousand

come to eat in his restaurants.
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His business model is so seemingly foolproof that the company has

acquired an air of invincibility, even as its founder became sullied with

scandal. As Saravana Bhavan went global, Rajagopal was charged with

murder, found guilty and sentenced to life in prison. Yet he served a

total of only 11 months, and today hes free to continue his expansion

next stop Hong Kong, followed by Sydney, Australia. And then, if his

health holds out, building his first luxury hotel.

Saravana Bhavanspecializes in the holy trinity of south Indian

snacks known as tiffin: dosa, idli and vada. All are made from ground

rice and lentils, with remarkably different results. Dosas are crispy

golden crepes that are most deliciously served with a masala of potato

and onion vadas are deep-fried savory doughnuts and idlis, the souths

staple food, are pure-white saucer-shaped steamed cakes. At most

branches of Saravana Bhavan in Chennai, you can also find for sale a

little book titled, I Set My Heart on Victory. First published in 1997,

the book is Rajagopals memoir and manifesto, a curious blend of

mythmaking and self-effacement.

His story begins in 1947, 10 days before Indias independence from

the British, when he was born in the vast brushland in the southernstate Tamil Nadu. His village, Punnaiadi, was so inconsequential that it

didnt merit a bus stop his home was a shack with mud-and-cow-dung

floors. Rajagopal writes that he quit school after seventh grade, left

home alone and took a job wiping tables at a cheap restaurant in a

distant resort town, where he showered in a waterfall and slept on the

kitchen floor. But he was proud of his work, especially after the

restaurants tea master inducted him into the mysteries of making aperfect chai.

When he was a teenager, he moved to Chennai, then known as

Madras, and in 1968 opened the first in a series of tiny groceries on the

outskirts of the city. One day in 1979, at his grocery in a neighborhood

called KK Nagar, a salesman made a casual remark: Hed have to go all

the way to T Nagar for lunch because KK Nagar didnt have any

restaurants.A century ago, there were virtually no restaurants in all of Chennai.


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Its a country that was very conservative about eating out, said

Krishnendu Ray, a food-studies professor at N.Y.U. When Rajagopal

was born, the restaurant scene consisted of little more than Brahmin

hotels: modest affairs catering to the traveling upper caste, whose

dietary rules dictated that they couldnt eat food cooked by any caste

but their own. As a member of the Nadar caste, Rajagopal wouldnt

have been allowed to eat in most Brahmin hotels, let alone run one. But

by the time he came of age, entrepreneurs from other castes had begun

to meet Chennais increasing appetite for dining out.

There was little to suggest that Rajagopal was ready to join them.

When he opened his debut restaurant in KK Nagar in 1981, his

struggling shops had left him deep in debt, and he knew little about

food service beyond selling groceries. He made the leap, he told me,

only after an astrologer recommended that he try a line of work that

involved fire. A business adviser insisted that he should use cheap

ingredients and pay his staff as little as possible food workers are

vagabonds, he said, and theyll take what they can get. I did not like his

argument at all, Rajagopal writes in his memoir. He fired the adviser,

started using coconut oil and top-quality vegetables and gave hisworkers surprisingly high wages. The business lost 10,000 rupees a

month a big deficit for a restaurant where most items on the menu

sold for a rupee apiece.

But word spread that his food was tasty and cheap, and soon

Rajagopal was turning a profit and opening new branches. He

expanded his workers benefits, all of them unprecedented in Indian

restaurants: free health care, housing stipends, a marriage fund fortheir daughters. Saravana Bhavan workers started calling him Annachi,

a Tamil term of respect that means elder brother.

By the 90s, a Saravana Bhavan could be found in neighborhoods

throughout Chennai. Locals sometimes refer to the brand as their

version of McDonalds: well lit, ubiquitous and uncannily consistent.

Unlike McDonalds, the restaurants make everything from scratch. One

afternoon, a trio of bright-eyed assistants from the companys R & Ddepartment gave me a tour of the branch in Mylapore, a Chennai


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neighborhood. I was surprised to find that there were no freezers, just a

single walk-in cooler for vegetables that had been bought at market the

day before. Even the rice flour for the dosas was ground on the

premises.

When the tour was over, the assistants talked to me about

Rajagopal. He is the same as the father of a family, one said. Any

problem I have, he addresses it. The company pays for employees to

visit Rajagopals home village for a few days each year, he told me,

driving them down in a company bus. When I go there, I can witness

all the love and affection the village people have for Annachi.

I asked if the company had cut back on its package of benefits as it

has grown. Theyve only been increasing, a second assistant said. The

company provides them with magazine subscriptions, a cellphone and a

motorbike, he said, and covers the cost of fuel. (The only benefit it

discontinued was a haircut allowance.)

And we have mechanics so that we dont have to go outside to fix

our vehicles, the third told me.

My friend used to joke with me, The only thing you can do with

your salary is put it in the bank and save it, the second assistant said.They take care of everything.

In 2000, Saravana Bhavan branched out for the first time beyond

India, opening a franchise in Dubai, where Indian expats vastly

outnumber native-born Emiratis. According to Rajagopals elder son,

Shiva Kumaar, the opening-day crowd was like for a newly released

movie. Theyd eventually expand to Paris, Frankfurt, London, Dallas

and Doha, Qatar. The strategy is simple: open one restaurant in everycity with a large expat Indian population. (One exception is Manhattan,

which has two.) Prey on homesickness by importing skilled chefs to

ensure that the food tastes just the way it does in Chennai. Dont bother

trying to pursue non-Indian customers.

In 2002, the year that he opened franchises in Singapore and

Sunnyvale, Calif., Rajagopal was charged with murdering the husband

of a woman he wanted to marry. In 2003, his restaurant expanded toCanada, Oman and Malaysia, and he went to jail for the first time. In


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2004, a local Chennai court sentenced him to 10 years in prison. By the

end of that year, the empire had opened 29 branches worldwide.

Eight months into his prison term, the Supreme Court suspended

Rajagopals sentence on medical grounds while awaiting appeal, citing

his diabetes. In 2009, the Madras High Court not only upheld the

verdict but also upgraded the conviction from culpable homicide to

murder and enhanced his sentence to life in prison. After another three-

month stint, he was out on bail pending a Supreme Court hearing,

which no one expects to happen anytime soon. The courts wont give

him back his passport, but otherwise hes free to go about his life. All

but one of Saravana Bhavans 47 foreign franchises have opened in the

12 years since the murder.

Its amazing how he managed it, said Sriram V., a local historian.

I mean, our legal system is not thatbad.

Chennais tabloids published every lurid detail of the murder

allegations, but the restaurant just kept growing. Others in that

position would have totally collapsed, said Manoharan, of the

competing chain Murugan Idli. People thought he was finished. But

there was no impact.It helped that Rajagopal has little interest in personal fame he

promotes the restaurants brand, not his own, which makes it easier for

customers to compartmentalize. As one Saravana Bhavan loyalist told

me: Some of my friends used to say, How can you go and eat in his

restaurant? Youre actually fattening the wallet of a murderer. And I

used to tell them, Look, I dont know with whom I do business in my

day-to-day activity, whether hes a drunk or beats his wife. I have noidea, but I do business. So as long as hes giving me good-quality food, I

go there.

Saravana Bhavan employees have been especially faithful. M.

Mahadevan, a consultant who has helped with the chains international

expansion, told me a story to illustrate their devotion. I was at the

Saravana Bhavan down the road, drinking coffee with some friends,

Mahadevan said. The old man thats what Mahadevan callsRajagopal was in prison at that time. These big hulky guys came in,


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eight of them they were local rowdies. They wanted to eat without

paying. One of them was bullying the waiter, saying: Hey, mister, hows

your boss? Dont act funny, I know hes inside. There was a boy pouring

water, and he told them: Youre talking about my boss. You say

anything against him, and Ill put this jug of water into your mouth.

Not on you into your mouth. I was astonished. The boy was three-

foot-nothing. And immediately all the waiters came and stood next to

him.

For him, the old man was a god. Period. Hes got that kind of

loyalty. He takes boys from the street, from the villages, and he teaches

them. He picks them up and molds them.

One gloomy Wednesdayevening in August, I went to meet

Rajagopal at Saravana Bhavans headquarters, passing several of his

restaurants as I inched my way through the citys eternal gridlock.

Mahadevan met me in the dining room and escorted me to the bosss

office, introducing me on the way to Rajagopals 39-year-old son,

Saravanan, who is gradually taking over the companys domestic

operations. (His elder brother, Shiva Kumaar, runs the international

business.) For a while the three of us sat and stared at the walls: Everysurface was covered with blown-up images of Rajagopals family and

favorite Hindu deities. Then suddenly Mahadevan and Saravanan rose.

The office door swung open, and Rajagopal entered.

He was grayer and jowlier than he was in the photographs Id seen.

He regarded the room with mild amusement, bowed politely and

walked behind his desk, where he faced a portrait of a popular guru

and folded his hands for a moment of prayer. With him was GanapathiIyer, his oldest friend, and a personal assistant and a valet. We all sat

but the valet, who stood ready with a glass of water the instant his boss

coughed. Nobody relaxed.

I asked Rajagopal about his origins and business philosophy. Each

question was answered with a cascade of replies: Rajagopal would

answer in Tamil, then Saravanan or Mahadevan or Iyer or all three

would jump in to elaborate or clarify in English, a language Rajagopaldoesnt understand. It was a dynamic that sometimes clearly frustrated


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the boss.

When I asked about the murder, everyone started talking at once,

until Rajagopal cut impatiently through the chatter. Im not

responsible for anyones death, he said. I used to pray to my god, why

was I punished for someone elses mistake? There was a reason, he

decided: God wanted to give an opportunity for my son Saravanan to

learn business. Saravanan smiled faintly.

By the time we finished talking, it was nearly 11, and Rajagopals

workday still wasnt over. In the foyer outside his office, eight

employees were standing in line waiting to speak with him. An older

man with a handlebar mustache and a proud bearing told me that he

was a night watchman and was there to ask Rajagopal for a promotion.

Another said he hoped to be transferred to a different branch. A third

said he wanted to inform Rajagopal of his coming wedding.

I went back into Rajagopals office. He sat at his desk, studying a

spreadsheet with the aid of a magnifying glass. He consulted his

assistant and then called in the first man. Rajagopal ignored him and

barked into a walkie-talkie, asking the voice on the other end what had

brought in this man who stood before him.From the walkie-talkie came a surprising answer: They keep

fighting the whole night. That was not what he told me outside. The

man hung his head. Rajagopal fired him on the spot.

The next man came in, and another voice on the walkie-talkie told

Rajagopal that hed been fiddling with his cellphone in the dining

room. It turned out that nearly all the employees in line had lied to me

they were there to be disciplined.Youve been with us for two and a half years dont you know

that youre not supposed to use your phone during work hours?

Rajagopal said.

I did it by mistake, the man mumbled.

Answer my question! Rajagopal snapped.

I forgot, the man said.

How can you forget? When youre in service, you should serve.He decided to give the man another chance. Next up was the


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watchman.

I heard you got drunk and abused everyone and used foul words,

Rajagopal said. And you should shave off your mustache. These are not

good habits.

Im sorry, Annachi, he said. Forgive me.

How can I? Rajagopal asked. Theres an age to forgive. At your

age, it doesnt make sense. The watchman stared at the floor. Are you

listening? Rajagopal asked.

Again he decided to have mercy the man would keep his job as

long as he laid off the booze. He whispered his thanks and left without

ever looking up.

The nights work was over Rajagopal sat back in his chair. What

to do? he said. Everyone makes mistakes.

At the conclusionof Rajagopals appeal trial in 2009, the

Madras High Court issued a 30,000-word document that served as its

definitive statement on the case. By and large, a witness cannot be

expected to possess a photographic memory to recall the details of the

incident and the actual words uttered, the court warns. It is not as if a

videotape is replayed on the mental screen. But this is the version ofevents that the court found most credible.

According to the document, Rajagopal possibly on the advice of

his astrologer became determined to marry Jeevajothi, the young

daughter of one of his assistant managers. That would have made her

Rajagopals third simultaneous wife: In 1972, he married the mother of

his sons, and in 1994, he married the wife of one of his employees.

Jeevajothi was not interested in Rajagopal. She was in love withher brothers math tutor, Santhakumar. In 1999, Jeevajothi and

Santhakumar eloped, but Rajagopals fixation persisted he gave her

jewelry, dresses and several installments of cash to help her open a

travel agency. While Jeevajothi accepted the gifts, she continued to

resist Rajagopals advances. On Sept. 28, 2001, Rajagopal came to

Jeevajothi and Santhakumars house at midnight and warned

Santhakumar that he had two days to sever their relationship. He toldJeevajothi that his second wife, too, had at first rejected him, but now


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she was living a queen life.

The young couple tried to flee to a place where they hoped

Rajagopal wouldnt find them, but five of Rajagopals employees, led by

a restaurant manager named Daniel, intercepted them. The henchmen

forced the couple into an Ambassador car and drove them to a

Saravana Bhavan warehouse in KK Nagar, where Rajagopal appeared.

According to the courts narrative, Rajagopal hiked up his dhoti and

gave Santhakumar a beating. Jeevajothi fell at Rajagopals feet and

begged him to stop. Rajagopal told his men to take Santhakumar to the

next room and continue beating him. Jeevajothi sat in the corner and

wept.

The next day, Daniel called Jeevajothi to apologize and suggested

that she go to the police.

Though Rajagopals men held Jeevajothi and Santhakumar under

a kind of house arrest, they escaped on Oct. 12 under the pretext of

going out to attend a felicitation function for Rajagopal. Instead, they

went to the city police commissioners office to file a complaint. Six

days later, Rajagopals employees kidnapped the couple again and

forcibly separated them. They pushed Jeevajothi into a Mercedes withRajagopal, who brandished a photocopy of her police complaint and

asked her mockingly about its contents.

Jeevajothi didnt know what became of Santhakumar. He reached

her by phone two days later, telling her that Rajagopal had paid Daniel

500,000 rupees ($10,000) to kill him, but Daniel had instead let him

escape and advised him to hide out in Mumbai. She urged

Santhakumar to come home to her together, Jeevajothi said, theydplead with Rajagopal to leave them alone. It is obvious, the court

wrote, that their overwhelming love for each other persuaded them to

take the risk.

Later that night, the couple, joined by Jeevajothis parents and

brother, went to Saravana Bhavan headquarters to meet Rajagopal. He

told them to wait in a nearby room. Then he interrogated Daniel about

what happened to Santhakumar. Daniel lied and said that he had tiedhim up on a railway track, where a train ran him over, and then he


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burned his clothes. With a dramatic flourish, Rajagopal then called

Santhakumar into the room. Whos this then, he asked Daniel,

Santhakumars ghost? Daniel started beating Santhakumar there in the

office, enraged that hed revealed his betrayal of Rajagopal. Jeevajothi

and her family tried to intervene. Eventually Rajagopal and his

henchmen put them all into a van, which, according to the court, took

them to a specialist in a faraway village for removal of witchcraft.

Two days later, Rajagopals men forced Santhakumar into a car

with Daniel, and they drove north. On Oct. 31, high up in the Western

Ghats mountain range near a resort town called Kodaikanal, forest

officials discovered a body. An assistant surgeon at the local hospital

concluded in his post-mortem that the cause of Santhakumars death

was asphyxia due to throttling. The police later found the alleged

murder weapon a sarong under the seat of Daniels car.

Daniel was convicted of murder along with Rajagopal and has also

been released on bail, but I was never able to track him down.

Jeevajothi, too, has made herself impossible to find.

Three days afterI met Rajagopal in Chennai, I took a short

flight to visit the village where he grew up. Rajagopals driver picked meup, and he beamed when I asked him what the boss was like. Hes like

a living god to us, he said. He understands every problem, and he

resolves it.

The villages name has been upgraded from Punnaiadi to Punnai

Nagar, because of Rajagopals development of the area, he told me. The

bus even stops there now. In terms of population, Punnai Nagar is no

bigger than it was when Rajagopal was born. Yet the village has beentransformed. In the middle of the red-dirt moonscape, Rajagopal has

erected a surreal monument to his success, in the form of a four-acre

Saravana Bhavan campus. The centerpiece is a million-dollar Hindu

temple, which is flanked by a Saravana Bhavan restaurant that employs

140 people all for a village that has fewer than 90 homes.

A worker took me on a tour of Rajagopals house, which he built in

1994 on the spot where his childhood hut once stood, and where he hasincreasingly been spending his time. Its a huge beige block, nearly all


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of it given over to dormitory rooms for his staff. The only decorations

are pictures of gods. The worker led me to a black couch on the second

floor, and a few minutes later, Rajagopal emerged from a back room

and sat on a chair opposite me. Ganapathi Iyer was there again, as were

his assistant and his valet, who pricked Rajagopals finger for a blood-

sugar test. But this time Rajagopal was less willing to let them control

the conversation.

I asked him about a rumor that while in prison he had managed to

improve the food served by the prison canteen. You cant change

anything there, he said. I had to spend one lakh [100,000 rupees]

every month in order to get home food delivered to me.

Dont tell him about this, Iyer said to Rajagopal. Do we have to

talk about the corruption?

They should know how corrupt we are, Rajagopal said. We cant

just keep bragging that we are good all the time. The truth has to be

told.

I asked him what he likes least about his work.

I dont like employees drinking and lying, he said. If you ask me,

I dont like that I went after Jeevajothi.Sir, not that, Iyer said, just office work, office work.

Theres nothing I dislike about the work, Rajagopal said.

After a while Rajagopal said he was getting tired. As we got up to

leave, he talked about how important it was for successful villagers like

him to support the places they came from. Developing villages was

Gandhis dream, he said. I believe in Gandhi.

I asked what he admired most about Gandhi, and he laughed. Ilike that he had a girl on each arm. He turned to my translator. Tell

him that having girls around keeps a guy young forever.

Tell him these last comments were just a joke, his assistant said.

Shortly beforeI left Chennai, I met again with Rajagopals son

Saravanan. This time it was just the two of us, and we talked for hours

in the foyer outside his fathers office. Saravanan is a large but gentle

man, his husky voice rarely much louder than a whisper.He described his father as a keep-guessing character. You dont


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know what he will come up wanting, he said. A phone call comes, and

you have to be dead sure what hes asking and what youre answering.

That fear is there for everybody. Is he an intimidating boss to work for?

I asked. When he wants things done a certain way, hes quite

intimidating, Saravanan said. It has to be done at any cost.

If hed had his choice, he said, he would have become an engineer.

My dad said, No, we come from a business community you have to

study commerce. So he did two years of commerce, and then

Rajagopal told him he had to study hotel management. From there his

father assigned him to a seven-year rotation through the companys

departments: purchasing vegetables, working the graveyard shift in the

kitchen, manning a Saravana sweets shop, making ice cream, working

in maintenance and accounting and human resources.

Its clear that Saravanan never gave up his dream of becoming an

engineer he just transferred his ideas to his fathers business.

Rajagopals exacting standards were dictated by the instinct of a self-

made man. Saravanan wants to translate that instinct into a science,

and when he talks about the company thats becoming his, his

conversation is peppered with terms that would be foreign to his father,like management information system and total dissolved solids. In a

biochemical lab Saravanan set up on the top floor of the companys ice-

cream factory, he has been trying to determine the exact chemical

composition of Saravanas dishes in their ideal form, and the lab uses

this information to test daily samples from each of the companys

Chennai branches to ensure that all are supplying the same quality.

As the company continues to grow, manpower is a worry.Saravanan said he is committed to making everything from fresh

ingredients in fact, he wants to take it further, and he has been

experimenting with replacing the artificial stabilizer in Saravanas

otherwise all-natural house-brand ice cream with flaxseed. But such

cooking requires vast kitchen staffs, and as better education reaches

more and more Indians, he said, fewer workers are interested in that

kind of labor.One solution Saravanan likes is automation. Another in-house lab


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is developing prototypes for everything from coffee machines to vada

fryers, according to Saravana Bhavans very particular specifications.

He recognizes, though, that the mass utility of such machines is still

years away in the meantime, personnel remains the companys most

treasured asset, so he has also systematized the hiring process. An in-

house medical team records each applicants vital statistics using

software Saravanan developed. A coffee man, he explained, should be

small and quiet, while a dosa chef needs to be at least 5-foot-6.

But he was quick to note the limits of such algorithms. Just that

morning, he said, the medical team alerted him to their concerns over a

particular applicant: They noticed that he had cigarette burns on his

forearm, apparently self-inflicted. Saravanan decided to call the man

and ask him what happened. He told me, I had a love affair, it failed,

she got married, I got agitated, Saravanan said. He made a mistake

that was a small part of his life. The company is strict, but not

unforgiving. He told the man he would hire him. And if the job worked

out, Saravana Bhavan would pay to erase his scars.

Rollo Romigis a freelance writer in Turkey. He last wrote for the magazine about the plight of

celebrity elephants in India.

Editor: Samantha Henig

A version of this article appears in print on May 11, 2014, on page MM32 of the Sunday

Magazine with the headline: Masala Dosa To Die For.

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