Out of service

When you have been travelling for a long time, what was once unusual, noticeable, different and therefore worthy of remark, becomes everyday, normal and natural and so ceases to register with you. Whether this is a good thing or not depends on the situation, item or person in question. Sometimes the things you couldn't bear originally become bearable, but equally the everyday charms and quirks, the little things that make you smile also lose their bright edge of pleasure.

But there is one thing that still strikes me afresh every time, however small and insignificant or big, and grand and that is the kindness of strangers. The small sparks of generosity, friendship and human contact never lose their novelty or shine. Each one is a new and beautiful moment to be savoured, wondered over and cherished. I suppose this is because they come in so many guises. There are innumerable nuances and shades of kindness, unexpected touches of friendship and different ways that humanity possesses to be nice to each other, so there is always a new way in which someone you meet can touch or move you.

In Hyderabad I was the recipient of a particular and sustained kindness in the guise of good customer service in the hotel I stayed at. It was no grand gesture but a simple act of selfless generosity delivered with a friendliness that elevated somehow it in my mind to a moment I will remember in a way that is out of proportion to its magnitude. And it came after I'd experienced rudeness that was its polar opposite in another hotel, so it charmed and pleased me doubly.

As I had taken an overnight bus to the city, I knew I would arrive early in the morning, about 6am. I had booked a room in a hotel, not wanting to traipse the streets after what I knew and now accepted would be a predominantly sleepless night.

I thought I'd chosen wisely, picking a hotel from The Bible which sung the praises of its helpful, friendly, cheerful staff, saying that if all hotel staff were like this travelling in India would be considerably easier and a more pleasant experience. I beg to differ in the strongest terms possible. Whoever the guidebook spoke to at this establishment at the time was as far away from that description as it was possible to be when I turned up. 

When I arrived at the hotel tired but not irritable, I was kept waiting at the counter while the receptionist sat behind it carefully and deliberately ignored me to carry on watching the grainy little TV he had nearby. I didn't ask for his attention, knowing it would eventually come to me.

In India people seem to behave in apparently opposite ways according to which side of a desk they occupy. If they are in front of it and in need of service, they do not hesitate to barge in without a sideways glance of guilt at other people present and wanting attention too, in order to deliver their desires, requests and questions in a loud voice over the top of anyone else currently engaged in conversation with the person behind the desk. If, however, they are behind a desk in a position to dispense such services, information or goods they do a remarkably good and thorough job of ignoring you entirely until you behave in such a way as to attract their attention (see above).

So, I waited in polite and silent English fashion, complete with winning smile, for the man to come to my aid. The desk was empty at that hour of the morning, so it wasn't necessary to go through the ritual of barging in - still awkward to my manners which were programmed to queue from the moment I was born and entered English air space - as there was no-one in front of me into whom I could 'barge'. Clearly the check-in man did think this necessary, as he took a spectacularly complete lack of notice of me, apart from a brief glance as I entered the reception area, until I called out meekly, 'Hello?'
'Wait,' was his considered reply. So, knowing that he had at least registered my presence I did as I was told, thinking wryly that The Bible and I seemed to diverge in our opinion of what constituted good service. Still, I had my room booked so there was no hurry. Evidently Receptionist didn't think there was any hurry either, as he continued to watch the TV then, still ignoring me, to talk to another employee, who appeared from the interior of the hotel. As I waited, I had a chance to look around at the place. It was pretty dingy and dusty, as The Bible had admitted to would be, but no better or worse than many places I'd stayed in, so I didn't give it too much thought.

Receptionist had now given the second man, who was not even a potential guest, more of his time than he had to me, and I was beginning to feel the first tell-tale prickles of irritation that tightened my jaw, creased my brow and caused tingling angry sensations, like ants with burning feet, in my stomach.
'Hello?' I called again.
'Wait, OK?' But I was not prepared to wait anymore.
'I booked a room with you. I want to check in.' He looked at me with barely disguised irritation and could not keep the emotion from straying into his mouth and out in his tone and his words.
'Wait, wait, OK?' I read his frown and the distasteful look on his face as though the words were written across it in letters of fire: "What the hell do you want? I'm busy," I am convinced they said.
My irritation flared suddenly and quickly into a flame of anger, burning white-hot and sharp.
'Look, I have booked a room and I would like to see it please,' I said, louder and sharper than was necessary. Shooting me a look that managed to combine disdain and sarcasm he finally gave me his attention.
'Fill this here. Passport.' It was not a request or a suggestion, it was an order. He shoved a huge guestbook at me, already turning back to the television. This is the one thing he should not have asked me to do and I fumed quietly but oh-so-dangerously inside. The innocuous guestbook in all Indian hotels and guest houses is a conduit. Through it and its use in my initial contact with a hotel's front-of-house staff, is channelled in a blinding and almost-always irretrievable way, my entire impression of a hotel and it's service, good or bad.

Let me explain. In its guestbook a hotel is required to note a stupendously excessive amount of detail for each foreign guest. You are obliged to give your name, home address, phone number, nationality, profession, passport number, date and place of issue (and photocopy of same); visa number and date and place of issue (and photocopy of same); date and port of entry into India; expected date of departure from India; the name of the town from which you have just come, the name of the town to which you intend to travel; the expected duration of your stay in the hotel. And the book is always a book. It is never a computer into which the detail can rapidly be entered with a few quick keystrokes. It must be filled in by draggingly laborious longhand.

But all this detail in itself is not what forms my impression of the place: it is whether the desk clerk takes on this tedious task himself or whether he gets me to do his work for him! Many is the time, I have had the book thrust into my hands and been asked to fill it in myself. Why should I stand there scribbling all my particulars down for him while he stands there looking bored, picking his teeth and watching me do it? For some reason being asked to fill in the guestbook myself enrages me out of all proportion to the simplicity of the task. Why? One simple word: laziness.

Indian hotels are often over-staffed, peopled by lolling employees who seem to have one specific task to perform many, several or few times a day. When they are not engaged in performing it, they do not appear to do anything else, preferring to sit arround waiting for the next occasion at which they can try to avoid doing this task. It is infuriating. Yet for the desk clerk, surely filling in the forms of each and every guest is a large part of the scant activity he is required to do during a day's work? So why should I - whose money pays for his wages to do this meagre amount of activity - have to do it for him and allow his paper-thin amount of work to concertina and collapse into almost nothing? Still, I suppose he did have a heavy workload of television-watching to do...

Not every hotel makes you fill in the guestbook, which is why those places that do create such a bad impression and rate instantly low in my estimations before I have even seen the room.

Now Receptionist had asked me to do this - and so rudely too - he had unwittingly unleashed wave of unstoppable anger that could probably never be turned back, however much of a palace the room turned out to be.

It turned out to be nothing of a palace whatsoever. The sickly, fug of damp enveloped me as I walked through the door and the grey light that scratched in through the grimy windows, illuminated with great and unfortunate brilliance the horizontal strata of dirt and dust that clung to the folds of the tattered curtains that blew in the exhaust-laced early-morning breeze that wafted in through the open window.

The bed, when I poked at it, was not just hard, but lumpy and hard and a foul abstract of stains spattered the blanket that lay folded and sagging like a corpse at the end of the mattress. The light was pleasantly bright but what it illuminated was not. The walls were painted with brushstrokes of smudged dirt in the oddest of places - above the door, above head height, nowhere near any furniture - as well as more typical smears on doors and above the headboard. It made me wonder what possible human activity could have caused them to be in places that I would have thought it impossible and unnecessary for anyone staying in a hotel to need to reach.

In other circumstances I may have been able to overlook the room's multiple failings, but heaped on top of the indignation of the rude and lazy service I had received so far, I was about as far from being accepting as it was possible to be.

'This is disgusting! It's filthy!' I said angrily, all the while knowing that the expression my distaste would never make the slightest bit of difference in the cleanliness of the room, either now or in the future. 'Do you have another room?' I don't know why I asked this, as I was sure that another would be equally unfit for hygienic habitation. It was.

I made a quick decision. I could either accept one of these dirty rooms and try to get a couple of hours sleep before starting my day or go out into Hyderabad and try to find another. I was too tired (and obviously more irritable than I believed myself to be) to do the latter, so I said to Receptionist, 'Ok, I'll take it, but can you change the blanket for a clean one and can I have a discount because it's so dirty?' He looked as incredulous as though I'd asked him to strip off all his clothes there and then in front of me.

'No, no discount,' he said, the note of surprise and incredulity at such a brazen request, raising his voice a notch. Did I really expect him to bow and scrape and agree to my demands after such a poor show of customer service downstairs at the front desk? No, not really, but the brutal bluntness of his answer when it came still shocked me like a slap in the face. And like a slap in the face, my reactionary rage was as swift and shocking.
'Well, stuff your shitty hotel, then!' I shouted at him, my face burning with fury. To his credit he remained remarkably calm.
'Ok, no problem, you can go,' he said sarcastically.
'I will and I'll never come back to this shithole again. It's absolutely disgusting, disgusting!' I roared, knowing that I would never in a million years shame him in the slightest: he saw nothing wrong with that room and therefore nothing which merited the ludicrous service and discount I had suggested.

I stormed off down the stairs and picked up by backpack. I realised ruefully that I'd made my decision now. And it was not the one I had intended a few seconds ago. I hailed a rickshaw and asked him to take me to another of the hotels in the guidebook. It and the other four in the book that I tried were all full. I began to feel the familiar cold, clammy hand of fear that I would not find a place to stay. All the while, as we drove between hotels the driver kept pestering me to go to hotels he knew. I resisted, spitting bitterly, 'What, so you can get commission and I get charged a higher price to pay for it? No thanks.' But soon, in desperation and weariness I agreed.

The entrance of the hotel he took me to was down a dark narrow alley with a third floor reception accessed via a grimy lift in a dirt-blackened lobby. I nearly laughed when I saw it. It was as bad as the first hotel. Had I just wasted the last hour or so, only to find myself back where I started, in the hygiene stakes? Well yes, I more-or-less had. But what I had also found here was another recepetionist who was the most charming and helpful person I was to meet in Hyderabad.

He was probably in his 40s, with an excitable face and a quick, genuine smile and he was a perfect gentleman. I noticed that I was the only non-Indian guest there, as he filled in the guestbook for me. I think he was so surprised and elated to find a foreigner wanting a room in his dingy digs that he welcomed me with open arms.

The first room he showed me overlooked the blaringly loud main road, so I asked if he had a quieter one. With a beaming smile he said, 'Yes, of course. Come, come.' It was as if he couldn't believe his luck at having someone he could offer good service to. As I followed him to the room, he turned and grinned over his shoulder at me, nodding eagerly. 'This one good, quiet.' It was at the back of the hotel and while it wasn't exactly quiet it was better than the first one.

Though the walls were cleaner than the first hotel, they were far from perfect. The bathroom was clean but in a pretty poor state with rusting, decrepit taps and flaking metal window frames, like rotting teeth, held in place loosely by plaster that was falling away in crumbled chunks at the sides. The bed was neatly made, but the sheets still displayed dubious stains, so I tried my luck.
'It's OK, but the sheets look dirty. Is it possible to change them please?'
He looked surprised but not offended. 'No, no, sheets clean, just stain. But I can change,' he added eagerly, again accompanied by that beaming smile. Then he had a better idea.
'You want another room?' he offered, looking worriedly at me.
'No, no, it's fine,' I reassured him, 'but if you can change the sheets, I will take it.'
'OK, OK. I change the sheet. Then you happy,' he beamed. 'Yes,' I laughed, 'then I'll be happy.'

Unfortunately I wasn't quite happy just yet. A room boy came and changed the sheet for an equally stained but reassuringly pressed one, that at least smelled as if it had been reently laundered. Contrary to appearances, I persuaded myself to accept that it was clean and went to have a shower.  I hunted for the bathroom light switch, only to find that the bathroom didn't actually have a light fitting at all. The walls and ceiling were totally bare of anything that would illuminate the space. It was fine during the day, but at night I wouldn't be able to see a thing.

I went back out to reception and told the receptionist. He came with me to check it out himself. 'Oh so sorry, so sorry,' he said, his face crumpled and bereft with apology. He was appalled at the unacceptable inconvenience I was suffering. Seeing I had half-unpacked my things he said, 'You relax and use this room for daytime and I give you different one tonight. OK?'
'Ok, that's fine,' I said. I was stunned. He was so accommodating! His customer service was as attentive as the first man's was dismissive. I couldn't believe my luck at having been directed to this place, so unpromising on the outside, but so friendly on the inside. It was almost as if the guidebook entry should have been written for this hotel (which didn't even appear in it) rather than the shockingly bad one that had made it into its pages.

After my shower, I went out to for the day. When I returned that evening, he was still there and stopped me at the desk. He wanted to chat and me told me all about his friends in England who were going to sponsor his visa application to go there. I listened amused and caught up in his infectious excitement about his impending trip. He had a childlike wonder about the whole thing and told me several times that his friend was a doctor over there and a very good man.

'You change room now?' he asked. 'I get boy to move your luggage.' And he called one over and sent him with me to the room.

Now, you might be forgiven for thinking that he was just doing his job and why was I so impressed with his kindness and service? But, having experienced the other extreme of service so recently (one which is all too prevalent) it merely highlighted how charming and helpful this man was. And he seemed to get so much joy from taking care of me and making sure I was comfortable, that I was almost glad to have a few niggles that it would give him such pleasure to sort out for me. His careful attention and his happiness at being given the opportunity to provide it was simply charming and made his dirty, crumbling hotel shine with a radiance that couldn't be dimmed by grubby paintwork and missing light fittings.

The new room was a definite improvement. It had obviously been refurbished recently and had clean, cream walls and cleanish correctly-lit bathroom and a just-about acceptably clean bed, although the stained sheets were still in evidence. It also had a big TV with cable channels. It was a rare pleasure to have such a luxury, so I switched it on to relax in front of something mindless and sleep-inducing. But my relaxation was denied. The image on every channel was fuzzy and jumpy and unwatchable. I went back to reception to explain the situation. The receptionist came back with me, all apologies and concern, but sure he could make it work. He couldn't and neither could any of the room boys, who, one by one, crowded into my room. Each successive person pressed all the same buttons and jiggled all the same cables in the same sequence as the man before him, but no-one could re-instate an acceptable signal.

Finally, the receptionist admitted defeat and, shooing the boys out again, said to me, 'I get my box from my room. Many channels.' He took my offending set-top box, trailing cables behind him, disappeared and came back with a more modern, sleek looking alternative. He plugged it in and immediately crystal-clear pictures leapt from the screen. He nearly burst with happiness.
'Look, you have good image! And many extra channels, look. Many English too!' Gleefully he flicked through the channels, finding several BBC and American options for me. He was clearly more excited than I was by the bounty on offer to me now. 'This my own box,' he explained 'You use it while you stay in hotel.'

I didn't know a different set-top box would fix the problem, but he did and so he brought me one - his own. I tried to protest but he wouldn't hear of it, brushing away my concern with a flip of his hand and a big smile. I was guiltily grateful and totally charmed. Guilty because I wasn't really bothered about the TV and could take it or leave it, but also because through his unnecessary generosity, I had deprived him of his viewing pleasure for the duration of my stay - and I hadn't decided how many days I was staying yet. And I was charmed because he was happy to give up his TV viewing for me and so readily too.

But most of all I was thrilled and pleased that I am still thrilled and pleased by this type of tiny kindness. I've experienced generosity and helpfulness repeatedly all over India and its power to move me has not diminished through repetition and familiarity. Neither had my reaction to it - always grateful, always full of wonder. I love that Indians are so free with their time, their friendship, their care and attention and I love that I still love this even after all this time. I have not begun to take it for granted despite it being a common occurrence.

This small act of generosity revealed to me again and with bright clarity one of the reasons why I love India so much. People are so open and they want to help you. And if they can, they will, up until the point where they perceive you have all you need or the point where you persuade them that their generosity has gone far enough. They don't (usually) do it because they think they can get something out of you in return, they do it because it is in their power to do so and if this is the case what would be the point in withholding it?

Rickshaw drivers who have seen me poring over a map sense that a fare might come their way from me, but once I tell them I intend to walk the distance and am just trying to get my bearings, they are just as happy to point me in the right direction and reassure me it's not too far. Knowing they will not get anything from me, does not stop them from wanting to help.

And the beautiful thing about such generosity as this receptionist's was its unexpectedness. A helping hand where you didn't realise you needed one until it has already been offered is so much sweeter than one received after being asked for. A request for help or assistance brings with it the potential for refusal and rejection, the 'no' where you would like a 'yes', while the unknown need that is met for you is a delight because it is satisfied before you even had knowledge of its existence. In its revelation is a two-fold joy: that the person has both met your need and even more wondrously, has anticipated it for you.