The day I stepped into Ship, I had the good fortune of meeting the most ill tempered attendant the place has to offer. After talking to him a few times, not much urge in me to talk has remained. Though he is irritable and ill tempered and highly unpredictable, he has quite a complex personality. This conclusion is based on the assumption that I am a rational being who does not give anyone too much benefit of the doubt.
It so happens that every time I have a conversation with him, it ends on the same note and needless to say ‘his note’. But it is usually me who builds the crescendo by being the ‘complaining sort’. Despite of my ‘complaining habit’, after being brainwashed by him and his gang who propagate the belief that the hotel offers the best facilities for the price we are paying, my very reasonable complaints now seem like shameless petitions for luxury, even to me.
I clearly recall, it was my very first day here when I had asked him, ‘Is my luggage secure here?’ I was referring to my second piece of luggage which was secured along with other pieces of luggage to the door with a long metal chain. And this is what he had to say to me, ‘If it doesn’t look secure to you why don’t you rent the now vacant double bed AC room we have. Rs. 312 is the rent. Your luggage will be quite safe there.’ I tell you I had this great urge to yell back at him why doesn’t he check in himself? What’s holding His Majesty back? Why does His Majesty sleep in quarters even worse than mine but I swear I restrained myself from hurting the poor man’s feelings.
As far as I know he knows darn well that I am a student and that too who is doing his summers at ‘The Indian Express’. For Gossake, hasn’t he ever come across the concept of budget constraints in his luxurious life of 25 years? And here I don’t want to make a mockery of irony by calling it an irony that he appears to be ignorant of the concept of budget while working in a budget hotel- the very place which is the reason for his next meal. I hope it’s clear to him that it’s not some five-seven star cruise liner he is working his lazy ass off in but a stationary budget hotel made out of concrete, attached to solid ground, inhabited by Nami-baba and forty-four roomies, a hotel which can never even dream about setting its eyes on a cruise liner let alone setting sail like it, but still has the audacity to call itself “Ship”.
Life is so predictable; I knew it won’t end there. So another time we had a chat about me complaining how disgusting it is to fill water from a cooler which situated so freaking close to the bathrooms. And again after the brain wash meant to make the hotel look like a place more reasonable than heaven, I received the generous offer from his majesty the attendant-prince himself to shift into the 312 Rs. double bed AC chamber intended to match my humble status as a summer trainee at The Indian Express. It was made clear to me that water wouldn’t be a problem there. And I must state here that what perplexes me is not the offer but the way it’s made. It’s purely mechanical as if some algorithm controls the words he is mouthing. I even close to considering that he was joking. It couldn’t possibly be true the second time, but it turns out that reality couldn’t disagree with me more.
And the third time this happened, it inspired this post, ‘cause third time is not funny. This time my problem was finding a plug point to charge my lappy-the device that earns me instant respect among the roomies. So His Majesty in his flat voice duly suggested the plug point near the staircase. Of course His Courageousness did not consider that the place does not have fan, is susceptible to trespassing and hence would require me to stand there in the heat as long as the lappy was getting charged, which is not much over an hour’s time. Needless to say the excellent suggestion of the plug point was followed by the magnanimous offer to move into the Special Summer Internship Suit which cost only Rs. 312. And, needless to say the suit was fitted with state-of-the-art plug points, and not only a fan but an AC.
After these three incidences I have given up on the ‘unreasonable complainant’ inside me. And have become a brown rat subjected to the greatest psychology experiment ever conducted inside a wannabe ship hotel codenamed ‘Project: Budget-Brainwash’.
And yes this brainwash does not come without the dilemma whether the attendant-prince is dumb or smart. But it comes with the assurance that whether dumb or smart he is surely an ass for which I congratulate him and my puny self profusely.
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