My husband, because we were on vacation and full to the brim with vitamin D and bonhomie, or possibly because he wanted to show off his Punjabi, always greeted him with a “SasryakalSardarji. Ki haalhain?” He was wary, at first, the doorman. Unused to talking to hotel guests. Satisfied with a perfunctory nod, a condescending wave, a passing grunt from the sahibs.
But hubby is persistent. And so, the doorman thawed. Soon, the two were bantering like long-lost buddies who knew each other’s histories, until our uber arrived. Nothing personal. Mostly, random conversations about traffic and road accidents and how it was no longer safe to walk in so many of the sidestreets these days, and so on.
As for me, I was not included in these jovial conversations. I stood with my head cocked to a side, supposedly communing with farishtas or ruminating about some girlish heaven that precluded road traffic and gregarious doormen.
Of course, I was afforded a respectful namaste each time he held the door for me, (sometimes as often as five times a day), but I couldn’t strike up a conversation with him. Conversation? He would not even make eye contact with me. Perhaps, he didn’t believe it was respectful to look a woman in the eye, or maybe, ‘don’t look, don’t talk’ was in the Doorman’s Code of Conduct brochure proscribed by the hotel industry. I do not know.
My Indian friends don’t think it is so unusual. “Why would you want to talk to him anyway? He is just a doorman.”
“I don’t want to,” I told them. “But I like to think I can.” That I am not making a social faux pas with a cheery hello. Or, an occasional, how’s your day going? Have you worked here long?
I mean, I don’t intend to go out for a meal with the man…. But seriously folk, as you said, he is a doorman – not a doornail, or a doormat, or a Dobermann!
Just from a practical standpoint, when in Europe or the USA we confer not so much with the hotel concierge but with doormen and uber drivers or a shampoo girl in the local salon about the best local dives, the non-touristy places to eat in, the best sunset points, etc. In fact, Rick Steves ( I can only describe him as my travel guru) thinks it is almost mandatory that we talk to the junta.
In India, however, one does not believe in talking to the locals. I will go as far as to say one believes in ignoring them, berating them, and treating them like so much s***. Am I wrong? Trust me, this one time it will make me very happy if you say that I am.
In any event, I am back home and doing what I always do the first few weeks after travel. Going down memory lane. And, yes, I admit it. I can’t help stopping to stare at the Sardarji.
You see, he looked so out of character at the Residency Service Apartments. Broad-shouldered as a gladiator, rocking a turban the colour of the sun and that smile – too genial, too wide, too subservient – too painful to watch really.
What was his story?
Did he, as a young man run towards the city lights or was he looking to escape? Was there a drought-ridden village, a bankruptcy, a whip-cracking landlord, a widowed mother or a druggie brother/son in his past? And would he ever find his way back home ( would he even want to?) or remain not inside, not outside, but trapped betwixt the doorway of one hotel or another like a man in purgatory going nowhere fast?
What was his story? Well, how would I know? I didn’t even ask his name. It was beneath my station to do so.
And thereby hangs a tale.
Poonam Chawla was born and raised in Mumbai where she worked as a copywriter before she moved to the United States.
She is deeply interested in women’s issues. She is the author of three books.
