(5 May ’08)
By April, in hotels,
the last of the charters and the first of the Indian guests mingle. British
laundryman meets Indian rice dealer.
In the swimming pool,
early in the morning, the gorah is
pretending to be a maharajah, soaking in luxury, after a cuppa, building up an
appetite for that scrumptious ‘breakky’ buffet, readying himself to beat the
heat of the afternoon. Beside him, at the tiled edge of the water, squats our
pot-bellied brownie from UP or Rajasthan or Tamil Nadu, toothbrush in hand,
ready to gargle, ogling at the white skin.
The next you know, the
foreigner is up in the lobby, without the towel, calling up Guest Relations,
his charter rep, his travel agent, the Press, to complain bitterly about his
fellow hotel occupant. This East meets West doesn’t seem to work smoothly, at
least when off-season meets dollar-payer.
Whilst the gent from
Lent enjoys his balcao-with-a-view, his Jabalpuri neighbour, who is given a
suppliers’-entrance-facing room, ruins it perfectly. He urinates on the very
beach that Marketing has ‘sold’ as a tropical paradise. No shyness there!!
However, we’re prudes when it comes to wearing swimming trunks; indeed, men
jump into sophisticated pools in their pyjamas and rubber slippers; their wives
follow, fully clad in petticoats, ‘nighties’, wearing bangles and with oiled hair.
Yup, I’ve seen it all. Of course, most of the time, the wives aren’t there, for
these are ‘conferences’, an all-male affair. These males, over a hundred of
them at times, are received with the ridiculous aarti-tikka that makes the customer-service girl’s hand ache.
Unlike the Finns and Germans who get hysterically excited over the stringy
garlands, the dark-skin is more interested in the freebies like soaps and
shampoos. Maybe napkins and candle-holders. Or even curtains. Actually, at the
end of the stay, it isn’t worth maroing the
curtains because they’ve been used for wiping oily hands after daroo and pakodas. Goa means daroo and
girls from Baina. The homework is well done, they know exactly what’s available
where. If they haven’t done it, no problem, there’s always a staff who will
‘oblige’ for a price.
When I worked in a five
star deluxe resort, I hated Indian guests. I wasn’t surprised when an
ex-colleague remarked to me that she still does. We didn’t usually get the
up-market Amitabh Bacchan kinds. They came during the season or went to very
exclusive places which no ordinary mortal could afford. For the rock-bottom
prices the normal Indian paid, they suffered: the hotel used to get
renovated/painted through the afternoons.
Most of the restaurants were shut, half the staff was laid off, and even
the weather was cruel. Either they suffered the sultry heat of summer, or the
unrelenting downpours of the monsoons. Sightseeing was restricted: of course,
our conferences’ idea of sightseeing was taking an unabashed look at the female
of the Caucasian species. No churches, thank you, nor temples nor
bitches…excuse, beaches.
There were some men,
though, who actually struck up conversations with the foreigners. (Indian women
don’t talk, apparently.) The topic was unvaryingly about income.
‘How-much-you-earn’ vs ‘what-you-do’. The brighter sparks ask “Why you came to
India?”
The times they are
a-changing. A colleague from my present office in Mumbai said she was going to
Goa for a weekend to read a book. She wasn’t interested in sight-seeing,
partying, swimming. It mattered not to her whether she was by the sea or in an
ex-mine. She wanted greenery and silence. She wanted solitude. She wanted to
get a clean room, food on time in that room, and little else. She was going
alone. No housework, no phone-calls, no tv, just to read and sleep. The little
slaves that did the tasks invisibly were what she wanted to pay for. She could
have done that in a Mumbai hotel, but that would have been expensive. So Goa
really is turning into a getaway for a different kind of tourist. Not five-stars, but the lesser hotels need to
look at this kind of guest during the off-season, and keep them safe from the
rice-and-hosiery dealer type of conferences.
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