Chowringhee

by Mani Shankar Mukherji

  I asked whether the suite should be reserved for them for one more day. Putting on his shirt, he said, ‘I don’t know yet—please ask Mr Bose to telephone me.’

  Returning to the counter, I saw that Bose-da had already taken charge of Shahjahan Hotel.

  ‘The lady’s left this envelope for you—and there weren’t enough pillows in the room, they had an uncomfortable night,’ I told him in one breath.

  Peeping into the envelope, Bose-da said, ‘The lady’s embarrassing me. People all over the world do as they please, so why should Mrs Pakrashi be any different? I’m not such a cad that I will put her name down in the register unless she gives me twenty rupees.’

  Turning to me he said, ‘It’s essential to enquire into guests’ complaints. If Marco Polo finds out, he’ll give Nityahari hell. You’d better inform Nityahari—after all, Mr Pakrashi has his eyes on this hotel, he could join the board any day.’

  I had no idea where Nityahari was, or where his stores were. Parabashia was roaming around so I took him along and went back upstairs. On the way up I saw Mrs Pakrashi’s companion coming down, empty-handed. He had come in the night before without any luggage.

  The building was like a city in itself. There were so many rooms, so many corridors and so many lanes and by-lanes that it took ages to know them, and you could never be sure you’d got to know them all. We walked along the corridor on the second floor, rows of rooms on either side, till the carpeted passage came to an end. There was a closed door to the right—I thought it was another room, but when Parabashia turned the handle, I saw that it led to yet another corridor. We were walking south to north; again there were rows of rooms on either side of the corridor, but these rooms weren’t air-conditioned, and the corridor seemed a little narrow.

  Parabashia told me that this was the oldest part of the hotel. Mr Simpson had built it himself, and he still frequented it more often than the rest of the hotel.

  A few doors were slightly ajar, but you couldn’t see much through them as you walked by. Only the swinging shadows made it clear that fans were whirring overhead. The muted sound of radios could also be heard from one or two rooms. In one room there were two Japanese gentlemen, each with a mug of beer; next to them was an American family. In the next room was a Sikh who had taken off his turban and beard-netting to give them an airing, and further on, judging from his garments, was a Burmese. I caught snatches of conversation in various languages—it was as though I were a child tuning a shortwave radio—and fragments of languages from different parts of the world drifted up before drowning in the flow of some other tongue.

  In the midst of all this, a little Chinese boy was trying to relieve himself of his clothes with philosophical detachment. He had already taken off his shirt, and was trying in vain to pull off his shorts as well. Suddenly he tottered over to me and grabbed my hand, smiling. I couldn’t make out what he was saying, but his gestures were clear—the poor thing had wet his pants, and even got part of the carpet sopping wet.

  Parabashia burst out in protest, ‘These rascals will destroy the carpets!’ It seems that a German boy had once answered nature’s greater call on the carpet—and it was Parabashia who had had to wrinkle his nose and summon the sweeper. Ever since, he has been afraid of little boys.

  I was about to scoop the child up in my arms, but Parabashia hastily stopped me as though I were about to touch a live bomb. ‘I don’t trust these Chinese children,’ he said. ‘He might be up to more mischief—perhaps the sweeper will have to be called.’

  The little boy was stumbling around, trying to find his room but, being unable to locate it, started crying. Accompanied by Parabashia, I eventually tracked down the boy’s parents. They didn’t know English, and were a little scared at not being able to find their son. They hadn’t realized that the young man had walked out of their room and arrived in this part of the hotel. They thanked us profusely in Chinese—and, guessing at their meaning, Parabashia proceeded to scold the mother in his own patois, trying to explain that Calcutta wasn’t safe and that there was no dearth of kidnappers here.

  Back in the corridor, Parabashia said solemnly, ‘I suspect Mr Lenin.’ How on earth had Comrade Lenin arrived at Calcutta’s Shahjahan Hotel? But Parabashia’s next statement clarified that Mr Lenin was none other than the linen clerk Nityahari. Apparently, he loved children and often lured them to his room whenever he got the chance. As he counted his bedspreads, pillows, sheets and napkins, he made faces, tickled them, bounced on his bed—antics which the children enjoyed immensely. He had even been pulled up a couple of times for doing this.

  Nityahari was seated amidst a mountain of linen, a pair of spectacles perched on his nose. The washed linen was piled high on one side, and the soiled linen on the floor. When he saw me, he flew into a rage. ‘Just a minute! Just when I can’t account for twenty-two towels, you have to have a word with me.’ He paused, then continued in a calmer voice, ‘Try to understand my predicament—if I have to buy twenty-two towels with my own money, they’ll have to sell me to raise the cash.’

  ‘There’s a complaint against you,’ said Parabashia.

  ‘Complaint? Against me? Who has the audacity to criticize me? I’ve spent thirty years in this hotel, I’ve kept track of the governors’ bedclothes and pillows, they haven’t said a word against me, and someone dares complain!’

  ‘There weren’t enough pillows in suite number one last night,’ I explained.

  ‘Impossible!’ he screamed.

  I was about to leave when Nityahari stood up, picked up his notebook and said, ‘Suite number one. Not enough pillows. Impossible. Nityahari Bhattacharya is not quite in his dotage yet, he cannot be accused of not putting enough pillows in the special suite. Let’s go and take a look.’

  In his half-sleeved shirt, dhoti and worn-out slippers he practically dragged me all the way to suite number one.

  On the way he said, ‘You have some nerve, trying to catch me out. The number of pillows, mattresses and towels in every room in this hotel is at my fingertips. Two of the pillows are feather ones, which Simpson himself used. Suite number two has eight pillows; suite number one, four. And you come to tell me there aren’t enough pillows?’

  When we unlocked the door to suite number one and walked in, there was only one pillow visible. Nityahari seemed taken aback at first, but the next moment he exploded, ‘Impossible! They must have been rolling around on the floor in a drunken fit and forgotten it afterwards.’

  ‘Yesterday was dry day,’ I pointed out.

  He brushed aside my objection. ‘You tell me! As if Calcutta becomes a chaste widow on dry day!’

  He suddenly crouched on the floor and peered beneath the bed, crying out in triumph. Crawling underneath and pulling out three pillows, he said, ‘There you are, sir—I nearly lost my job. No one would have believed that I had put in the pillows and that they were playing around with them on the floor. Even after thirty years of service, supplying pillows to the likes of the Governor-General, I would have lost my job.’

  As I saw for myself, the pillows had indeed been lying beneath the bed. Relenting a little when he saw my face, Nityahari said, ‘You’re young, you don’t know a thing about hotels yet. Do you suppose people get drunk only on liquor? Rubbish—when old women get stars in their eyes they’re drunk most of the time. Of course, it’s none of my business—you’ve booked a room with your own money, you have every right to play with the pillows.’ He swallowed. ‘But why drop the pillows on the floor and then bay for my blood?’

  Sensing that things were going wrong, Parabashia had made off, leaving me alone, wishing I too could make a getaway. Nityahari was still at it. ‘You may think grown-ups can’t behave this way—but that’s nonsense! Even adults become babies when the spirit gets them. Mark my words: I don’t delegate, I’ve been supplying pillows with my own hands for thirty years.’

  I tried to leave, but he grabbed my hand. ‘Where are you off to?’

  ‘Downstairs,’ I said.
r />   ‘What’s the hurry—no one gets away from me so easily.’ Even at that early hour his eyes were glowing like embers.

  ‘What do I have to do?’ I asked him.

  The fire in his eyes dimmed—he seemed to be bringing himself under control. Softly, he said, ‘Will you pour some water on my hands?’

  ‘Whatever for?’ I asked.

  ‘I have to wash their sins off, haven’t I?’

  There was running water in the toilet, but he wouldn’t touch the taps in suite number one—as though the so-called sins had permeated everywhere. I discovered a mug in the bathroom and poured water from it on to his hands. There was some liquid soap above the basin, but he didn’t even look at it, taking out a bar of carbolic soap from his own pocket instead. There was no telling when he would have to wash his hands after rummaging through the linen, so he always had a few bars of soap on him. Washing his hands carefully, he said, ‘I must have stolen millions of clothes from washermen in my previous life.’

  Returning to the room he sat down on the edge of the bed. ‘Can you tell me how many pillows there are in this hotel?’

  ‘How should I know?’ I said.

  ‘Nine hundred and fifty,’ he whispered. ‘There were a thousand originally, but fifty have been torn. The stuffing’s in a corner of my room—sins!’ He brought his mouth close to my ears and distorted his face. ‘A thousand sins!’

  He had my full attention by now. I asked, ‘Why sins?’

  ‘Didn’t your father give you an education? Didn’t he pay your school fees?’ he admonished.

  ‘He paid to the best of his abilities—he never cheated anyone,’ I said.

  ‘Well then? What did the teacher teach you? Don’t you know that millions and billions of sins are committed every moment in hotels and bars and drinking joints?’

  ‘Thousands of people come here on business—have they all committed sins?’ I asked naively.

  ‘Of course they have. If they hadn’t, would they have needed to get out of their homes, or even spend the night outside?’ Nityahari’s eyes were glowing again. ‘How long have you been working?’

  ‘Not very long.’’

  Not gone to the dogs yet, I hope?’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘Have you met Rosie?’

  ‘I have, but I don’t know her very well.’

  ‘That woman had asked me for an extra pillow once. I said no to her face, and then thought, who am I to say no? Give pillows to whoever wants them, as many as they want—what do I care? I took the pillows myself to her room and she returned them the next morning. But I have to say I haven’t fathomed two of the people here yet. One is Satyasundar Bose—he has never asked for an extra pillow, even by mistake—and the other is Mr Marco. I’ve seen him hit the bottle and get high, but that’s it—he’s never asked for an extra pillow either, as though women are the plague.’

  I looked at him in surprise.

  ‘To ask for extra pillows, you first need liquor—what our learned men refer to as booze. You do frequent the Shahjahan bar, don’t you?’

  ‘I haven’t been on duty there yet,’ I said.

  ‘I always tell the girls, give your husbands all the freedom, my dears, but don’t let them leave home. The moment they step out there’s going to be trouble—there’s no telling whose fences they will break down or whose garden they will attack.’

  All of this was pretty confounding. I was discovering a bizarre persona within Nityahari. Softly he said, ‘Snakes! I’ve discovered at last that every person has a cobra in him. For some people the snake stays asleep all their lives; for others, it hisses and sticks out its tongue as soon as they get out of their homes.’

  I was feeling uncomfortable and didn’t fancy staying in that room any longer. He probably wasn’t enjoying it either which is why he got off the bed and said, ‘Let’s go to my room.’

  ‘This is where I live,’ he said when we arrived in his room, ‘and little Shahjahan is where I eat.’

  ‘Little Shahjahan—where on earth is that?’ I asked.

  ‘Behind the real Shahjahan. Can you tell me how much the most expensive dinner at Shahjahan costs?’

  ‘Everybody knows that—thirty-five rupees.’

  ‘In little Shahjahan it’s fourteen paise—a four-course dinner for fourteen paise: rice, a curry, two vegetables. They’d planned to raise the price to four annas; the entire Shahjahan staff protested—how could we afford to pay four annas? So they were forced to keep the price at fourteen paise—only, they made the curry a little more watery and we have to wash our own dishes,’ he said. ‘It’s different for you—you’ve got your stripes before your commission; breakfast, lunch and dinner at Shahjahan immediately on joining.’

  I was silent. What could I say? He continued, ‘Of course, Juneau doesn’t give you much; the leftovers from lunch make up your dinner, and the leftovers from dinner go into the next day’s lunch. Do you know what’s for lunch today?’

  I marvelled at his ability to gather information.

  ‘Madras curry—wonderful to eat, but don’t touch it. How good is your constitution—can you digest steel?’

  ‘Not at all—my digestive system is no obedient servant of mine.’

  ‘Then you’d better give the Madras curry a wide berth. Veeraswami of London—gold medallist, honorary cooking advisor to the Secretary of State for India—invented it. In 1924 he went to the British Empire exhibition, and then started a restaurant in London. Juneau claims to have learnt Indian cooking from him, but in fact Veeraswami threw him out. If it hadn’t been for our cook, Deben, the skeleton in Juneau’s cupboard would have been exposed by now. As I was saying, the day when the meat is bought, it’s served as cold meat; it’s the same the next day. On the third day it goes into the biryani and on the fourth it’s Madras curry for the staff.’

  I was about to bid him goodbye when he said, ‘Just a minute. Since you’re practically a child, I’m going to arrange it so that your mind stays pure—or, even if it does get impure, you realize quickly that it has. Since Rosie has occupied your room, all your stuff has been transferred next door. I’ll arrange for everything in there to be white.’

  Carrying a bundle of linen, he insisted on coming up to the terrace with me. Rosie was in her room, grinning from ear to ear. She told me, ‘I’m through for the day. I’m going to sit on the terrace now and fry myself to a crisp. Then I’ll have lunch. And then, you know what? I’ll go to the cinema for the matinee show. Jimmy was supposed to go too, but he’s got banquet duty; there’s an extra ticket—would you like to come?’

  I was amazed at Rosie’s invitation. ‘Many thanks,’ I said, ‘but I’m on duty.’

  ‘All right, I’ll take my sister then,’ she said. ‘But if I take her to the movies without notice, her boyfriends will be disappointed, they won’t find her home when they call on her.’

  After one more round of thanks, I went into my room.

  Nityahari had somehow kept his expression under control all this while, but as soon as he entered the room he made a face. ‘You seem to have made a lot of progress,’ he said. ‘But remember, the higher you climb, the harder you fall. And don’t forget, either, that there’s temptation everywhere; unless you are careful you’ll succumb to it.’ Glancing around with an eagle eye, he went on, ‘I’ll make sure everything in this room is white—white curtains, white bedclothes, white towels, white table linen. If necessary, I’ll make arrangements for them to be changed every day. I have to go, there’s lots to do—three hundred guests at the banquet, which means three hundred napkin flowers.’

  I didn’t know what napkin flowers were. It was he who told me that in the olden days, napkins used to be changed with every course at the Shahjahan—but now they were laid out just once, placed in the glasses before the guests entered. ‘I’ve made many arrangements,’ he said, ‘fans, bishops, boats, lotuses, orchids. This time I’ll make something new—it’s much harder work, but I’ll do it, only for the name. A boar’s head
! From now on I’ll make nothing but a boar’s head for banquets at the hotel,’ he muttered to himself as he left.

  7

  What test matches are to cricket, what the IFA Shield final is to football, the banquet is to hotels. The top brass of the hotel don’t really know what a banquet is all about, nor do they have the time to find out.

  The person who was happiest when enquiries for a banquet came was the manager. He told the customer quite categorically that no hotel other than Shahjahan could possibly manage such a large party. ‘Of course, we do charge a little more, but the guests are happy, and the hosts are assured of success.’

  Earlier, there used to be more than one banquet per week, but even now there was at least one every week. Bose-da told me that there was a time when they had banquets on five successive days. You couldn’t get the hall unless you booked it two months in advance. But those days were gone, he added. It wasn’t as though the fun-loving population had declined or that socializing had diminished—it was just that Calcutta’s clubs had taken to organizing banquets. The liquor in the clubs was cheaper, and so was the food. Besides, the prestige was by no means any less, since the city’s top socialites preferred to throw their parties in the privacy of clubs. The clubs’ managers were pleased, too—they didn’t have to employ extra staff, and banquets made for a handsome source of income.

  Considering the state the country was in, one never knew when newspaper headlines would announce that Calcutta had also gone down the drain like Bombay; that the city had gone dry overnight. Without a bar licence, a club was like a cake without the icing. God forbid that the dark day be at hand! But if indeed the ominous dry cloud hanging over Bombay made its way to Calcutta, against everyone’s wishes, the clubs would have nothing left but their banquets.

  If only banquets were a cakewalk! Especially if they happened to be for 350 or 400 guests. There were people at Shahjahan whose skills at handling such events were unmatched. Their services were even sought by official circles in the government. It was they who preserved India’s fragile reputation among international guests. Consider Parabashia—he had gone to England in 1924 to work at the Indian restaurant put up at the British Empire exhibition. Since then, there was no counting the number of times he had saved the day at banquets. Banquets pleased him—they did mean working much harder for a couple of days, leading to backaches and aching feet, but still he enjoyed them.