Mohan Panesar's 50-year love affair with wood

Mohan Panesar’s soul is entwined with the essence of wood. 

Whenever he enters his workshop along Mombasa Road, Nairobi, each morning, as he has done for the last 50 years, his hands twitch with the urge to create bespoke pieces.

He speaks of wood with poetic reverence and with the same passion a painter speaks of colour.

Each creation tells a story, a narrative of his endless love and dedication.

“I am a carpenter and will remain a carpenter,” says Panesar, better known by the moniker, Moni. He is the chief executive officer, Panesar Furniture, one of the oldest furniture companies in East Africa.

“I enjoy life here, spending time in the workshop giving wood a new dimension, just like shaping a stone into a beautiful diamond.”

His is not the often-disorganised furniture shops where pieces of raw wood, offcuts and sawdust litter every inch.

The 60,000 square feet, three-storey workshop is designed around the principles of the Japanese philosophy, Kaizen, a harmonious blend of organization and functionality and exactly what you would expect of a workshop that creates furniture fit for loyalty.

Moni’s works adorn some of the highest offices in the land and have been part of the cast in notable occasions in Kenya’s history.

For example, Kenya’s new Constitution was signed not just on a ‘table’ but what the workshop catalogue describes as ‘Presidential’, a piece of furniture that weighs approximately 300 kilogrammes!

Chatting with the 73-year-old is like taking a glimpse into the past when the furniture workshop was no more than a backyard shed. Moni speaks of the parental discipline and the sheer grit upon which his father laid the foundation for the intergenerational business that has stood the test of time.

Panesar’s love for hard work goes back to the 1940s when his father, Kundan Singh Panesar, arrived in Kenya aboard a dhow from India, armed with nothing more than 30 rupees borrowed from a friend and a big dream.

“Like others on that boat, my father had no idea where he was going. There was a 14-year-old Indian boy who had only ‘heard’ of some greener pastures on the other side of the Indian Ocean,” Moni says.

The dhow relied on tails winds which fluctuated at best. It would move on a straight course one day, and as the wind direction changed, it would yaw into the opposite direction and head towards India, much to the frustration of all. The trip took 25 days. Many got sick at sea. Others died. Kundan survived.

The journey aside, senior Panesar was not prepared for the reception that met him and the remaining travellers once the dhow docked at Mombasa.

“People in Mombasa were not ready to receive the emaciated Indians and told them to stay on board the dhow until their health status was verified. Fearing they could be harbouring diseases, all their clothes were laid up in a heap and burnt. Not the best way to start life in a new world,” says Moni.

But the resilient Kundan grew up, married and settled his family in Eastleigh Section Three, near the then-international airport. Here, in a mabati house, Moni, and his eight siblings, were born.

“I was born in April, a rainy month in Kenya. The roof, I was later told, leaked relentlessly and my mother kept moving me from one corner to the other,” he says.

In 1957, when young Moni was in Eastleigh Primary School, his father began coaching him for a future career in woodworking by making him collect the offcuts and nails from the floor of the workshop he had set up in Gikomba back in 1948.

“I would go to school on weekdays and when my other siblings opted to play over the weekend, I would be at the workshop working and collecting more pocket money than the rest. There was no excuse for not working hard,” he recalls.

His early childhood was marked by the Mau Mau uprising, a bunch that gave him and his family enough scares. His father lost three bicycles to the group that would then use the pipes to make guns.

Both the Mau Mau and the white security apparatus would take shoes off Moni and his siblings as it was considered ‘rude’ to wear shoes when few enjoyed such ‘luxuries’.

Such experiences made the family survive on bare minimums by communally sharing whatever was available with the other eight siblings.

“One day I lost my shoes to some young boys while coming from Kariakor market. When I asked my mother for a new pair, she was categorical that there was no way she was going to get me a new pair but rather have an old, worn-out pair repaired by the local cobbler. Nobody owned a shirt but anyone could wear whatever was available, regardless of your body size,” he says.

After high school in 1968, Moni proceeded to the United States where he studied aeronautical engineering with the hope of working in the local aviation industry.

Upon returning to Kenya in 1972, he faced the harsh reality that there were few career prospects in the local aviation industry since the then East African Airways was on the verge of collapse. 

“My father urged me to join him in the carpentry workshop. He also gave me a key to collect a new car at DT Dobie. ‘But this key does not come alone,’ he told me. He put his hand in the other pocket and handed out the workshop keys. As a young man thrilled with the prospect of driving a new car, I had no option but to take both. Freedom, I learnt, comes with responsibility,” says Moni.

Moni looks back with pride at the furniture business that has endured despite undergoing several shocks including a fire that wiped out everything in 1982 and the commitment required to build a lasting business.

A key strategy is to is to get generations involved in business at a very tender age and make the transition easier when they get older.

“I was six years old when I first stepped into my father’s workshop. My son has been with me for the last 15 years. Woodwork needs commitment. Look at the shine on this table. It is because I spent 25 years perfecting the paint job in the spray booth,” he says.

It has taken loads of discipline to build the successful furniture shop; waking up by 4:30am, doing some exercises in the compound, taking a cold shower and heading off to the workshop. Yet, for Mohan ‘Moni’ Panesar, woodwork is not just a craft but a lifelong romance, an endless dance with nature itself.