A Dog's Life(38)

I had noticed on entering the restaurant a tall woman with obviously dyed black hair who was swathed in a gaudy yellow and green evening dress. ‘Are you by chance from England?’ she enquired, in a very posh Kensington accent. I answered yes. ‘From London?’ Yes, again. ‘Thank you,’ she said, smiling mysteriously.

It transpired that there were five other English people staying at the hotel, and two of them were in the dining room. I suddenly heard ‘Maybe it’s Because I’m a Londoner’ being played on an upright piano behind me. I turned round in my chair and saw that the pianist was the gaudily dressed woman I had just spoken to. She then gave a hearty rendition of ‘I’ve Got a Lovely Bunch of Coconuts’. ‘Roll Out the Barrel’ and ‘Two Lovely Black Eyes’ came next. The two elderly Englishwomen opposite me were trying desperately to stifle their giggles, and so was I. The English music hall theme once exhausted, the pianist plunged into ‘Santa Lucia’ and ‘Over the Rainbow’. The most enthusiastic member of her audience was a tiny old woman, sitting in state at the end of the room and beaming with pleasure. The waiters treated her with special attentiveness.

There were two hot water bottles in my bed and a coal fire, lit by a maid, was burning. I had to remind myself that the year was 1994, and that I was in India, not some chilly English suburb. My bedtime reading, with a glass of Indian brandy to hand, was the notes I had overlooked earlier:

About salads, all uncooked vegetables are washed thoroughly in ‘pinki-pani’, or potassium permanganate (the stuff you gargle with when you have a sore throat) before being served. We have been doing this also since 1939.


That particular note made the idea of ordering salad instantly resistible.


The next note exhorted:


SEND IT TO KAN-CHI

If you need a sock darned, a button sewn on, or a stitch put in a seam, please send the article for repair to Kan-Chi through your room maid. Kan-Chi sews for love. Her service is free.


There was a final note to study:


WINDERMERE [sic] TEA. Served by the fire, in the sitting-room of Windamere Hotel, since 1939. Remembered by guests as ‘The Champagne of Teas’.


I began to realize 1939 was a key year in the Windamere’s history.


I rose early the following morning, had a warmish shower, and went to the dining room for breakfast. I told the Nepalese waiter that I wanted very weak Darjeeling tea without milk or sugar, and I ordered scrambled eggs. I thought I was safe with scrambled eggs, but I was wrong. The tea was fine, but the eggs were grey, their greyness emphasized by the dollop of mashed potato that came with them. I remembered powdered egg from my childhood in wartime, and wondered if the chef was still using the supply the hotel had purchased in – could it be? – 1939.

I wandered about the town, taking in some long-in-the-tooth American disciples of Hare Krishna, passing the NU LADEE beauty parlour, and a little cinema that was showing FILTHY DELIGHT, with the unnecessary caution ‘For Adults Only’. I found a bookshop that contained every book P. G. Wodehouse had written – which seemed appropriate, since the great chronicler of English idiocy might have invented the Windamere. I visited a tea plantation, and bought various kinds of Darjeeling and Sikkim tea. The saddest sight was of a pair of abandoned ponies – too old and frail now to be of use. One of them followed me some of the way up Observatory Hill, until he was scared off by a troop of excited monkeys. Every litter bin on the hill had a message from the Darjeeling Council printed on it, my favourite being ALLOW US TO KEEP YOU SMILE. On my way to the zoo – where wonderfully beautiful Siberian and Indian tigers were kept in far too confined a space – I paused before the HOT AND STIMULATING CAFE, which specialized in tea and instant coffee (produced with Science, and probably tastier than the kind made with Art).

I was in Darjeeling, courtesy of the British Council, to talk to the teachers and students at Loreto College. I was immediately charmed by the principal, Reverend Mother Damien O’Donoghue, not least because she spoke about Shakespeare, Keats, Dickens and Jane Austen with luminous enthusiasm. It was clear that the staff and pupils respected and loved her. I spent two days at the college, and was impressed by the quality and intelligence of the questions I was asked. Of the teachers, I best remember a large man – the Nepalese and Sikkim are small in stature – whose eyes disappeared into his head whenever he spoke. I was so intrigued by this ocular vanishing trick that I scarcely heard what he was saying.


Mitalee joined me to savour the delights of Windamere cuisine: a cream of potato and onion soup, straight from the tin or packet, thick with monosodium glutamate; roast beef with Yorkshire pudding, potatoes and carrots, and a curry with pork and vegetables. Crème caramel was the dessert. Mitalee, being Hindu, refused the beef and I resisted the Yorkshire pudding, which resembled a dry biscuit. There was a power cut during the meal – the pianist played gamely on, by candlelight – so I escorted Mitalee to the New Elgin Hotel, and I, in turn, was guided back to the Windamere by a tiny man with a torch.