10 Things You Must Do At A Five Star Hotel. It Doesn’t Happen Every Day
by Anubha Yadav
I don’t know if history can credit the birth of the descriptive phrase ‘Five Star’ to someone. A word that led to the creation of a cult called–a Five Star hotel. Perhaps an old, stubby British journalist exited quite satiated after a visit, and on-return to his desk drummed his fingers in style and winked for added flavor as he exhaled to his newspaper editor- “Ah! The place! I tell you–five stars!” Knowing that newspaper editors have an uncanny ability for catching catchy phrases like this one, this casual usage could have become the bed for a cult classification. Or perhaps there is a duller story.
The Indian middle class has a curiously tenacious relationship with the Five Star hotels. ‘They are the Five Star types’ is enough description to describe a whole family. It serves most purposes, be it trailing chatter or swift matrimonial enquiry.
It isn’t about affluence alone. The five stars represent the paradox of pleasure. The idea of success and professional achievement is linked to these marbled spaces, albeit with suspicion. Entering them announces your upward mobility and superior status from the rest in the middle. You are not a real Indian if you haven’t bellowed about your first free FIVE Star conference– describing the plush environs, the buffet service and the musical elevators with ceaseless pride.
Post-liberalization the new corporates de-stress their employees in these luxurious spaces, it is a great way to spend money on your employees and avoid extra taxation. Unlike before, now even the new-bee-employee can boast of a five-day-5-star-stay training program. Often the parents who have no clue it is free-for-all, listen to the tales of Alice’s return from Wonderland with dove eyes, joyful smiles and flushed cheeks, and perhaps that very night the father and the mother rest their prayers for the child, as their child has finally arrived.
The swimming pool in a Five Star hotel used to symbolize the villain’s deep venomous desire, and an innocent cup of tea in a Five Star hotel could make the hero a dubious playboy.
Indian cinema has also found itself in this moral bind. The swimming pool in a Five Star hotel used to symbolize the villain’s deep venomous desire, and an innocent cup of tea in a Five Star hotel could make the hero a dubious playboy. Heroines never sauntered in Five Stars but vamps made them their second home. In short a good person never entered these nailed and webbed spaces of Maya.
Recently, My 65-year-old aunt and uncle who had never been in those haloed spaces were booked for a holiday in a Five Star hotel by their pampering seven-zero-salary daughter so they celebrate their 40th wedding anniversary in style. And to my surprise aunty came back with a booty of shampoos, soaps, tissues and moisturizers. She declared the freebies with utmost pride. When asked about the stay she lamented, “Well, for that money even narak (hell) better be good!”
So, those who still feel the classical guilt after the starry stay. Here are the 10 things you just must do to get FULL paisa vasool.
Channel your inner Sherlock
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1. Ask for the best rooms and if you believe they never show the best rooms to you, you are absolutely right. It is a conspiracy! Just inspect seven rooms on each side of the hotel before you choose one as your temporary home. Don’t believe the lobby boy if he informs you that there is no ocean, or mountain peaks around the hotel, remember they could have tucked them away in some corner — there should be a view from the window if you are paying! Check your 28 options before you sit and make that comparative chart to make the final choice.
Have a view! Have a view! Have a view!
Starry tip: For the GPRS challenged — the sun rises in the east and sets in the west.
Show them your pre-punctuality
2. Confirm the check-in time and reach at least four hours before. Use the swimming pool, the squash court and the gymnasium (even if you have never used it before) while they get the room ready for you. You are already taking the worth of your green notes. Far ahead of them!
Starry Tip: Don’t stop your children from going up and down in the musical lifts like they are in an amusement park.
Food is food
3. Stop eating two days before the stay, so you can fully utilize the complimentary buffet. Exhaust the FULL buffet. Eat like you haven’t had food since two days (which will also be the truth: Satyamev jayate!). Remember: Tomorrow never comes. Now that you are at it, eat for the next three days. If you are a vegetarian and the buffet is unjustly weighing towards the non-vegetarian across the table, then it might just help to call the buffet manager. Or just convert for one hour in the morning?
Starry tip for mothers: Encourage children to eat the complicated recipes. Things you don’t wish to cook for breakfast. If they ask for regulars like cornflakes and milk or boiled eggs just take matters in your own hands, fill the plates with the other-spread. If they cry, stuff their mouths with what is in the plates.
Because you have paid for it
4. Use every inch of the space in the locker, almirahs, racks in your room.
Starry Tip: Jump on the beds so they make them twice in a day.
The world outside isn’t a Five Star Hotel
5. Always finish the free items in the mini bar.
Starry tip: Mini bar has no free items. But should they not tell you that in advance? Huh?
It’s all yours
6. Every hotel gives rationed bottled water, tea bags, coffee and sugar. Keep asking for them from room service. Of course, stock them and pack them. No, do not use them as yet. If you are an efficient collector you should have enough for the return journey and the next month at home.
Starry tip: Never forget to pick the newspapers and magazines lying here and there.
Part of the constitution
7. Shampoos, soaps, conditioners, creams, toothpaste — two packs for each day — is your fundamental right. Just keep packing them in as you use what you have got from home.
Starry Tip: Toilet paper rolls can also be packed!
Because it is liquid currency
8. Swim in the pool even if you do not know how to swim — you have paid for it! Money is flowing like water.
Starry Tip: Buy a swim wear from the boutique shops in the hotel. Of course, they are overpriced. Haggle! Don’t forget to take a mandatory swimwear photo. And also, quote the price in dollars to relatives after your return.
Even God is on Facebook
9. Social media settings should be changed before the trip. Facebook and all else should automatically update your location as soon as you enter the Five Star hotel. Or what is the point of all of it? Huh?
#Instagram #EiffelTowerSelfie #NapoleonSneezedHereSelfie
10. Where are those pictures of you in the Five Star hotel lobby? It is the lobby of a FIVE Star, no less than the Taj (Mahal!), or the Eiffel Tower itself. Sit on the sofa or stand with the bronze statue for sure.
Anubha Yadav is a writer, academic based in New Delhi. Her short fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in Wasafiri, Indian Literature, Cha: An Asian Literary Journal, Elsewhere, Jaggery and others. Recently she has been awarded the Dastaan Award, 2014. She was also shortlisted for the Wasafiri New Writing Prize, 2013. At present she is writing a collection of short stories. When not in a classroom, she travels with a backpack full of tea leaves- somehow she never reaches anywhere. Her work can also be read on her blog: anubhayadav.com.