The room is spotless. Not a crease on the bedcover, cushions upright and the fruit bowl centred. A couple of students mill about rearranging toiletries, buffing doorknobs and cleaning fingerprints on the highball glasses, their eyes scanning every inch of the suite for flaws. Then, satisfied yet presumably nervous, they look to their teacher for a sign of approval. She gives a half-nod, only to stride up to the closet and change the direction in which a single, errant hanger had been facing all along.

At the mock hotel on the Swiss campus of Les Roches in Bluche, near the twin ski towns of Crans-Montana, nothing is invisible, nothing too pernickety. And nattily dressed Shivanka Lankalingam, heir of a Chennai-based conglomerate that among other things plies the Buckingham Palace with ‘poppadums’, knows it all too well.

Work your way up In his final year at the school now, Lankalingam was put through the paces early — serving over 1,100 meals a day, waiting tables — to prepare eventually for a managerial role in hospitality or event management. “You know how it is back home... there are maids for everything. But here, you have to work your way up,” he says.

Lankalingam — who abandons his morning coffee to show the ‘sights’ at school, including a large pool overlooking the Alps — is not the only Indian at the main campus in Bluche (the others are at Marbella, Shanghai and Amman). Ranked third, Les Roches appears to be a popular choice for Indians, who form the second-largest international community here after China — notwithstanding the fee of 30,000-40,000 Swiss Francs per semester (₹25,82,000). Its chief competitor and top-ranking hotel management school, École Hôtelière de Lausanne, may only be an hour away, but the admission criteria is clearly more stringent there. Also, unlike Lausanne, the only medium of education at Les Roches is English.

All-round proficiency For the socio-economic category of Indian students it attracts though — many of whom have completed their schooling abroad — language is rarely a barrier. Student Ambassador Siddharth Bajaj, for instance, speaks six languages — English, Hindi, Spanish, Portuguese, French and Farsi (his Iranian mother’s tongue).

Well-travelled and with internships at luxury brands like Louis Vuitton, his entrepreneurial dreams are clearly steering him away from his father’s cold-storage business back in Ranchi.

While a sizeable number of Indian students come from families with a hospitality background, many like Bajaj are not trained to take over the reins. Recent alumni include erstwhile royals (the prince of Bhavnagar), celebrity offspring (singer Alka Yagnik’s daughter Syesha Kapoor) and famous siblings (actor Priyanka Chopra’s brother who now runs a nightclub in Pune).

Unlike in the West, which witnessed a boom in hospitality in the 1970s, its success in India is relatively recent. Also, vocational studies have always been the fallback option. Which is why, it’s surprising that the first Indian student may have well walked the corridors of Les Roches in the early 1980s; the first records of Indian graduates date back to 1985 though — the year that saw a major fire at the school, forcing it to relocate temporarily to a hotel nearby.

The embers of that fire have long grown cold. The only fires today at this school ‘village’ of 21 buildings are those that lick the stoves at cafe kitchens or fine dining restaurants, which serve cuisines of all kinds.

With 99 nationalities and 98 per cent international students on campus, adapting to cultural (or culinary) differences comes easy at Bluche. French national Clement Lebaupin, who shares his living area with three boys from Mumbai, Kolkata and Delhi, says, “At first, it was a culture shock. But now I wait for the tuck they bring back after term, and tag along, no matter what the excuse — birthdays, homesickness, ‘because it’s there’ — to the only Indian restaurant in town.” Clearly, in this corner of the Swiss Alps, India doesn’t need Yash Chopra to recommend it.

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