Sex at the Palace
(The Taj Mahal Palace in Mumbai)
Samosas & Ale is a collection of tales “with an Indian flavour”, and is available at Amazon.com or Amazon.uk. This extract is adapted from one of the short stories in there. Read it, and perhaps you might be encouraged to buy a copy of the book, in e-form or in paperback.
There are easier ways of getting to Jaipur from Edinburgh _ probably. Certainly for a woman travelling by herself, that is. But I decided to fly to Mumbai, spend a couple of days there first. I think the programs on TV about the Taj Mahal Hotel had something to do with it. I wanted to indulge myself. I am quite flushed at the moment, having won a Booker only last month, and to say nothing of my titles topping the million copies mark.
I landed at Mumbai’s Santa Cruz airport after sunset. I wasn’t sure if I’d fly or catch a train. I rarely plan in advance. At the moment all I knew was that I was going to bask in
luxury of a five star hotel, enjoy individually made toast with mango jam. I am also doing a bit of research, as I am thinking of setting my next book in Mumbai, with my main character staying in Mr Tata’s institution at some point. As it had already been attacked by terrorists, I feel safe enough, in the belief that lightning does not strike twice.
This is my first time on the subcontinent. When William Dalrymple’s invitation arrived, I knew that I would need to overcome my prejudices about germs, poor hygiene and leprosy and risk it.
I knew that India had a population of over one billion, and an hour after landing, I must have seen more than half of them milling about, seemingly aimlessly, like demented flies trapped in a jar. What was the population of the whole country doing in one city?
I had never been in such a luxurious place as the Taj in my life. I wouldn’t have known that places like that existed if I had not come across the television program. And their rates are very reasonable when you consider the exchange rate. The contrast with the squalor outside was very marked. After Slumdog Millionaire, everybody has an idea of what the slums of Mumbai are like. People looked underfed and wore rags, although I don’t know why they had to smile all the time. Is happiness really not dependent of one’s material conditions? I suppose I had always known the answer to that question, but I would not have thought that it was possible to be really happy if you were poor.
The people working in the Taj treated me like royalty, although I could see how surprised they were that I was travelling alone. I am accustomed to middle of the range hotels when I travel to literary events or to promote my books. As they are selling well, when I travel for pleasure I stay in posh hotels, but there is posh and posh. In the US, when you get $25,000 for one lecture, they book you into the most luxurious place, but none of them was a patch on the one in Mumbai. I do not want to sound like a brochure, but the luxury was breathtaking. The carpets, the chandeliers, the furniture, were truly astounding. The doorkeepers, in finest livery opened doors for you, bowed to you like you were Angelina Jolie — or J.K.Rowling. The food was simply incredible. There was nothing extraordinary in that, but would one have expected the great wines on offer?
I did the usual tourist thing, took a day trip to the Elephanta Caves and marvelled at rock-cut cave monuments. I spent a whole day at Juhu Beach, swimming and drinking coconut water, and as a woman by herself, promptly became a focus of curiosity for the locals. Some daring young swains tried to chat me up. There were one or two striking looking chaps I would not have minded taking to my bed, but I have a literary festival to go to, and must keep my libido in check. Of one thing I am sure, I am not going to let myself be seduced by a fellow writer. I rather enjoyed the attention of the young men who might have been clumsy in their efforts to let me know that if like Barkis I was willing, they would know how to organise something. Although their pockets were not bulging with rupees they insisted on buying me coconut water. I spent my last day walking randomly and I drank freshly pressed mango juice, from street vendors using a lethal looking contraption of dubious cleanliness. I saw girls who presumably were not allowed to leave their homes except perhaps to go to school, flying kites from open windows of multi-storied buildings. In the afternoon I visited the Horniman Circle Gardens, a green oasis in the middle of a concrete jungle.
The confines of the hotel might be rather more conducive to my research, I surmised. Whilst sipping an aperitif in the bar, I noticed how handsome the staff was. It would seem that it was the hotel’s policy to pick on the tall athletic Rajput types, in much the same way that airline companies chose pretty women to become hostesses on board. At least used to. There was a stunningly good-looking chap called Kishore who had attracted my attention. If the opportunity arises, I was thinking …You would have thought that he could have been making a fortune in Bollywood, but when I saw him give a younger waiter called Gokul a hard time, I crossed him off my list of possibles. Gokul was small, unkempt and had buck teeth. He was also rather clumsy, colliding with the furniture when he was bringing you your order. No, definitely not the sort of chap one would look twice at. Never in a million years would the weedy fellow have made my long list of possibles. You wondered how he got a job in this place. You would expect that for every job available there would be fifty applicants. I watched him in a haze of smoke, and suddenly I had an inspiration. Why pick on the handsomest? I challenged myself. Would it not be more fun to choose someone like the gawky chap? My mind was suddenly made up: it was going to be Gokul.
He spoke reasonable English. I do not suppose they employed anybody who did not. I engaged him in conversation and he told me that he was from Hyderabad in the south of the country. Like many employees of the hotel, he lived in purpose-built quarters just behind the hotel. He was very dark but if one looked beyond his buck teeth, one saw one of the best profiles you could imagine on a man, an elongated face, a well-rounded head, a beautiful nose, peerless black eyes, shaped like a woman’s, and a small square jaw. Still, the buck teeth were something of a turn off, but my mind was made up. I was going to invite him over to my room for the night.
Gradually I began to see the ramifications of my endeavour: asking this simple chap to come to my room and spend the night with me, I felt like an emperor ordering the sun to rise at midnight, but knowing that it would do as it were told. Also I had the irresistible urge to ‘make his day.’ When I looked at him straight in the eyes and asked him at what time he finished his shift and he said midnight, I touched his hand discreetly. If he was not so dark, I am sure I would have seen him blush.
‘Gokul, do you know my room number?’
He nearly dropped the plates he was picking up, and began trembling _ with
excitement, I hope.
‘All the patrons and workers of the hotel are knowing everything about you, your room number, at what time you switch your light off in your room. Yes, memsahib, I am knowing your room number.’ Memsahib! I liked that.
‘I will wait for you,’ I said, breathing in to emphasise the shape and size of my tits, a trick which all women know and use. The plates started clanging quite alarmingly.
‘Why?’ he asked, refusing to believe what was happening to him, ‘Do you have
some errand you are wanting me to do? I can tell Room Service for you.’
‘No, you silly man, I want you. Your body. Don’t you want to go to bed with me?’ We Scottish lassies are famous for our forthrightness.
He became deathly pale. I wondered, but only for a split second whether he could see beyond the facade of Dior and Estee Lauder and found the real me repulsive. No, perish the thought, I know I am gorgeous really, thousands of men have told me so. I doubt whether there is a single man that I have met who have not fantasised about taking me to their bed. I also imagined that he had often heard other waiters recount made-up fantasies of the predatory foreign women who had seduced them when they were exercising their waiterly duties, and had dismissed them as lies. He must have been convinced that never in a million years would anybody make such a proposition to him.
‘You want to, don’t you?’
‘Of course I am wanting too much, Meydem, you are so… beautiful and sexy, so white, but I am only a servant and I am black …’ I wondered what happened to memsahib.
‘I was a waitress too,’ I said, not lying, as in my student days I did a lot of waitressing.
‘Meydem is joking, Memsahib must be a ladyship, meydem isn’t being a servant…’ Meydem and memsahib are seesawing now.
‘No, but I want you in my bed,’ I said, ‘I want us to fuck.’
‘Such bad word!’
‘Really?’
‘I think ladyship is making fun of me.’
‘You mean you don’t want to?’
‘Memsahib, I am wanting it too very much, but … I will lose my job.’
‘What do you mean? Why? I am the one inviting you, and it’s after work, it’s nobody’s business.’
‘Meydem, here everything is everybody’s business. They are so jealous when they are finding out.’ And waggling his head he added, ‘I will definitely be sacked.’
‘But I too want you sacked … with me.’
‘Meydem?’ The look of alarm on his face made me regret my little tasteless lapse.
‘Just a joke, I want you … in bed…’
‘Meydem is wanting me to lose my job?’
‘No, of course not.’
This was followed by an embarrassed pause, but he raised his head, looked at me in the eyes, and nodding slightly, said, ‘But I am thinking you are worth my losing job, Meydem. I will come, most definitely, I will try not to be seen, but people here are very coo… coo-reeosh?’
‘I will wait for you, I will leave the door unlocked, so you can just push it and walk in.’
He walked away from me carrying a pile of plates, like a punch-drunk boxer. It was too late now of course, but I regretted my thoughtless act. I only thought that I was imparting a little happiness to someone who probably had very little joy in his life. I thought I would be giving him a story that would keep him warm on cold winter nights _ not that the nights in Bombay are ever likely to get that cold _ and cheer him up when he was feeling miserable. Perhaps, I fantasised, on his death bed he will re-live that night before expiring. But all I had achieved was to put his job, his whole livelihood on the line. I realised that I had been cynical. Worse. arrogant!
By late afternoon, I had dismissed all my qualms. I hardly ate at dinner, but imbibed copiously of the Pinot Noir. I smoked half a packet of fags waiting for the witching hour, waiting for my beau. I had put on my near transparent negligee, and promised myself to go easy on my duty-free Glenfidditch 12 Year Reserve.
Shortly after midnight, I heard Gokul’s footsteps approaching the door. As he seemed to be hesitating, I opened the door furtively but on seeing me, he walked straight past the door with barely a glance in my direction. Cold feet, I said to myself. In a way I was relieved, and closed the door without locking it. I was looking for the Remote when I heard him come back. This time he pushed the door and walked in. His face was shiny with sweat, his shirt was soaked. He saw my enquiring frown and explained that he thought he had heard footsteps behind him as he first approached my room and turned back, only to discover that they were his own. I made him take a shower, and gave him a towel to wrap himself in. I dried his luxuriant jet black hair with a smaller towel, and combed it for him.
‘You are so beautiful, Meydem, like a peri … and you are so young.’
‘Young? Me? I am thirty four, Gokul.’
‘You never thirty four, meydem. You joking. You twenty two and a half.’
‘You know how to talk to women, you demagogue.’ He asked me to explain what demagogue meant, and smiled happily when he heard.
‘How old are you, Gokul?’
‘Me? I am fifty-one.’ I really couldn’t believe it. He seemed younger than me.
He became more relaxed, and from that moment, a self-satisfied smile took possession of his face. As he was not going to do it of his own accord, I took his hands and directed them towards my breasts. He gasped at the contact. He indignantly refused my offer of some single malt, saying that he had sworn to his father now dead that he would never not touch a single drop of alcohol. But when I offered him a cigarette, he lit it with trembling fingers, smoking it intensely and quickly, as if he was afraid I was going to take it away from him. I watched him, amused at his furtive moves. He kept at it until unable to hold it between his middle and index fingers, he had to grab it with his rounded thumb and index finger. I feared that he might burn his lips. When he finally reluctantly stubbed it out on the ashtray, I offered him another one. He was ecstatic when this time I lit it and then offered to share it with him. Just like Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall, he said merrily. He was now more relaxed, inhaling the smoke deeply, closing his eyes, and leaning back his head as he puffed out the blue smoke in a rising cone.
I then dragged him to my bed and fairly flung him on it, climbed on top of him and kissed him, which made him open his eyes wide in the funniest manner possible. I found his buck teeth made for a new and exciting experience in kissing. He did it competently, and I had a great come. He was in a rush to leave after we had done it. Is anyone waiting for you? I asked, and he shook his head. No, I alone. I told him that he could stay the night. Wouldn’t it be safer for him to stay the night and sneak away in the small hours, and he nodded. Is safer, he admitted. We smoked, and I ordered drinks from Room Service. I hid my lover in the shower when the waiter knocked. The latter could not hide his perplexity when he delivered the gin and tonic and the milk shake. A strange combination, I read on his brow. We did it again, three times, and each time he was better than before. We then we slept in each other’s arms. Before the morning bustle started, Gokul woke up, got dressed, and was tiptoeing away, but I stopped him. I had another impulsive idea. I grabbed my purse, and found a bit over one hundred pounds in cash.
‘Gokul, take this.’
‘What is it Meydem?’
‘Just some money.’
‘Meydem, why give me money?’
‘In case you lose your job … this is about what? I suppose ten thousand rupees… you could start your own business if you lose your job.’
‘But no memsahib, No, Meydem, I am not wanting your money.’
I explained to him that one hundred quid was not much to me, that it was a gift which I was giving him. Surely if he did not need it he must have family in his gaon who would be grateful for a little cash. Yes, he said proudly, but I want to give them clean money which I have earned by the sweat of my body. But I made you sweat, I said limply, doubting that he would have got the joke. But he did, and smiled. No question of accepting money from me, he said with convincing finality. And I knew that no power on earth would have made him take it.
‘If you still lose your job, Gokul?’
‘Then it will be Bhagwan’s will, and I must accept it.’ He waggled his head with great contentment and smiled.
He was walking towards the door, but stopped just as he was going to open it.
‘Meydem,’ he said with a twinkle in his eye, ‘until I die, I will never forget this … eh …what did you call it, blow work?’
‘Blow job,’ I said. He shook his head merrily.
‘My wife, she never … she never…’
‘You can teach her,’ I said. He shook his head.
‘No Meydem, Bhagwan took her from me… three years and fourteen days now.’
