Archives for posts with tag: Hotel Imperial

My Madcap Adventure Episode 16

March 13, 2015 //

On 2 November in my room at the Taj Palace, watching Indian state tv was like watching science fiction; with expressionless humanoid faces telling us not to believe “rumors of communal violence.” As I watched Rajiv light his mother’s funeral pyre on television, I could coincidentally look out the window at a column of smoke rising in the distance. Indira Gandhi’s body going up in flames or another Sikh home? There was no way for me to know, as these were simultaneous phenomena. So, what was the point of the television lie? Another trait India holds in common with the western democracies – ‘what you’re told isn’t the reality.’

Meanwhile I’d picked up a security detail shadowing me, no one believed for a New York second I was Old Babette’s grandson. It’d been better if she’d said nothing. I took care of that with fortuitous circumstance. I was sitting in a lounge in the morning when some vile looking, dowdy and incredibly wealthy (her gold and jewels hanging on her like kites tangled in utility wires) old woman decided to abandon her huge purse that appeared to be so heavy as to be filled with gold bars and leave the room. I spotted my security man across the room in a doorway, looking the other way. I walked swiftly over to him and, without mentioning the owner, I told him “There is an untended bag.” He immediately followed me into the lounge where I pointed out the purse, as it happened the old woman was returning to claim it. After, there was no further suspicions; they didn’t care who I was, other than an extra set of security eyes. No one wanted a bomb going off. A little later I frightened the ‘bejezuz’ out of myself with a stupid trick. Heading back to my room I turned the corner to see the elevator doors were beginning to close. With a sprint & leap worthy of some caped hero, I flew into the elevator as the door closed behind me: squarely into some VIP”s armed security detail! And fortunately for me, sans VIP. I wasn’t shot. If only they’d taken a photo of my face in that moment, some things are absolutely priceless. Recovering my composure in the stare of several ‘men-in-black’ security types, I simply said “Sorry” and pushed the elevator button to my level.

3 November simply dragged on in some sort of time warp that makes a day seem as though it will never end, as Indian television insisted despite rumors, there was no communal violence. Meanwhile I’d encountered an American who said a mob had boarded at a stop and killed Sikhs on the train he’d taken to Delhi.

Meanwhile Old Babette had been showering me with promises. Grateful, at least momentarily, for engineering our escape, she insisted I was going to be put up in Cairo and take a boat tour with her on the Nile, all on her dime. I listened but said nothing. Underneath, both of us knew we were absolutely incompatible personalities. That, and I recalled her brief episode of delusional belief she was a siren of eternal youth. That made me more paranoid than the rioting city we were looking to escape.

On the morning of the 4th, the Guardian Angel Sister’s Muslim travel agent manifest, to be certain Old Babette and myself made it onto the airport shuttle. For that fact, I totally forgive her for -on my departing the Hotel Imperial- passing off to me two, inferior quality, counterfeit USD$100 bills as a means of getting rid of them. On the other hand, her Bandit Sister was prone to absolutely angel moments (time to time.)

Cairo

In our (cheap) silk kimono jackets courtesy of 1st class tickets on Japan Airline, we were among the first people out of Delhi. No sooner than we we’re in the air, Old Babette’s immense gratitude began to wane; she was certain I wouldn’t mind a 2nd class hotel in Cairo. The truth is, other than reassurance as escort on absolutely insane taxi rides, there hadn’t been much I’d done she couldn’t have done for herself. It was the Muslim friend of the Guardian Angel Sister had made our departure possible. I don’t know if Old Babette had ‘male companion’ in mind for Egypt, but as far as I was concerned we were parting ways. As we were disembarking our plane in Cairo, her plans for us were getting reiterated and I said nothing until we’d passed through customs; her needing assistance with luggage, and myself with two carry on totality of luggage, I turned to her and said “I’ll take a rain-check” with a wave of the hand I strode away .. and the look of complete surprize-shock-amazement on her face was the last I ever saw of Old Babette.

My Madcap Adventure (all episodes)

Letter to the De Sousa clan of India

Tags Cairo, communal violence, Delhi, Egypt, Hotel Imperial, India, Indira Gandhi

Categories assassinations, crime, culture, Folk Stories, philosophy, politics, satire, Travel

My Madcap Adventure Episode 15

March 13, 2015 //

Of the numerous photos of the 1984 ‘riots’ I could have chosen, of Sikhs being beaten to death, burned alive, arson of their businesses or simply bodies of children, women and men alike murdered by the mob, I decided instead to show a taste of the opulence I’d escaped to .. and is likely an accurate picture of the Gandhi family’s life; even as Rajiv was setting fire to his mother’s funeral pyre while powerless Sikh families were being burned alive in their homes:

^ Interior of Taj Palace Hotel at New Delhi

I’d put on my day pack and shouldered my small sport duffel, the totality of my luggage, grabbed one of Old Babette’s suitcases (she had two) and escorted her out of the Hotel Imperial’s gate, past the Sikh security contingent, all armed with swords or batons, one of whose face was severely beaten. We turned right outside of the gate and walked maybe a hundred meters or so to an area where there was a taxi business. The taxi people pointed us down an alley where there were a few taxis with drivers willing to risk exiting the area and hired one to drive us to the Taj Palace Hotel … for one hundred US dollars. Working was an affront to the memory of Indira Gandhi and could get a taxi driver killed, with no safety promise made to the passengers. We made the trip with a wide-eyed, nearly panic stricken driver speeding through the empty streets of Delhi – it looked like a ghost city with scattered debris and the occasional smouldering ruin. Suddenly we breezed through an army checkpoint into the upscale area of the city where life looked like a calm calendar holiday. We arrived at the marble & brass edifice that we’d call home for the following three nights, without incident. Then, Old Babette made her first screw-up. She quite spontaneously decided to create an alibi for the character she was traveling with (that would be me) and went into an unrequested, convoluted, unconvincing explanation I was her “grandson” at check-in. Of course all this did was raise suspicions; as I bore no resemblance whatsoever to her. A medium-short, dark, muscular male with no scent of money whatsoever in his attire, in the company of a clearly wealthy, slender, taller, translucent-White woman who’d burn in the sun in less than 10 minutes without her protective hat and sunscreen. For purposes of cover, I would never bring myself to pose as her male prostitute; as well, we had separate rooms .. otherwise that might have almost been the story that fit her unnecessary, unwanted, counter-productive attempt at an alibi. In a way, we WERE using each other. But now I was marked by hotel security in a venue that was filling up with high profile guests arriving for a state funeral.

Now, things became more stupid in a blessed sort of way; We discovered there was to be an ‘inaugural’ Japan Airlines flight out of Delhi on 4 November, the day the airport would reopen for regular commercial traffic. This stroke of luck made available to us was on account of the Guardian Angel Sister who’d an Indian professional travel associate who came to see if we’d made it to our destination alive. This Muslim man, I do not recall his name, impresses me as one of the finest people I’d met on our trip. The catch was, I subsequently discovered, in order to secure tickets, we had to visit the Japan Airlines travel agency office, precisely located one city block from Hotel Imperial! Old Babette and myself had to get a taxi and retrace our route and return!! Argh!!! None of the travel businesses were overtly open but if we went to the back door of the business, we were told, we’d be allowed in to acquire plane tickets. This would be my fifth trip across the burning city in two days, if one counted destination and return separately. I told Old Babette she could either come up with a few thousand cash for myself to transact the business for us or take the ride and bring along her credit cards. She got into the taxi with me. Two wild rides & two hundred dollars in taxi fees later, we were back at the Taj Palace with a pair of first class tickets to Cairo.

My Madcap Adventure (all episodes)

Letter to the De Sousa clan of India

Tags 1984, Hotel Imperial, New Delhi, Taj Palace Hotel

Categories assassinations, Author, crime, culture, Folk Stories, philosophy, politics, satire, Travel

My Madcap Adventure Episode 1

March 1, 2015 //

I know these crazy sisters. Their parents were 1950s Bohemian artists in Southern California. So, already you know a few things to expect; with adolescence in the middle 1960s, the girls immersed in ‘flower power’ .. and several stereotype this background would imply. Traveling to Mexico looking for enlightenment with Huichol Indians & hallucinogens, among other adventures, and finally following George Harrison and the Beatles inspirations to India. And they stayed on there for quite some time.

I was living at Starr School on the Blackfeet Indian reservation, when I received an invitation from one of the sisters; would I like to travel to India, to be taken around on a personal, guided tour? ‘Well, why not’ was my thought. And so it was I stepped on a plane at Helena, Montana, it was September .. in the Year of Our Lord (George Orwell’s) 1984.

I had a one day layover in New York City, and had let an acquaintance know I’d be in town. Tommy took me down to the lower west side (Meatpacking District) to show me (in those days) the character of one of the more interesting areas of the city. We ate at his family’s diner, a many decades establishment, located there. As we walked the neighborhood after eating, I noticed the some ‘brothers’ had a campfire going in the parking lot of an abandoned building and the thought crossed my mind ‘this is a city I could survive in.’ An interesting interlude on a journey from Blackfeet Indian country to the Indians of India.

Tommy picked me up in the morning, my flight was late afternoon, throwing my small luggage into his VW beetle, we went to Greenwich Village. After walking around for awhile, not really investigating our surroundings so much as talking about the summer of 1981 when Tommy had been a chef at Glacier National Park’s east side and I’d shown him Blackfoot country. We somehow landed at McSorley’s Tavern and I managed to get perfectly hammered on Irish black beer. We took off from McSorley’s in Tommy’s beetle, driving to Newark airport … I had the window down and was slapping my hand on the outside of the passenger side door to time of a pow-wow drum, while belting out some popular Native American war-dance tune of that era, as we passed under the Hudson River via Lincoln Tunnel. Arriving at Newark, I was seriously worried I was too drunk to be allowed onto my Air India flight, non-stop to New Delhi.

I bid Tommy goodbye and Tommy bid myself good luck; then with a Herculean effort of will, I managed to seem sober enough to acquire my boarding pass, check myself through security and get on-board my flight.

The Air India 747 wasn’t half full, and no sooner than we had taken off, I saw people begin bringing out their pillows and some were making beds on the floor! What a blessing!! I found a row in center section with empty seats, pushed up the arm-rests and lay down to pass out … and woke up over Iran with a severe hangover. Stepping out of the air terminal at New Delhi, the humidity-heat-smog cocktail, with a sort or reddish orange glow filtering through, the tropical trees and traffic, briefly flashed me back fourteen years, to Saigon, 1970, and my adventures in that city. But only briefly, this was a very different city and embarking on entirely new adventure. I caught a taxi to the old Hotel Imperial and rendezvous with the odd lot who’d be my traveling companions. A date with a bed in colonial era ambiance and hospitality is perfect for overcoming jet-lag with a hangover, I’ll be a happy sahib for a few days .. before moving on, in native dress.