Akshay Chhugani, the hotel manager, has the self-possession and unyielding amiability of the powerful and wealthy, but his good will seems like a temporary blessing, liable to be converted at the snap of a finger to a rampaging fury. I can’t imagine Mr Chhugani ever being silly or making a joke at his own expense, but who knows how the company of close friends might transform him. He offered us tea and coffee, and while he went to arrange it Haider nervously asked me whether I thought we would have to pay for this, and, if so, how much it would cost. I told him it would be very expensive, but on seeing his panic-stricken expression assured him that it was almost certainly on the house.
When Mr Chhugani returned, I outlined my vision for a scholarship scheme whereby Devigarh could sponsor a few Delwarans every year on a hotel management course and then take them on, as and when required.
“In principle,” he said in impeccably clipped English, “I am open to any suggestions but I’ll need to be presented a workable strategy before I can consider it.” Meaning, I suppose: I’m a busy man and don’t see anything in this for me, so you go away and do the maths and then I’ll give it my time.
Before my visit, Javed and Shaheen had begged me to plead their cause of becoming officially recognised tour guides. Mr Chhugani, in the course of outlining his vision for Delwara, quashed this idea before I could raise it.
“Of course I would be very happy to consider ways of involving the village more. Potentially we could set up an official tour guiding process and train some of the local boys. I am not against some kind of arrangement like this, it’s just that there are currently a couple of... surplus elements who are taking advantage of my residents and giving the local people a bad name.”
Abandoning my surplus elements to their own fight, I accepted Mr Chhugani’s offer of a guided tour round the hotel. He called out to one of the staff loitering on the grass. “Rakesh, why don’t you show these gentlemen round the hotel?”. Framed as a friendly question, the easy authority was obvious in his voice, and Rakesh sprang gracefully into action.
I suppose I’d never given much thought to luxury hotels before coming to Delwara, but I have come to realise more and more that, not only in character, but in the purpose they serve, they are a world apart from the bottom-end bedding-down places that budget travellers like myself tend to frequent. Visitors to these five-star and seven-star hotels don’t simply want a bed and a meal, they want an experience, a home from home, a whole world from which they can make forays into the hotel’s hinterland, usually still very much cocooned in their five stars. Or, even better, the hinterland can be brought into the hotel – a troupe of “local” dancers perhaps, or maybe a luxuriously authentic meal eaten while seated on cushions above a straw mat, with a harmonium player and vocalist singing in a vernacular language in a corner.
Devigarh fulfils these criteria with elegance and panache, involving much marble, countless rose petals in bowls and lots of enormous windows, through which Delwara and its environs seem heart-breakingly picturesque and not too obtrusively real. The budget rooms cost a trifling $400 per night, while the “Presidential Suite” replete with an open-plan, white marble “bedroom-and-bathroom concept” (in a luxury hotel “concepts” are to be found at every turn – I mean, they’re so much more “in” than things, darling) and a black marble swimming pool, weighs in at a staggering $1300 per night. Admittedly, shock at how the other hundred-and-twentieth live has reduced my writing style to something out of a guidebook!
Inside Devigarh
I could bang on forever to the tune of “Don’t these people realise they’re not seeing the ‘real India’?” but I’m rather tired of all that inverse snobbery, and trying to defend a notion of what the ‘real India’ is in the first place would get me into dangerously deep water. Much more interesting is the meeting of worlds personified by our guide Rakesh Ameta. Born and bred in a small village near Udaipur, he is now a blandly sophisticated high flyer in the Front Office department. I can hardly begin to imagine what it must feel like for him, servicing crorepatis (billionaires) all month and then going home to a life of rural deprivation to see his family. Needless to say I know nothing about his village background, but life in an Indian village usually entails what we would consider deprivation. Perhaps the contrast doesn’t affect him at all, and I am wrong to be amazed and to assume, as I have always done, that the fact that I can stay in affluent style in South Bombay and BPL discomfort in Northeast Maal within weeks of each other and remain unfazed is an effect of a balanced middle-class upbringing (whatever that means). In reality this may simply be the symptom of a very human capacity to adapt. Haider was clearly rather taken with Rakesh and asked me again and again afterwards whether he really hadn’t spoken any English before coming to Devigargh, which is what he told us. Even if the slightly prissy do-gooding idealist in me thinks Rakesh should respond to his experience by devoting the rest of his life to rural upliftment, I cannot but feel an admiration for his having come so far from such presumably unpromising origins.
*
Back at Vikas Samiti, the unthinkable has arrived: a new volunteer. A new male volunteer. I was so used to our cosy group, and so relishing being alone in the dormitory that I was slightly apprehensive when I heard he was coming. First impressions, however, have been positive. Reuben is 22 and is in the middle of a philosophy degree in a university in Washington DC. He looks the part, although is on the grungier end of Bohemian in his personal appearance! He seems quite young for his age and is passionate about getting involved in the practical aspects of development work - “I want to be out there digging these wells myself, dude!” as he puts it. Apparently this world view has already been derided by Sumita as “simplistic and American” and Reuben is debating whether to quit Vikas Samiti and join an organic farm.
Next Post - Friday 19th January 2007: Udaipur (will be posted Thursday 19th January 2012)
No comments:
Post a Comment