DILIP and Jacqueline Kapur (the Hidesign leather luxury products people) are the toast and flavour of Pondicherry. They are a handsome and loving couple, with several business and social interests, two beautiful children, two hotels in Pondicherry, Andalusian horses, lots of friends, and a somewhat rustic though charming bungalow in the heart of a dense forest in Auroville. He is North Indian, she is German, they have been together for 16 years, and somehow Pondicherry is the better for them.

Dilip was mine host in Pondicherry. Though I saw more of Jacqueline: in their hotel The Promenade; at her amazing shopping mall Casablanca and clothes store Titanic; at the Auroville riding school where she is an instructor and her daughter Ayesha is a star; and, finally, at home where she is housewife and mother. Dilip, on the other hand, was the typical businessman, rushing in and out of Pondicherry, always on the cell, stopping to grab a bite at The Promenade�s buffet breakfast and telling the Maharashtrian waitress there to make a Kanda-Poha for him like she would have made it at home, conducting business meetings over coffee, coordinating sales targets and marketing strategies with all 33 outlets of Hidesign in the country, sharing jokes with his top managerial staff, and yet managing despite all this to get home by 8. �Otherwise he is in trouble,� said Jacqueline with a slow drawl and small smile on her face. This is the same face the couple�s daughter Ayesha is blessed with and which our Sanjay Leela Bhansali took a liking for when he signed her to play the young Rani Mukherjee opposite Amitabh Bachchan in his award-winning film Black. Though Ayesha has sulky eyes and Jacqueline�s, which have seen more of life, can flash real fire. She is a delightful woman, Jacqueline, and expresses herself vociferously and successfully in Tamil when local Pondicheriens try to take the foreigner in her for a ride! Dilip, too, is pretty unusual. On my last morning in Pondicherry, he invited me home for breakfast, and once there amazed me by cooking it himself!

He did a Ph.D in International Affairs in the US to return to Auroville in 1978. Dilip was always from Auroville, his father who had a shoe business was made the watchman of its playground by Mother, and the Kapurs stayed in the bungalow in the forest. But Dilip never returned to do any Ph.D work. Leather and designing handbags was always his hobby and in 1990, he set up his first leather factory in Pondicherry. �There was one worker and me, and a friend in the Oberoi leather shop in Bombay,� he said. When finishing his Ph.D in the US, Dilip was working in a leather place, and he developed a liking for the material. �Jacqueline came around then and Hidesign got busy,� he explained. �Hidesign�s first store was an international one. In 2000, we opened the first one in India and had a turnover of six per cent. Today it is 40 per cent and now we have 33 stores, 17 more are coming, and 11 are abroad. I have concentrated on India in the last few years and want to focus internationally in the next few. I�ve got stores through distributors coming up in Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Moscow, Kuala Lumpur, Hong Kong airport, which is the best place to be in the world!�

His first hotel was le Dupliex and he started it where Hidesign was established and where he used to live in Pondicherry. �We lived upstairs and the bags were being made down. This was the house of the former mayor and when we moved out to Auroville, the place was just lying vacant and not in use,� he said. To create le Dupliex, Dilip had to call an architect from Paris who was an expert at renovating old public buildings. �Three months later, he was not done. So he stayed on three more months, then extended by another three, and that guy finally settled down here! It took us two-and-half years to make the hotel. I didn�t think le Dupliex would be an important part of my life, but I got more and more involved, and we opened it with nine rooms a year ago,� he recalled.

According to him, The Promenade was another accident! An old Pondicherry family owned the property and wanted to develop it. Dilip put in 50 per cent of the money and then got saddled with the whole thing. The government wanted to convert the place into its Assembly. He fought them tooth and nail and finally, years later, managed to convince the authorities that the place was too small for an Assembly but perfect for a international standards hotel. �That is what The Promenade is now,� said Dilip, �but getting the permissions was hell, it required overcoming MLAs� opposition, going to court and what not.� But now the hotels business is just getting to be fun for Dilip. �I am concerned with the designing and aesthetics of the hotels, not their operations, for that I have the Sarovar Park Plaza. Why reinvent the wheel? I have given our properties a warm, breezy, life-oriented look, that angle comes because I am fashion conscious,� he said.

So much for his work. Outside of his business suit and tie, Dilip Kapur is a family man. �I like mooching around the family,� he explained. He travels abroad four times a year and several times in India. �Every marriage benefits from that,� he said with a sly wink. But he enjoys being at home, having dinner with the children, munching on salads, Japanese food, drinking wines and nothing else, he works out religiously for 40 minutes every day, he does not believe in diets because he thinks he eats like a pigeon, he was a smoker but then he stopped. Ask him what he smoked, cigars, a pipe, you would expect nothing less from a man of this style, class and lifestyle. He chortled with glee, �I used to smoke a joint every day for 30 years!� And then he cooks at home. Yes, the home and cooking, that Dilip saved for the last.

�It�s always pancakes on Sunday,� said Dilip, standing in the small kitchen in his Auroville bungalow that had clearly been designed for his bachelor days. He was expertly flipping the pancakes that were gently simmering in a pan. �The family won�t have anything else,� he added with a sly smile. The pancakes were giving off a gentle aroma that wafted out of the kitchen and got lost in the dense forest outside. On another burner, a Tamilian domestic called Amma was watching a pot of black coffee brewing, making the kitchen seem a very homely place indeed.

�The family�, I found out, reckons Dilip is the best pancake man in the business. It was now seated around the outdoor dining table, a picture of patience in the dappled sunlight, waiting for breakfast to be served. There was wife Jacqueline, and the couple�s lovely children, handsome growing-up son Milan and daughter Ayesha. Three dogs completed �the family�. There was a gentle Great Dane called Thea, a Labrador called Blondie, and a black canine of mixed parentage called for some strange reason Boongooloongoo!

When he is not traveling and at home, Dilip does the breakfast on Sundays. �He�s been doing this for eight or nine years. He even does the breakfast when we are at our hut on the beach that is 27 kilometres on the way to Chennai. Unfortunately, he can only cook pancakes,� said Jacqueline wryly. She loves cooking herself and is at ease in the tiny kitchen doing South European food. �I use lots of garlic, herbs, olive oil, seafood. I lived one year in Japan so I know a little bit of their food, but it is not easy to cook. I make big salads, prawns in olive oil, chickpea with bread. And if I put my head into it, I can cook German food as well,� she said. For 15 years she subscribed to the German culinary magazine Essen Und Trinken. �It means eating and drinking and this is the best magazine of its kind that you can get. I used to cook out of it,� added Jacqueline.

She runs two of the most popular department stores in Pondicherry. They are Casablanca, which is a two-storeyed chrome, glass and granite swanky shopping mall full of designer home products; and Titanic, a clothes store for surplus branded wear. Both are happening places that the locals and tourists swear by. Jacqueline also involves herself in the operations and control of the Kapurs�s two hotels, le Dupliex, a 200-year-old heritage property, and The Promenade, the newest and most modern address to stay at in the small French township. Plus, she helps run a riding school in Auroville that is meant for people from the community and tourists. It is a busy life that Jacqueline leads. I could see why she was happy to let Dilip do the breakfast on Sunday morning.

He would not be hurried. Despite the family�s impatience, the pancakes had to be browned to his specification, or not at all. His executive chef R. Kumara Krishnan of le Dupliex, who brought us to the Kapur bungalow in Auroville, stood by in respectful silence sniffing appreciatively. �Kumar,� Dilip called out teasingly, �come and taste them, you will know what good pancakes are all about!� Kumar had obviously been told this before. He smiled gently. �Why do you make pancakes,� I asked. And Dilip replied, �Because traditionally, it is the only thing I know how to cook. But I must admit, this is a collaborated family thing, Ayesha mixes the flour and makes the batter and Milan beats the eggs � that�s a tough job. What do I do? Why, I�m the master of ceremonies!�

The pancakes were soon ready and Dilip rushed out with them. He does not serve pancakes with traditional maple syrup but chooses honey instead. �There�s organic honey, wild honey and Greek honey,� he sang out. �And�� he paused, like a master chef about to reveal his signature dish, �there�s also French toast, orange juice, Greek cheese and American grapes! But does anyone want caviar with their pancakes?�