Page 170 - Hospitality Horizon Oct-Nov 2025_FLIP FINAL ISSUE

freewheeling

The quiet art of holding, healing, and humanising the world

By Suvir Saran

ospitality has always been my first soft architecture of affection, the geometry of generosity,
language, my mother tongue, the soft the steady science of seeing someone clearly and
grammar of my childhood and the steady making room for them exactly as they are.
rhythm of my adulthood. Long before I In these pages, I want to tell the stories that hide
learned how to write a recipe, compose a behind the shine. The feelings behind the façade. The
Hcritique, or craft a column, I knew the emotions beneath elegance. The human stories behind
temperature of a welcome. I knew how a room could the celebrity of a restaurant – the quiet craftsmen whose
shift simply because someone lit a lamp with love. I knew hands steady the flame, the stars who polish the sheen
how the fragrance of dal could become a dialect of of a menu long before it arrives at your table, the magic
comfort, how a glass of water placed with intention makers who work invisibly so that you may feel visible.
could speak louder than any polished speech. I want to explore the sensuality in service, the poetry in
Hospitality, for me, was never a profession. It was a pulse. plating, the rhythm in a kitchen’s chaos, and the rhyme in
A quiet heartbeat beneath meals, moments, and a dining room’s calm. Because hospitality is not only
meetings, the hidden hum beneath how humans hold about taste – it is about tenderness. It is not only about
each other. And so when Shafquat Ali invited me to write technique – it is about truth. It is not only about food – it
a bi-monthly column for Hospitality Horizon, he didn’t is about feeling.
simply offer me space. He entrusted me with a purpose: People see the luminescent dining rooms, the
to explore hospitality not as a business, but as a lacquered tables, and the glassware that gleams like
breathtaking, fragile, ferocious human instinct. galaxies. But they do not see the hands behind the shine:
Many of you may know me already. Perhaps through shoulders sore from lifting, fingers taped from slicing,
the vulnerable vignettes I share every Sunday in my Slice chefs who haven’t sat down since sunrise, hosts who
of Life column for Indian Express, or through the smile through heartbreak, servers who swallow tears
simmering reflections I serve each Friday in Soft Boil for behind POS screens. Hospitality is not glamour.
Open magazine, or through the literary flavours I plate Hospitality is grit wrapped in grace.
every Thursday in Aftertaste, my weekly book review for We often speak of menus but forget the magic of
Indian Express. You may have followed my monthly moments. A guest’s journey begins long before the
pieces in Hello! magazine, or the many essays and amuse-bouche. It begins in the way a door opens. In the
columns I write for ANI News – pieces that the syndicate way a lobby breathes. In the way lighting soothes instead
takes far and wide, allowing stories of food, culture, of startles. It begins in the hush of expectation, the small
compassion, kindness, and India’s living traditions to whisper of hope every guest carries across that
travel across geographies and into hearts that may never threshold: Will I be seen? Will I be held? Will I matter
meet me but somehow know me. here?
But here, in Hospitality Horizon, I arrive with a different I have learned more about hospitality from accidents
intention. I am not here only to speak of properties or than from awards. Once, at a well-known hotel in
praise plates. I am here to travel into the emotional Mumbai, a young server spilled burning coffee onto my
undercurrents of hospitality – the joy, the exhaustion, the lap. The table trembled. Crockery clattered. Time slowed
grace, the grit, the glamour, the grief, and the ghosts. into a hot, chaotic blur. The manager rushed over with
Because hospitality is not built from buildings and corporate apologies, crisp and formulaic, but what I
bedsheets. It is built from breaths and beings. It is remember is the look in the server’s eyes –real worry, real
choreography, architecture, geometry, intuition. It is the care, real humanity. “Sir, are you hurt? I’m so very sorry.”

170 OCTOBER-NOVEMBER 2025 hospitality horizon www.hospitality-horizon.com