18-year-old Kottarappu Chattu Kuttan crossed to what was then Ceylon by boat from Kerala in 1938. He started working as a domestic servant, and then joined the Galle Face in 1942. Though he retired as a waiter in the 1980s, he was kept on at the front entrance, where he "found his true calling."
"Emperor Hirohito, Richard Nixon, Sir Laurence Olivier and George Bernard Shaw came and stayed with us," he told Agence France-Presse in 2010. He also met Lord Mountbatten and Jawaharlal Nehru, the then Princess Elizabeth, and the Bond girl, Ursula Andress. And he saw a Japanese fighter-plane crash-land in the grounds during World War Two.
The hotel held a minute's silence as a tribute to Mr Kuttan.
What a life!!
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-30104851
