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.

... contd.