The New York Observer
by George Gurley
Vikram Chatwal is not your usual rich Manhattan
playboy. For starters, he has never cut his
hair and he wears a turban, in keeping with
his Sikh heritage. And while he does all that
other playboy stuff—dating fashion models,
tooling around town in an Aston Martin, running
up an $11,500 bar tab in a nightclub, hanging
out with Bill Clinton—he strikes many Manhattan
night-crawlers as having something extra, something
"spiritual", if you will. Or maybe
it’s just that he has a calming effect
on the people around him. When he himself wants
to calm down, he says, he plays Sony PlayStation
games and watches The Simpsons.
Mr. Chatwal will tell you he plans to be the
first Sikh billionaire. His father says: "Why
not? This is New York City; he’s just 31
years old; he’s got a base to start with.
The problem right now is, he’s only spending
30 percent of his time towards business. The
day he starts spending 70 percent of his time,
within two or three years he’ll make it."
His father, Sant Singh Chatwal, has a lot to
do with Vikram’s success: He owns the international
chain of Bombay Palace restaurants, as well
as 11 hotels in Manhattan. With his father’s
backing, Mr. Chatwal opened the trendy Time
hotel on West 49th Street in 1999 and, last
month, the equally hip Majestic hotel on West
55th Street. He says he’s working with
author and wellness guru Deepak Chopra to open
another hotel, the Lambs Club on West 44th Street,
with rates starting at $500, which will include
an Ayurvedic spa and an upscale Indian restaurant.
He lives high above Central Park West in an
Indian and African art-filled apartment in the
Trump International. His parents, live in an
Upper East Side penthouse where they’ve
hosted fund-raisers attended by Bill and Hillary
Clinton. During Mrs. Clinton’s Senate campaign,
The Daily News reported that Sant Chatwal was
one of her top soft-money donors, contributing
$210,000. (Chatwal pere claimed he made no personal
contributions, saying the donation came from
a chain he created, Hampshire Hotels.)
Things between the Chatwals and the Clintons
could have gotten sticky in 2000, when the U.S.
government fined Sant Chatwal $125,000 to settle
charges that he owed governments, banks and
creditors tens of millions of dollars. But that
soon blew over, and last June the Clintons both
attended the arranged marriage of Vikram’s
younger brother, Vivek, at Tavern on the Green.
Mr. Clinton even gave a toast and joked, "We’re
actually celebrating two events today: the couple’s
marriage and Vikram giving up drinking."
Mr. Chatwal gets some good-natured ribbing
from his family about his penchant for nightlife.
Earlier this month, he attended Puff Daddy’s
birthday party in Morocco, flying with the birthday
boy on a 767 lent by the King of Morocco.
"He’s always cracking jokes, always
up for partying," Mr. Chatwal said of Puff
Daddy. "We both like to go out and party
a lot. We’re both Scorpios. Every Scorpio
I’ve met, I’ve connected with. We
talk about music, women and the next party,
how we’re going to be organizing the next
big event. I think players are often confused
with playboys, which is part of it, but it’s
mainly Renaissance men—people who are doing
a lot of different things and are successful.
Someone like Puff."
I was sitting with Mr. Chatwal at La Goulue
on Madison Avenue. He was wearing a Brioni jacket,
an Hermès tie and Diesel jeans, but no
turban—he said he’d been swimming
and was running late, so his hair was up in
a bun. He calls himself more of a "cultural
Sikh," but goes to temple, prays every
day and has five Sikh tattoos on his arms. He
also has a "G" tattooed on his arm,
for the Brazilian supermodel Gisele Bündchen,
with whom he’s gone on a few dates.
I told him he didn’t seem like the usual
nightclub type—not a hell-raiser at all.
"I think that’s the Scorpio side
of me," he said, sipping a beer. "Scorpios
are either religious or sexual. You know, Mother
Teresa and Gandhi were Scorpios, but so was
Charles Manson. So it’s a real sort of
balance. That’s where the passion comes
in. So sometimes I have that subdued, religious
feel, but sometimes I’ll let it out and
go completely sexual. Or nuts. Like when I’m
with Puff."
(Later, I looked it up and found that Mother
Teresa was actually a Virgo and Gandhi was a
Libra.)
I asked what his social life had been like
recently, and he mentioned a dinner party at
the Manhattan townhouse of Lady Ghislaine Maxwell,
the daughter of the late British media baron
Robert Maxwell. The guest of honor, said Mr.
Chatwal, was Prince Andrew, who told a "quite
humorous" joke involving Pepto-Bismol and
his brother Prince Charles’ girlfriend,
Camilla Parker Bowles. Then Ms. Maxwell told
a story about how she flew a Blackhawk helicopter
in Colombia and fired a rocket into a supposed
terrorist camp.
"Ghislaine is just the most rocking babe
I’ve ever met," said Mr. Chatwal.
"She blew up a tank. That is amazing. After
that, my perception of her completely changed.
I said, ‘You have to be the coolest person
alive.’"
Mr. Chatwal said he had recently split up with
his girlfriend, a Victoria’s Secret model
from the Caribbean named Teresa Lourenco.
"I think we may get back together, but
who knows?" he said.
I knew he’d dated lots of women; I asked
what his favorite nationality was.
"Brazilian," he said. "It’s
not just the fact that they’re beautiful,
it’s the whole vibe—the language itself
drips sexuality. It’s Italian squared."
Since I had an international playboy sitting
right in front of me, I decided to take advantage
of the fact and started rattling off nationalities.
"Russian women are sort of deal-makers;
they are the smartest business people I’ve
met," he said. "Indian women talk
about marriage and kids before they’ve
had the first date. British women … I’ve
never met women who act so civilized but are
so crazy—the craziest bunch of women I’ve
ever met. Just nuts. Real mental.
"I’ve been around the world,"
he said. "The best thing about French women
is the way they speak English. That accent is
awesome. But they’re slightly pretentious,
snobs. But when you get to know them, they become
quite cute and cuddly."
Manhattan women?
"Very calculating," he said. "They’ll
do their homework before, and everything is
about what’s in it for them. You can rarely
relax."
Always unsatisfied, right? I asked.
"Completely," he said. "Whether
it’s sexually or socially, they’re
just driven. When you talk to them, they never
look at you in the eye; they’re kind of
looking over the shoulder—who else is in
the room? Like you’re the stepping stone
to the next bigger and better thing."
He said he sees himself settling down with
a Caribbean woman or someone from the Far East,
where, he said, "they have sort of a traditional
sense of understanding what a woman’s duty
is, and what a man’s duty is, to be in
a relationship together. If you date a woman
from Manhattan, you feel like the woman in the
relationship."
Last year, he bought a John Galliano dress
for $26,000 at an AIDS benefit auction; Mr.
Galliano had been commissioned by Vogue editor
Anna Wintour to design the dress with a Moulin
Rouge theme.
"I bought it and I was going to give it
to the right girl, and I really haven’t
found the right girl yet," said Mr. Chatwal.
"Probably my wife, I guess. But if things
keep going this way, I’ll send it back
and tell them to give it to Nicole, she deserves
it for her performance. It’s fitted for
her, so it’s probably best that she had
it."
He told me he thinks Gisele, the Brazilian
supermodel whose initial he has tattooed on
his arm, is the most beautiful woman in the
world. I accompanied him recently to a party
being thrown for Gisele by Vogue magazine at
the Hôtel Plaza Athénée.
He sat a few feet away from Gisele, leaning
forward and facing her. She was wearing a backless
sequined mini-dress, soaking up the attention
with Helena Christensen and two other models.
"We’re just friends, that’s
all," said Gisele. "Vikram’s
just a very sweet guy. I’ve known him since
I was 17. I’m 22 now. Vikram! I’m
talking about you! He’s just Vikram; he’s
a funny guy. Look at him! Vikram, I’m explaining
you to the world! He’s just a goofy guy—you
know Vikram, he’s just … out there,
you know what I mean? You never know what he’s
thinking. In the clouds. A cool man."
Soon, Vikram left the party with his good buddy
Robbie Kravis, the son of billionaire Henry
Kravis. They were headed for the Chelsea nightclub
Bungalow 8.
Going out at night isn’t always a party
for Mr. Chatwal. After Sept. 11, some hooligans
threw eggs at him; others have yelled "Osama!"
or "Terrorist!" After one Sikh was
murdered in the U.S, he had to hire a bodyguard,
and his father bought $100,000 worth of newspaper
ads supporting the Sikhs and making clear that
they weren’t Muslim and had nothing in
common with the Taliban.
Vikram Chatwal was born in Ethiopia. His father,
a former Indian Navy fighter pilot, started
a restaurant there, became close with Emperor
Haile Selassie, but lost a $5 million fortune
when the emperor was overthrown in 1974. Vikram
remembers bombs going off. The family ended
up in Montreal, where his father opened his
first Bombay Palace. Vikram said his childhood
was "comfortable and luxurious." His
mother, a former actress, is a "typical
Indian yenta" who smothered him with love
and food.
"So I was really fat as a kid," he
said. "My indulgence was food. I was a
plump kid. Used to go surf and turf every day."
In kindergarten, he fell in love with his next-door
neighbor, a cute French girl. He kissed her,
then told his parents. "They slapped me
and said, ‘Are you crazy? You can’t
be doing that!’"
His comfortable surroundings did little to
ease the pain of social harassment. Kids called
the brothers "diaperhead" and knocked
off their turbans.
"I could take it, I was a bit of a fighter,"
Mr. Chatwal said. "My brother was really
timid and shy and couldn’t take it, so
emotionally he has still been scarred by it.
My father was very authoritative: ‘You
have to pray, you have to wear the turban, you
have to do this.’ We couldn’t understand
him, because we were being raised in this sort
of Western world. And we couldn’t understand
our peers, because we seemed like those aliens
from Mars Attacks."
Sant Chatwal also taught Vikram about work,
making him a busboy at a Beefsteak Charlie’s
he owned.
Things got less stressful for Vikram when the
family moved to Manhattan in 1982 and the boys
attended the private United Nations International
School. Still, he said, "we were the only
Sikhs in New York for a while."
He made good grades but skipped classes.
"It was right when hip-hop started—I
became like a Sikh homeboy," he said. "Wearing
thick laces, Run-D.M.C.-style chains. I got
busted a couple times for shoplifting, because
that was the cool thing to do."
His parents made him go to a Sikh camp upstate.
"I’m glad I went," he said.
"One thing I’m happy about that my
parents instilled is that I stayed a Sikh. I
have never cut my hair, and I’m happy I
didn’t."
He was accepted into the University of Pennsylvania’s
Wharton School of Business. He got a job at
Morgan Stanley but quit after eight months because,
he said, "I couldn’t deal with the
authority." He became a model, appearing
in Vogue. "It was a lot of fun," Vikram
said. "High-pulse fun. The downside is
that it’s so arbitrary, subjective."
After eight months of modeling, his father
gave him an ultimatum: Either he could have
an arranged marriage or work in the family business.
His parents had a few girls in mind, and Vikram
had met them. He joined the family business.
Business has been good to him. Not only did
he visit Bill Clinton in the White House, the
two also spent time together on a trip Mr. Clinton
made to India last year.
"We had a dinner, and every Indian woman
was basically in love with him, and they were
trying to sit next to him," Mr. Chatwal
said. "These girls kept saying, ‘We
want to go back to Clinton’s suite.’"
"I know him very well," he said of
the former President. He added that the two
men have sat down and talked often about books
and Gandhi, as well as, he said, "women
and models I’ve dated. He, like any man
in the world, appreciates beauty."
What Mr. Chatwal really wants to be is an actor.
He had a few seconds onscreen in the fashion
spoof Zoolander, as a member of Owen Wilson’s
posse, playing a prince in a drug scene.
"Owen’s a friend of mine," he
said. "He’s a really good guy. We
go jogging together a lot in the park."
He’s landed a starring role in a small
independent movie that starts filming in February,
called One Dollar Curry. He’ll play a Sikh
cabdriver who falls for a Parisian woman, even
though he’s supposed to have an arranged
marriage. The movie will be shot in France.
In the meantime, he’s enjoying New York.
On Halloween night, he celebrated his birthday
with a party under a heated tent on the roof
of his hotel, the Majestic. A Clockwork Orange
was looping on the big TV screen, heavy-metal
music was blasting, guests drank Cristal and
Dom Perignon champagne. Many of the women wore
skimpy outfits. I asked some of the guests about
their friend Vikram.
"He’s very, very spiritual,"
said magician David Blaine. "He’s
very, very, very giving. He’s very, very
charming."
"I’ve known Vikram for a long time—long
enough to know he’s a beautiful person,"
said a Siberian model named Irina.
Fashion designer Diane von Furstenberg—whom
Mr. Chatwal calls "the most amazing woman
I’ve ever met in my life, up there with
Hillary Clinton"—said he had "a
big heart" and was "extremely attractive."
Puff Daddy arrived, dressed as a king with
a crown and a long, flowing red robe. "He’s
a real cool, down-to-earth guy," said the
rapper of Mr. Chatwal.
How were they alike?
"We’re not. Nobody’s like me.
Nobody’s like him," said Puff Daddy.
The next day, the two would be on the 767 headed
for Morocco.
I asked Mr. Chatwal how he felt.
"I’m feeling as high as I’ve
ever felt, naturally," he said. "All
my friends are here, and it’s just the
best feeling in the world. I couldn’t be
happier. Rock star, movie star—whatever
it is, it just feels great.
This column ran on page 1 in the 11/18/2002
edition of The New York Observer.
