At their homestay, actress Saiyami Kher’s parents, Adwait and Uttara, will make sure your hands do the talking
File pics
Growing up as a kid in Mumbai Central, my limited exposure to carpentry was through my father. He loved acquiring different kinds of wood polishes—a dark chocolate, a sienna and on and on it went. But what I remember the most are summer afternoons when we would be out on the balcony putting on the first coat of polish on an old chair or table, relishing working with our hands.
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Cut to 2019 when I attended a carpentry workshop in Chembur (that was eventually discontinued) and soon forgot all about my love for woodworking as the pandemic took over six months later. So when we at Sunday mid-day heard about a carpentry workshop at Nashik, it felt serendipitous.
We loved the photo frame we were able to make within few hours; (right) Adwait tries to show a student how to use a grinder to soften the edges
It was also the word we used when we introduced ourselves to Adwait Kher, the muscle behind Utopia Farmstay and the carpentry workshop—however, I felt the brain was his wife Uttara (sorry but not sorry, Adwait).
The journey of the Kher family from Pali Hill to the middle of nowhere dates back from the late 1990s when Adwait was at the peak of his career in hospitality, working at the Oberoi, and was a few years away from taking up the reins of management. “My manager at the time asked if I had gone off my rocker,” laughs the 72-year-old Kher, whose stamina is staggering—he manages the property, which has a small farming section, runs the carpentry workshop and oversees the yoga workshop run by his daughter Saunskruti, along with his wife.
Our prized possesion, a book shelf
When we say farmstay we don’t mean there are cattle running around but it is definitely one of those places where the sound of vehicles is an oddity and where the birds are your wakeup alarm.
Right off the bat, I would say that if you are heading there for a carpentry workshop and hope to get time to chill and roam around, then banish that notion right away. The level 1 workshop we attended was gruelling, to say the least, and left us feeling sore, with very little physical capability at the end of the day, other than eating and passing out with sawdust in our hair.
How the bookshelf began
The workshops start at 9 am, break for lunch and you are back to work by 2.45 pm until 6 pm; in our case it ran longer. By us I mean my partner-in-crime in general, Parth, whose mild enthusiasm gave away to exhaustion by the end of day one itself.
The almost-three-day workshop begins with a bit of history about carpentry and then moves on to practicals very quickly.
Parth Satam, tries to use the handsaw on a stick of raw teakwood
Adwait usually pre-measures the wood before handing over to the class in this level, this changes as you level-up and learn to measure and mark under his supervision. The block of fat square wood that had a few markings and measurements on it that were indecipherable at first. My only clue—it’s a photo frame. The one thing I really liked about Adwait is that he doesn’t seem to rush to figure things out quickly. For example, he gives me about 10 minutes with this piece of wood and doesn’t run out of patience when I still get it wrong as to how to begin and where to make the first cut. “Well, okay, we can do that but then where’s the fun in that?” he asks, when I told him an uninspired way to begin what most of us think of as a photo frame, a square mount. I soon realised that Adwait is one of those who bends to the will of the wood rather than the other way round. The pine wood we were working with was slightly sturdier than in the past workshop I had attended, because it was Russian pine wood that is sourced from a manufacturing company nearby, again a big part of his mantra of using materials at hand.
“We just have to look around and we will get everything we need from around us. No need to spend money, even the tools to be a decent hobby carpenter at home is a mere Rs 10,000,” says Adwait, indicating the table of tools in the open-air workshop.
Yours truly sanding some wood to smoothen it out
My photo frame makes me look like an artist and I improve on that with the bookshelf that we take up on the second day. The bookshelf too is from the same material but a raw stick of teak wood was added in the mix as the fourth wall for the shelf. Another plus of this workshop is that Adwait puts you in touch with the tools to use immediately. So you have no time to be hesitant about using a jigsaw, a grinder, a sander and even understand rudimentary polishing.
We loved everything about the Utopia Farmstay right from the repurposed wood that makes our beds, our lamps and even the flower vases. It seems the way of life here is to waste nothing. “There is nothing here that has been purchased like the bed or the common area’s dining table. Even the windows in our rooms are made of repurposed wood and that is a way of life I believe in carpentry too. We often become too technical and want to run before we walk,” he says.
A wine stopper is being polished and is one of the first items you learn at the workshop
So if you want to learn carpentry while being at peace with nature this should be your go-to, especially in the monsoon, when the Godavari river swells up to the backyard of the farmstay.
Rs 18,900
Per person
Rs 14,500
Per person if you go in pairs
Who are the Khers?
Adwait Kher is the son of yestyear actress Usha Kiran and is married to Uttara, who was crowned Miss India in 1992. The couple has two daughters actress Saiyami and Saunskruti
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