I met Fatima just a week ago in Delhi, at a dinner for her son Fareed (the Newsweek editor) at the home of her curator daughter Tasneem and son-in-law Vikram Mehta, CEO of Shell and an Express Group columnist. We joked about that article and, even as I filled my plate from a wonderful buffet you could write a whole glorious article on (if you had the skills, and the taste), I told her, and other guests, how one thing I could never get around to doing was write about my experience in fine hotels. Events of this week, however, do not leave me that excuse any longer. Because, of all the scores of impersonal, cold, boring, overdone, mechanical hotels I may have spent half my life in, there is one that has been like my second home, which was warm, lively-yet-quiet, private-yet-not-impersonal, and where I slept almost as well as at home. Warm, comfortable and secure. That is why the assault on The Oberoi in Bombay, by far the finest hotel I have ever stayed in — and I stayed there a lot — is like an assault on my second home. So I have no choice but to write about my experiences in a fine hotel, after all, whatever my limitations of taste, style or turn of phrase.

In fact I had never realised how long I had used the hotel, and how often, until some time back a gift-wrapped package arrived in my room, with a card saying that this was the hotel’s way of thanking me for my 250th, or 300th visit (I am a bit hazy on the number now, but it was a lot). That would probably make it as many hotel nights as I may have spent in any other around the world in the same period. I thanked the manager that evening, and asked, mischievously, that he better warn Biki Oberoi that at this rate I was soon going to claim tenancy rights at his premier hotel.

But the reason I continued to stay here, even on days when my work would take me to the suburbs, to which the driving time can be longer than the Bombay-Delhi flight, was not to strengthen my claims to tenancy rights. It is because it was the next best thing to home. Housekeeping knew my impatience with hotel mattresses, so always had my spartan floor bed ready, next to the glazed window facing the sea, room service always knew how I wanted my tea, everybody knew I came home late, and yet often went for a walk by Marine Drive. And everybody knew not to knock on my door, whatever the reason, or put a call through in the morning because I am not exactly a morning person.

If you stay in a hotel often enough, you may come to take these things for granted. People get used to a frequent guest, after all. But I figured how this was so much by design one morning as the butler who brought in the morning tea was a very young woman. As she placed the tray in the room, she asked me to check if the tea was done right: two bags of Oberoi Blend in one pot of hot water. Waking up, but amused, I asked if room service had asked her to check that. She said, instead, this is what she, still a trainee, was told while being familiarised with regular guests. So what other quirks of mine do you know, I asked. That you sleep on the floor, come back late, go for post-midnight walks, wake up late, turn the air-con to the coldest and then sometimes use a double duvet — so we place an extra one in your room — and so on, she said. The more I think about what The Oberoi and its staff may have gone through, the more I hope she is safe, and well.

There are so many others I would strike conversations with, many nameless, smiling, super-efficient hotel staff, but warm and dignified, the way they are trained to be at The Oberoi. That includes almost all the front desk staff, and those at Tiffin, where I ate half my meals when in Bombay. We all know that Tiffin, open and exposed to the lobby, took the first assault. I do hope and pray that all the brilliant people who fed me and so many others in what had so quickly become Bombay’s favourite happening restaurant, are safe and will be there to bring my meal again and to chat about their lives, their plans and ambitions. Ditto for Cornel from laundry who got your stuff back an hour sooner than you asked, spotless and almost too well-ironed for clumsy me and asked you a question about politics and one about cricket. I hope he is fine too.

I used the expression nameless for hotel staff because the uniform and style give them a kind of anonymity, and the distance and rank-consciousness that their training breeds prevents them from getting too familiar with a guest, or letting the guest get too familiar. So you usually remember faces, not names. But one is easy to remember, Abhimanyu on the front desk, because that is also my son’s name. I told him that the first time I saw him, and probably reminded him each time I ran into him on the many subsequent visits. He is the type who is always smiling, helpful and always has an opinion too. I hope he is well too, along with all his cheerful mates, and I find him, as usual, smiling at the front office.

Anybody who knows Biki Oberoi and Ratan Tata would have no doubts that they will both fix and reopen their crown jewels sooner than anybody imagines. Soon enough The Oberoi and The Taj will be back. They are both Bombay landmarks, fully Indian hotels that run at first-world efficiency. I bet both can count on thousands, like me, spoilt by one of them, coming back at first opportunity. I shall be back at The Oberoi, my second home, the day it reopens, and will keep coming back, not for collecting more room nights and gifts. So Biki Oberoi need not worry about me claiming tenancy rights some day. I can’t wait to come back to my favourite “fine” hotel, one so much a part of my life I can even write an entire column about it, and to all its brilliant young staffers that make it such a special place.

sg@expressindia.com