I had a relatively successful day in Delwara today, getting Mohan to agree to a date in early February for the careers fair, and also to arrange an appointment for me with a member of the Devigarh team on Monday. This is so I can try and persuade them to provide somebody to speak about hotel work at the careers fair, for which I envisage a series of different “professionals” – policeman, social worker, hotel worker – coming to give short speeches.
Getting more Delwarans to work in the hotel has become something of a hobbyhorse of mine. A luxury hotel plonked in the middle of a poor village with chronic unemployment problems seems like a cruel joke if it employs people from Udaipur, Jaipur, Bombay and Calcutta in preference to local people. Mohan insists that there are some people from Delwara working in the lower rung jobs such as cleaning and gardening, but that the skilled jobs, like front office, housekeeping, food and beverages, are filled by outsiders. I would like to encourage at least a few people to go on Hotel Management Diplomas, get some experience and then come back to work in Devigarh, establishing better links between the hotel and the town. The biggest barrier that I can currently see is that of cost. I will take the opportunity at the meeting to propose that the Devigarh management sets up a scheme whereby the hotel sponsors a few youths from Delwara each year to study at the Udaipur Institute of Hotel Management (or similar), on the condition that after qualifying they come to work in Devigarh. Mohan suspects the management might worry that a large Delwara contingent among the hotel staff would have too much potential power and hence provide a constant threat of trouble. Maybe, due to the feeling of alienation that Devigarh has unwittingly forced on Delwara, this will be the case. In the interests of honesty, I should acknowledge the fact that Devigarh is providing some sort of impetus – possibly financial, but I don’t know the details – to the Nagrik Vikas Manch, and should not, therefore be totally demonised.
As well as Javed and Shaheen there is a third unofficial guide in Delwara called Imtiaz, who I have met in a number of circumstances. His origins are humble enough, but according to the life story he gave me, he trained in hotel work off his own bat and has worked in Udaipur’s Trident (Hilton), the Lake Palace, a five-star in Surat, and most recently as a driver for Devigarh until he was sacked for crashing into two cows! He now acts as a freelance driver and guide and claims to have driven Paul McCartney and Liz Hurley. Indeed, he has a rakish air of being very well-connected in all levels of society. He is also a snob, and told me how difficult it was in the Lake Palace having to work with backward castes who were so lazy and had to be forced to work and even then were a constant source of worry.
He recently told me a story about seducing the Japanese widow of millionaire in the back of his car. He picked her up from the airport, and noticed that she was crying. When he asked her why she was crying she told him that he reminded her of her Brazilian husband who had died less than a year ago. He pulled the car to one side, and offered her privacy while he waited outside. In the end, he joined her in the back seat where they made love. Hilariously, Javed later told me an almost identical story, even down to the Brazilian husband, differing only in the detail that his girl was Korean! Imtiaz has Javed’s chutzpah but with it a maturity and man-of-the-world air, and I am prepared to believe his story, even including the sequel that he spent nine months with his lover in Japan.
Next Post - Thursday 11th January 2007: Delwara and Udaipur (will be posted Wednesday 11th January 2012)
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