IN the "old" days, your first worry when you checked into a hotel or guesthouse at a resort or hill-station was whether the bathrooms were clean, the beds free of bugs and the food palatable. Nowadays your main concern is what kind of people are staying in the rooms next to yours?
We seem to like holidaying in herds, either huge joint families or groups of colleagues and friends, which may be good for familial and social bonding, but not for the people in the rooms next door. The Indian joint family on holiday or a bunch of colleagues on holiday together, can (and often do) wreck the very raison d' etat of your holiday.
Family holiday
For a start, the Family firmly believes that it is (the first and) only family in the whole country that has decided to take a holiday. Because they have (or at any rate will be) paid for their board and lodging — so have you but who the hell are you anyway — they have complete and exclusive rights to the entire hotel, resort, hill-station, district.
Thus, they will swagger into the hotel or resort, as if they are Americans taking over another country that cannot properly defend itself. For the period of their stay the hotel, hill-station and district are theirs exclusively. And so they may do as they please, monopolise all the facilities of the place, and indulge in their God given right to litter freely and with complete abandon.
The hotel staff is of course no better than bonded labour, to come when whistled at, serve and clean up the mess — and politely so.
Their beloved children of course, can do no wrong. So, naturally they may play football or volleyball outside your room at all hours of the day and night. Dare you protest or complain!
Their doting parents will look hurt and explain, "bachche hai" (they're children), even if the children concerned look more like 20-year-olds. And even worse than the screeching, screaming children are their parents, when they've consumed more alcohol they can handle, and much too quickly.
Morning blues
It is at four a.m. the following morning that you get your most diabolical ideas for dealing with them. Like tiptoeing outside their doors, a huge steel dekchi and steel spoon in your hand... need one go on?
But alas, you know this is a hill-station and starting a steel percussion band at this hour is the equivalent of committing a capital offence, no matter what the provocation.
Besides, where the hell can you get a steel dekchi and spoon at this hour? Ah, but you could throw the empty booze bottles (littering the verandah) against their doors and politely explain that they "forgot to take them inshide".
When the Family enters the dining room, service to all other diners must of course cease forthwith and every waiter in the area must scurry to their table. And try and make sense of the vociferous and completely higgledy-piggledy ordering that takes place — of items not anywhere on the menu, but cooked so well in their own homes by famous grandmothers.
Once this is over, the entire dining room must listen avidly as they discuss family politics, marriages, how Lovely is being given a hard time by her mother-in law, who made her drop out even though she got 50 per cent after "study-study-study", and gut-busting, multi-crore business deals, all at 95 decibels. In between bellowing into their mobiles (each member of the Family has one and must receive/make at least five calls per serving).
Value for money
And what is it they want in these cool and pristine surroundings? They may have the Himalayas in all their splendour laid out before them, walks in pine-scented forests, lakes of a blue you can die for, wild flowers that would make mafia dons go gaga, and what is it that they demand? Forty-five channels of cable television, discos and DJs, video game parlours, speed-boats — anything that makes as raucous a noise as possible and preferably has them at the centre of attention. Any resort or hotel that has a view of the mountains or is tucked deep in some forest should be banned from having these facilities!
Sometimes, of course, tour operators aid and abet this process further. In a tiger reserve for instance, the clients must see a tiger or naak kat jayegi. Then they can go home with that smug glow on their faces and claim, "I saw a tiger". Not so much because it was such a magnificent sight, but because paisa vasool ho gaya (they got their money's worth). By simply goggling the tiger in its home, they somehow scored macho brownie points over it. Never mind that (thanks to the tour operators' machinations) 16 jeeps and 12 elephants surrounded the hapless animal, pinning it down. They may as well have gone to the zoo — it would have been much cheaper and they wouldn't have had to rise at some unearthly hour. You're probably thinking that I've been exaggerating to the ends of the earth in this litany of complaints. But here's a bit of reality that I've been saving for the end.
So be the judge: Some years ago, at a resort in Naukuchiyatal, we were giving thanks to the Almighty as one great Indian joint family took their leave of the place (after annihilating the word "tranquillity" from all of Kumaon).
They were finally getting into their cars, when one of the women looked up and shrilled in a voice that would have shamed the great barbet and must have carried all across Kumaon. "Sweety, susu kar lo!" (Sweety, have a pee!).
And loud and clear from one of the rooms, Sweety, a hefty 14 year old, bellows back. "Nahin aa raha hain! Kyaa karoo?" (It's not coming! What to do?)