Tales from a Travelling salesman

Hotel Hustles By a rough count, I have spent 100 nights per year in hotels for many decades. I can not say I enjoyed my stay with all of them. But it was all a call of duty and the experiences made life that much more dramatic, more bittersweet, the way life should be. My first ever hotel stay was during my visit to Delhi, also my first. I stayed at a run-down Hotel Jai Hind in the heart of Chandni Chowk, Old Delhi. My daily allowance of Rs 40 took me only that far. I landed at the old Delhi station by train and took a cycle rickshaw to the hotel. The owner of the hotel was already on his third drink and did not bother to check me in. He simply gave me the key to a room.  Noises made by a young couple in the next room eluded sleep that night. The hotel owner said the next morning something in a hushed tone that Harayana police picked up runaway lovebirds. That explained the yelling and screaming that I thought was my dream.  The hotel was in the middle of popular street foo...

Mumbai again I keep writing about Mumbai, a city that is a bundle of contradictions. The city is like an eccentric friend whose presence annoys you secretly, but his affection makes you miss him the moment he walks away. I recall my first trip here on a wet and rainy day in 1962 when I was 11 years old. A war was simmering with China. Shammi Kapoor’s all-time hit film ‘Professor’ was running to a packed house at Novelty on Grant road where I stayed. In a short period of few months, I would complete 25 years when I finally landed here with one suitcase, hope, dream, and a bit of faith to make a life here. As writer Anuvab Pal said in his ode to Mumbai, the city keeps you on the edge. Living here is like permanently being backstage, two minutes from a show that is a sold-out performance. Mumbai can be madness at one moment and serenity at the next. The city is constantly and daily emerging into layers after layers of unfathomable pains and pleasures, trials, and tribulations. Nothing eve...

Collecting people   Everyone likes to collect something. Stamp, a precious stones, seashells, watches. I like to collect people. I have an eclectic collection of them. Such a collection has made my life livable and my soul shine.   Let me share a glimpse of my collection with you all.   Visram Sivram Salvi is the first person on my list. He is dead and gone. He was a family servant and mentor to me. His immense contribution to what I am today includes life-defining traits such as tying my shoelaces, reading clock dials, washing clothes, and being respectful to elders. He worked for our family for over 40 years. He then grew old and went home to Dapoli, in Maharashtra. How I traced him after two decades is another story to be told.   Muli ben was my class teacher in grade 2. She was a widow who always wore white and devoted her life to us rowdy boys and girls in a local primary school. When I was laid down with a plaster on my foot, She visited our home for a month to...

My Southern sojourn  I had never visited southern India until the age of 23. This changed overnight when my Jewish boss, all of 30 years old himself, called me one day at 3 pm to say something like 'go to Madras and call me from there.  Thus began my Southern sojourn.  He did not care if this meant taking a night train from Ahmedabad to Mumbai and then Dadar-Madras express or Madra Mail, all without a reservation.  He did not care about the social life of a young man or the fact that I had a steady girlfriend. Reflecting on this now, I recognize that this is how you develop people, push them to perform no matter what the circumstances are.  My job was to buy  handloom clothes for our garment business from southern India. We had two agents, Sashikant bhai in Cananore and Mr. Menon in Madras. These gentlemen taught me everything about the handloom trade and became my gurus. We paid 50 paise a meter as a commission to them.  The frequent tr...

Quest of the Quaint travels  Traveling has been my fate, my ceaseless life for 5 decades. The eternally spinning wheel of traveling life began when I chose a salesman’s career at 21. I traveled from Punxsutawney in Western Pennsylvania to Palabora in northeastern South Africa, Amreli in Gujarat to Aizawl in North East, Pochampalli in Andhra to Pathankot in Kashmir. I traveled by the bullock carts, horse-drawn buggies, old and dilapidated buses, narrow-gauge trains, and planes with one and a half wing. I traveled 20 days a month; travel that was backbreaking, head spinning, whirlwind, bizarre, throbbing, exciting, fun, struggles but sweet. There was never a moment of boredom in my life.  Let me take you through some of my more exotic and quaint journeys.  Nestled in the gently rolling hills of Western Pennsylvania, Punxsutawney is approximately 90 miles northeast of Pittsburgh, USA, and is home to tiny 6,800 residents. The hotel receptionist warned us to hurry since...