Memsaabs Bounced!

Only the special few have been tossed out of the 5-star Amarvilas Oberoi near the Taj Mahal.

What was I doing at the Oberoi, where Bill Clinton hung out when he visited the Taj? (HE was not thrown out. Fulbright’s India director, who also did not get thrown out of the Oberoi but was given a tour that included the Koh-inoor suite where Bill stayed, told me that one showers there in transparent glass and marble surroundings with a grand and unimpeded view across the treetops of the magnificent Taj.)

Around New Year’s my friend Megan, 28, invited me to come to Rajasthan with an intermediate stop at Agra with her mother and her aunt, both roughly my age. I readily accepted. We took train, plane, and car, the latter from Delhi to Agra with the garrulous driver, who honked at every living thing on the road, of a small white Maruti, our trip luggage lashed on top.

This is not about the Taj, but it is as breathtaking as one expects, a grand shimmering bubble floating on the horizon when we visited at dawn. Like good tourists we also inspected every other grand pile in the vicinity over the course of the day, all built by one or another of a long and fractious line of ruling Mughals with exceptionally testy intra-familial relationships. It will here be recorded that in front of Akbar’s tomb my salwar (the string-tied bloomers beneath the kameez), in the stuff of nightmares, suddenly gave way and descended to my ankles. I was lightning fast in swooping to retrieve them, and so shocked and awed only the immediate crowd (exposing only white calves and a failure to properly inhabit the culture).

After a day of taking in much weapons-grade sandstone and marble, we were ready for a drink. Alcohol is hard to come by in India, especially for women. According to Megan’s Lonely Planet, we could have a cocktail in the high class, air conditioned ambience of the Taj Oberoi—drinking Westerners of all genders among their best clientele—so off we went. This was a challenge for our driver, who couldn’t at first find any among the humble class of local rickshaw wallahs and taxi-ists who knew what or where it was.

But finally we drew up to a coach carriage roundabout in front of a faux Mughal palace with beautiful, non-randomly fair-skinned doormen outfitted in eunuch drag--elegant red kurtahs with gold detailing over full length ivory dhotis, pewterish gold turbans--gliding over the marble to greet our band of four, tootling up in our dusty compact with its canopy of mismatched luggage. We gathered up all the dignity our rumpled clothes and windblown hair permitted and climbed out to faultless manners and gracious greetings. Not a bad way, we thought, to spend time before dinner on New Year’s Eve.

We sent off our driver and got down to business. This meant submitting our bags to screening on a side conveyer belt in an unadorned niche off a side entrance. Something I’ve never done before in any hotel. This is 26/11 land, but the whole thing felt awkward as we hoisted our stuff on the belt. One could not picture Bill doing that. We were followed the whole way by staff standing attentively about, but not helping. As we crossed a courtyard to the lobby, one eunuch directed us to the pink orb of the late afternoon sun hovering over the carefully manicured terrace garden. Very aesthetically sensitive, us and the costumed help pausing to enjoy nature’s gifts together. And so, with Megan’s aunt briskly in the lead, we went to find the bar.

Oh, so sorry, said one of the slaves, effectively and expertly cutting us off like a border collie herding stampeding sheep. We must call and see if the bar has any room to spare: It’s New Year’s Eve. Right. At 4.30 in the afternoon with an entirely empty lobby. He smiled apologetically.

Everyone smiled, pityingly as I think of it now, at us. We sat in pleasantly cooperative anticipation, like it is perfectly normal for folks at swanky hotels to check in daylight to see if the bar’s full. By now us older broads had pretty much figured out the score, but Megan was still sure all was going according to plan, and dispensing regal receptivity as the benevolent mistress of the situation among servants attuned to her every wish.

The verdict came. Oh, so sorry, no room at all! Such a pity! Had I thought of it, I would have asked just to look at the bar to see what they would come up with to keep early drinking patrons from glimpsing Another Kind. But this was a “light boot” as somebody later described it, and all the players were perfectly behaved.

Where are you staying, one of the eunuchs asked as we walked out, so pleasantly only a cynic could be suspect. Megan named our cheesy mid-grade hotel. He took it in and with barely a pause and a well bred lift of the eyebrow—And how do you like it there? In this context a negative answer would have been pathetic over-sharing; an enthusiastic one totally confirming of our yokel status. We said we liked [the cut rate stuff] fine, and with a final display of gracious smiles all around, trooped out to the terrace to call our driver.

Across the roundabout, sleek rich people in sleek rich cars pulled up at the entrance to the main lobby. No one was rumpled. We waited in the cold, as it were, for our driver. When he came the doorman glinted engagingly one last time and waved us off, four more Lonely Planet parvenus dispatched without blood.

There was still dinner to be had before boarding an overnight bus to Haridwar. Our driver promised to query the locals for a good place to eat.

He must have had difficulty pegging us. Camped at a standard tourist hotel, we had nonetheless gone for cocktails at the Oberoi. And twice he had taken us to the bus station, the strongest possible contrast with the Oberoi. So where did we belong?

With great fanfare he picked us up from our hotel and drove to a kind of thatch-roofed wooden shed with a Polynesian decor filtered through an Indian aesthetic, bad lighting, a semi-karaoke floor show, and food about which it is better not to comment. As we alighted, he happily waved his hand and told us: All the people from the Oberoi go here.