Ramblings and Musings

Back from a conference

Readers may be surprised to know that I had my first experience with staying in a five-star hotel last weekend. I have never been abroad in my life and the tarriffs of five star hotels are dollar-cheap, but rupee-expensive.

It happened like this: I registered for a medical conference at a hotel venue that is but 30 km (divide by 1.6 to know how many miles that is) from my residence. It was a conference that would run for three days and end on Sunday. The delegates were offered sharing rooms for just half of the normal room rates for that hotel, so I said, why not?

Thus, I drove to the conference on Friday afternoon and registered - first for the conference, and then, for the room. My room-mate (whom I had never met before) turned out to be a Pediatrician from a much smaller city that is more than 350 km from mine. He drove all the way to Mumbai and had come with his family, whom he had told to stay at a relatives' place outside the hotel!

Both he and I turned out to be ... ahem, noisy sleepers, and I had a tough time adjusting since he went to sleep earlier than me the first night (... and the second one too, as it transpired).

The rooms overlooked hills, some up-coming new buildings and slums (the ubiquitous shanties of poor, homeless India). By itself, the room was well appointed, with all the modern amenities that modern hotel rooms supply all over the world. The American breakfast that we were entitled to was also superb! We had 24-hours running hot and cold water, a bath-tub (a luxury that my home does not possess),a very comfortable bed, great climate control, free tea and coffee (self-made from an electric kettle, mineral water and pouches of milk powder, sugar, aspartame, tea-powder and coffee), fresh fruit in the tray twice a day, and free access to gym, jacuzzi, steam, swimming pool and so on.

All in all, a lot different from all my previous holidays which have been in smaller, three or four star hotels.

At the book-shop, I placed some twenty-odd copies of my parenting book (and announced this through one of the organisers at the conference), and managed to sell about ten of these.

The hotel deli and cake shop was lovely, and I picked up several breads, mousse, cakes and chocolates for my own family on the last day.

There was a cultural program every evening; the first night had a group that beat out new songs and made all the doctors dance on the floor; the second night, a fantastic group entertained us with nostalgic Hindi melodies from the 1940s-1970s. This was something I really enjoyed!

Along with the conference, the pharma industry had put up some stalls to inform and entertain doctors when they came out of the lectures for snacks, tea or lunch. I entered a slogan contest and won a gold-plated wrist-watch as a prize in the same!

The other high point of my stay was when I opted to take a paid Swedish body massage at the hotel spa. The masseur turned out to be a local woman of around 35, who received informal training at the hotel after having served at the same place for over two years earlier as a female janitor. Pratibha, as she was called, normally attended only to female customers, but I was her first male customer (or at least that is what she led me to believe). She had to take me as there was a staff shortage, she said. I put her at ease by reminding her that I would not embarrass her in any way since I was a doctor and had a reputation to protect. She was nervous initially, but soon, she relaxed and gave me a nice massage that had me totally relaxed. I tipped her Rs. 50/= in addition to the Rs. 1850/= that the hotel charged me for its services. I got the free steam and jacuzzi as add-ons.

The only bad news was that while returning home, I was only 200 meters from home when a car collided with mine while reversing as I waited near a traffic signal. It crumpled up my left fender and the hood and provided that unnecessary bad touch to an otherwise excellent two and a half days that I spent at the hotel.