I literally waltzed my way across to the other side of the carpet—to the area marked ‘Reception’. The gentleman standing behind the counter showed all the signs of fatigue resulting from a sleepless night. But as I approached, he snapped alert and, conjuring up a smile, wished me good morning.
I was a little flustered. Without returning the greeting, I introduced myself. ‘I’ve got a job here, I met the manager Mr Marco Polo last night. He asked me to report today. Can I meet him now?’
His expression changed in a trice. The formal politeness gave way to a warm, friendly smile. ‘Welcome! Welcome!’ he said. ‘The Orient’s oldest hotel welcomes its youngest staff member.’
I was tongue-tied with nervousness. He extended his right hand and said, ‘My name is Satyasundar Bose—at least, that’s what my father christened me. As luck would have it, I have now become Sata Bose.’
I must have been staring blankly at him for some time, for with an affectionate nudge he said, ‘You will tire of this accursed face soon. In the long run it may even nauseate you. You may even throw up every time you see it. Come round behind the counter, so that I can complete the coronation formalities of Shahjahan Hotel’s young prince.’
I said, ‘I should meet Mr Marco Polo and...’
‘No need,’ said Bose, ‘he briefed me last night. It’s time to rev up.’
‘Meaning?’
‘You know how cars refuel and rev up their engines, don’t you? You must do the same.’ I smiled at his manner of speech. He continued, ‘Have you heard of the AAB?
‘Automobile Association of Bengal?’
‘That’s right. They have two competitions—a speed test to see how fast one can drive and an endurance test to see how long one can drive. We have a combination of the two here—a speed-cum-endurance test. The management of Shahjahan wants to find out how quickly you can do how much work.’
The telephone next to him rang. He picked up the receiver and in an artificial Anglo-Indian accent said, ‘Good morning, Shahjahan Hotel reception. Just a minute, Mr and Mrs Satarawalla, yes, room number two thirty-two, you’re welcome...’
I couldn’t comprehend a word. Bose smiled at me and said, ‘For now, concentrate on listening, you’ll get the hang of it eventually. Just don’t let your memory rust...electroplate it and keep it shining. The rest will come to you automatically. Take room numbers, for example...it helps a lot to know every guest’s room number.’
I looked at the reception counter carefully. There were three chairs behind it, but it was the done thing to keep standing. The table behind it had a typewriter and, next to it, a few thick ledgers: the hotel registers. The pendulum of an old, large clock oscillated lazily on the wall, as though it had just woken up from a long slumber and was ruminating.
‘Come around inside,’ said Bose again.
My thoughts must have shown on my face, which was probably why he asked, ‘Unnerved already?’
Embarrassed, I shook my head. ‘No, of course not.’
He laughed, looked around warily and said in a conspiratorial whisper, ‘Wait till the hotel wakes up—you’ll be amazed.’
I went behind the counter. As the telephone rang again, Bose picked up the receiver with practiced ease and spoke in a soft and stylish voice, ‘Shahjahan reception.’ Hearing the speaker at the other end he laughed and said, ‘Yes, Sata here.’ The two perhaps exchanged some joke, as Bose guffawed loudly. He put the receiver down and said, ‘The steward will be here any minute. Try to “butter” him up a little and keep him in good humour.’
In a few minutes, I saw a huge figure approaching the reception, a veritable Mount Vesuvius. But despite his girth, the man’s gait reminded me of a feather drifting in the breeze. His complexion was a dark shade of burnt copper, his eyes a pair of flaming wicks. He charged at me like a bull. ‘So, you’re the chap who got rid of Rosie!’
Without giving me a chance to reply, he thrust his left wrist under my nose. Drawing my attention to his watch he said that breakfast would be ready in fifteen minutes, and since the breakfast cards hadn’t been prepared the previous night they had to be done immediately. It was obvious from the way he spoke that he wasn’t an Englishman. In halting, European English he said, ‘Take down, take down quickly.’
Bose pushed a shorthand pad across and said softly, ‘Write it down.’
Without further ado the steward barked out a list of items. Strange words, some of which I had never heard before, assailed my ears: chilled pineapple juice, rice crisps, eggs—boiled, fried, poached, scrambled. The man stopped a while, gulped, and then continued yelling in the manner of reciting a multiplication table: omelette—prawn, cheese, tomato...and so on. Words came tumbling out of his mouth like gunfire as he came to a halt with ‘coffee’.
‘Jaldi, jaldi mangta,’ he said, without even looking at me, and disappeared without giving me a chance to ask anything.
I was nearly in tears, never having heard the names of all those strange dishes before. I hadn’t been able to take down even half of what he’d said.
‘Fifty breakfast cards have to be prepared immediately,’ said Bose.
Seeing my face, he tried to console me. ‘Never mind Jimmy—the fellow always behaves that way—grunts like an old boar all the time.’
‘I haven’t been able to write down the breakfast list,’ I told him piteously.
‘Don’t worry about that. I know Jimmy’s list by heart. I’ll call out the names and you can type them out slowly. Ever since I came to this hotel I’ve been seeing the same menu, and he still wants new cards every day. At first I used to feel scared too, but now it makes me laugh—so many exotic names and pronunciations. In a couple of days you’ll be able to tell from the steward’s face what the menu will be—the moment he says Salad Italienne, you will know that our Italian steward wants consommé froid en tasse and potage albion.’
A novice, I made a lot of spelling errors in typing out the menu that day. Eventually, Bose took over the task himself, while I walked out from behind the counter and looked around the building. Things were very quiet at this hour of the morning—Shahjahan Hotel was not fully awake yet. The kitchen and pantry, however, hummed with a suppressed excitement. The bearers were pouring milk into pots, arranging cups and saucers, polishing the cutlery.
Returning to the reception counter I found Bose typing furiously. Had we waited for me to type the cards, breakfast would not have been served before lunch. But Bose’s practised fingers waltzed through the French words with speed and dexterity. How old was he? I wondered. Not more than thirty-two, thirty-three surely. He had an athletic build—not an ounce of excess fat anywhere on his body. His well-ironed jacket and trousers and matching tie set off his figure very well.
‘You know French?’ I asked.
‘French!’ He made a face. ‘You couldn’t get a word of French out of me at gunpoint. Of course, I know the names of the dishes—but then, even our head cook, who can’t sign his name, knows those names by heart.’ Arranging the cards, he continued, ‘The English, so clever in so many ways, don’t know to cook—you won’t find the name of a single decent preparation in John Bull’s dictionary.’
My knowledge of occidental cooking was limited to ‘Keshto Café’, situated next to Ripon College. The chop and the cutlet—gastronomic delights in my student days—were almost synonymous with British civilization. I was also acquainted with another rare English dish—the mamlette. I now discovered that the English had no hand in the invention of the chop or the cutlet, and that the mamlette was really an omelette, for which there were so many recipes in continental cuisine that a thick tome titled The Dictionary of Omelettes had been published in English.
Earlier, every time I ate out with my old employer, I always attacked the food without worrying about its name. It was he who had told me about the honest and inquisitive gentleman who had vowed never to eat anything without knowing its ‘background story’, and had added in a grave tone that, as a result, the poor man had eventual
ly died of starvation.
Dispatching the cards to the dining room, Bose said, ‘You must have heard of Henry the eighth. His fat bearded face in the history textbook made me so angry that I cut out his picture with a blade and threw it away. Had I known then that he had dug our graves for us, I wouldn’t have stopped there. I’d have burnt it as well.’
‘Why?’ I asked, astonished.
‘Henry the eighth was as fond of eating as he was of getting married,’ said Bose. ‘He once went to a duke’s house for dinner. The other guests at the table noticed that he kept glancing at a piece of paper on the table every now and then before going back to the food. The assembled lords and counts, earls and dukes were at a loss—it must be a very important document, they thought, for His Majesty to have to read it even during dinner. After the meal, though, the king left the piece of paper on the table and retired to the drawing room. The attendants crowded around the table—but alas, it carried no state secret, only the names of a few dishes—the ones they had just had. The host had put them down on a piece of paper and given it to the king. Everyone said, “What a wonderful idea! This way you don’t have to stuff yourself with the boring items and then regret it when something lip-smacking turns up. If you know in advance you can decide what to eat and what to avoid, which ones to take more of and which ones less.”’
Bose smiled and continued, ‘That was the beginning of the menu card. What was intended as a convenience for a king has become a source of endless trouble for us hotel employees. Type the breakfast, lunch and dinner menu cards every day, arrange for them to be displayed at every table, and after the meals send the cards back to the storeroom where they gather dust for about a year. Then, one day, the Salvation Army is sent for, and they lift all the old papers and carry them off in a lorry.’
Glancing at the clock, he said, ‘Here, at Shahjahan, we have divided time in a different way. We start our day here with bed tea. Then comes breakfast time. What the world calls noon is lunchtime for us. Afternoon teatime and dinnertime follow—and no, it doesn’t end there. The date on the calendar might change; we don’t, as you will see.’
The workload at the hotel counter increases right from breakfast. It leaves one with no time for idle chitchat. Some of the guests leave the comfort of their cosy rooms around this time and come down to relax in the lounge. As they file past the counter in ones and twos, there is a mechanical exchange of good mornings—a guest serves a perfunctory ‘good morning’ which Bose volleys back with the expertise of a professional tennis player: ‘Good morning, Mr Claybar!’ ‘Good Morning, madam, hope you slept well.’
‘Madam’ was an elderly American lady. Bose had obviously touched upon a raw nerve.
‘Sleep? My dear boy, I haven’t known sleep for eight years. At first I took pills, then injections—but nothing works now. That’s why I’ve come to the Orient. One has heard so much about miracle healing in this country.’
Bose was appropriately sympathetic. ‘That’s sad! With so many rogues and scoundrels in the world, why does God have to be so cruel to someone as good as you? But don’t worry, this illness is easily cured.’
The lady sighed. ‘I don’t believe I’ll be able to sleep again in this lifetime.’
‘God forbid! My aunt had the same problem, but she recovered.’
‘Really! What medicine did she take?’ The lady practically threw herself over the counter.
‘No medicines...simply prayers. My aunt used to say: There is no power greater than prayer. Prayer can move even mountains.’
The lady was impressed. Putting down her vanity bag and camera on the counter and adjusting the scarf on her head, she asked, ‘Does she have supernatural powers?’
Before Bose could reply, another gentleman came along and stood across the counter—a foreigner, good-looking, six feet tall, impressively built as if moulded in Dorman Long steel. Bose leaned towards him and said, ‘Good morning, doctor.’
Looking sharply from behind his glasses, the doctor returned the greeting and said gravely, ‘May I have ten rupees?’
‘Of course.’ Bose opened the cash box to his right, took out ten one-rupee notes and gave them to the doctor, who scribbled his signature with his left hand on a printed voucher form and left.
‘Who is he?’ whispered the lady.
‘Dr Sutherland,’ replied Bose. ‘He’s here representing the World Health Organization.’
The lady seemed upset. She said disapprovingly, ‘You people are mad, you make no effort whatsoever to rediscover your ancient medical sciences. These foreign doctors whom you worship like demigods and spend millions of dollars on can’t even make an ordinary American sleep. While the naked fakirs of this country can stay asleep a couple of hundred years if they want to.’
Caught in a bind, Bose opted for silence.
The lady continued, ‘I’m not interested in your Sutherland, I’m interested in your aunt. I want to meet the great lady; if necessary I’ll arrange for her to go on television. You have no idea how much the United States needs your aunt.’
Bose’s eyes misted over. He pulled out a handkerchief and wiped them.
The lady asked in consternation, ‘What is it? Have I said something to upset you?’
Still wiping his eyes, Bose answered, ‘No, no, it’s not your fault. How could you have known that I lost my aunt just two months ago?’
‘Please forgive me, Mr Bose, I’m awfully sorry—may your aunt’s soul rest in peace,’ said the mortified lady and left hurriedly in search of a taxi.
Bose’s sudden outburst had caught me unawares, too. I tried to console him, ‘No one lives forever, Mr Bose. My father used to say that all of us have to learn to live alone in this world.’
Bose began laughing, leaving me utterly bewildered. ‘I have no aunt,’ he said. ‘I made it all up. If I hadn’t killed my aunt quickly, that woman would have wasted another hour of my time, and there’s a lot of work piled up.’
I was speechless for a while. ‘You know the high court on Old Post Office Street, near St John’s Church? That’s the right place for you,’ I told him when I had recovered. ‘With this sort of presence of mind you would have owned a car and a house by now.’
Bose seemed lost in thought. ‘House? Car?’ he mused almost to himself. ‘Never mind, you’re new, so we’ll leave you out if it.’ He might have said more, but a bearer came and informed him that the manager was downstairs on kitchen inspection.
Bose turned towards me. ‘Go and have a darshan of Mr Marco Polo’s beautiful face. You’ll have to set up home with him.’
‘What’s he like?’ I asked apprehensively.
‘What do you think?’
‘It’s a romantic name. I had no idea such names were still in vogue.’
‘Romantic indeed,’ said Bose. ‘His more famous namesake spent his last days in jail, let’s see where this one goes.’
‘Is that a possibility?’ I asked.
‘Oh no, I merely said that in passing. He’s very efficient, a perfect manager. You know what Omar Khayyam said, don’t you? “It’s difficult for a country to get a good prime minister, but it’s even more difficult to get a good hotel manager.” They are born, not made. Countries have been known to survive bad ministers but no hotel can survive a bad manager,’ Bose said, laughing.
‘He was the manager of the biggest hotel in Rangoon,’ he continued. ‘Used to earn twice as much as here. But some whim brought him to Calcutta. At first we thought he may have been running away from some trouble he had got into, but the steward of that hotel, who stayed with us for two days on his way back to France, said that the Rangoon hotel was still sending requests to Marco Polo to go back.’
‘Why hasn’t the floor been cleaned? Even a pigsty is cleaner than this,’ screamed the manager, standing in the middle of the kitchen.
The head cook and an assistant were scurrying about the room, while Marco Polo scoured the corners for grime. He raised his head on hearing my footsteps. ‘Hello, so you’re he
re.’
I bade him good morning.
‘Learning the ropes, I hope?’ he asked.
The inquisition of the head cook was called to a halt, as the manager set off with me towards his office.
It was a small room, sparsely furnished. Three chairs were arranged around a table. On one side of the table was a pile of files, on another a typewriter. Two steel cupboards stood in a corner. There was a door in the wall to the right, which probably connected the office to Marco Polo’s bedroom.
He sat down and lit a cigar—a tall, manly figure, a trifle overweight for his age. He was balding a little as well, but because his hair was close-cropped, the bald patch didn’t show too much. The cigar made the grave face look even more so—he could have easily played Churchill onstage.
Preparing to dictate letters, he looked at me and said sadly, ‘Such a good girl—I’ll never find another Rosie. I had nothing to worry about in the office thanks to her. She typed my letters whenever I asked her to—even at midnight. There are some letters we get that can’t be left unanswered, they have to be replied to immediately.’
He went on to dictate a couple of letters. The language wasn’t very polished, but humility dripped from every line. It was obvious he kept detailed tabs on what wines were available. Having imported some liquor recently, he proudly dictated a circular: ‘We’re the only ones in India to import this world-famous liquor.’
Dictation over, Marco Polo left. Evidently he had a lot of other work pending. It is easier to rule over a small kingdom than manage a large hotel. Two hundred guests could give rise to two hundred problems a minute. The manager has to solve them all personally.
Typing letters was not something I was unused to, so it didn’t take much time. Sending them to the manager’s room for him to sign, I started sorting the papers. Though I owed my job to her departure, Rosie had left me in the lurch by running away suddenly—I had no idea where things were. I couldn’t even find a list. Trusting only my eyes and hands I started rearranging the mountains of files.
Chowringhee Page 3