The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel: A Novel

  Evelyn sat next to her companions of the afternoon. She eyed Dorothy with curiosity. This changed to astonishment when Dorothy ordered a bottle of wine. Nobody drank wine—it was exorbitantly expensive, as rare a treat as when they were young. People drank local beer, Indian spirits or, if feeling extravagant, imported liquor. Jimmy carried in the bottle, holding it like a firework, and had to be helped with the corkscrew.

  “Not your birthday, old girl?” boomed Norman from the next table. He eyed the bottle greedily.

  Dorothy shook her head. After a long interval, Jimmy reappeared with four dusty wineglasses, trembling on a tray.

  Evelyn, some yards away, inspected Dorothy’s face. There was an air of suppressed excitement about her, as if she had heard some news on the radio of which the rest of them were unaware. Dorothy speared a slice of egg with mayonnaise, lifted it to her mouth and then, lost in thought, put it down again.

  Until recently Evelyn had defended Dorothy against the rumor of barminess that had been circulating. Eccentricity, like good cheddar, was one of a dwindling list of things of which the British could be proud. Until they had arrived at the hotel many of the residents had been living alone for some years, a situation that fostered odd behavior. Evelyn herself frequently spoke aloud to Hugh.

  Only the day before, however, she had found Dorothy in the garden, talking to the mali. When she drew nearer and could make out the words, she had discovered that Dorothy wasn’t speaking English at all; it was some sort of gobbledygook. No wonder the mali had looked bemused and shaken his head. Or done that sort of waggle. Of course, if that’s what you want to say, you dotty old Brit. We all have our strange little ways, thought Evelyn. It was just that some were stranger than others.

  Take Muriel Donnelly. In recent days Muriel had grown more agitated. The visit to the holy man hadn’t produced the desired result: there was still no sign of her son. She had phoned his home in Essex many times: no answer. His neighbors hadn’t heard a dicky-bird. Muriel’s efforts to track down his wife and her two children, Jordan and Shannon, had failed too. Maybe the wife had run away as well. Muriel had no idea. The two of them had never got on.

  Yet Muriel still persisted. Miracles could happen. After all, without hope she would probably lose the will to live.

  After dinner Evelyn sat in the lounge, reading an old Good Housekeeping. From the TV room came the sound of Porridge; somebody had discovered a pirated copy at Khan’s. In the armchair opposite dozed Hermione, her exercise book on her lap. She was writing her memoirs for her grandchildren.

  Muriel came up to Evelyn and whispered: “Guess what. I’m having me leaves read tomorrow.”

  “Leaves?”

  “It’s going to tell me the future.”

  “Do you think that’s a good idea?” asked Evelyn.

  “It’s got the answers written on it,” said Muriel.

  “How? I thought they just made a sort of shape.”

  “What does?”

  “Tea leaves.”

  “Not tea leaves, ducks,” said Muriel. “I can do them. This is palm leaves. They even tell you when you’re going to die.”

  Opposite, Hermione had fallen asleep. Her memoirs slipped from her fingers and fell onto the floor.

  Ammachi, they say, is the embodiment of Devi, the Divine Mother of the Universe. At her ashram in this small fishing village by the Arabian Sea—built on the site of her birthplace and childhood home—thousands of people from around the world come to experience her unique darshan, in which she holds each devotee in her arms like a mother embracing a child.

  Theresa sat on the rocks reading From Here to Nirvana. The waves pounded the beach and withdrew, hissingly. Their rhythm lulled her. Each wave was her consciousness, washing over her and then retreating and leaving her cleansed. Now that she had arrived, she was filled with peace.

  Earthy, vital and archetypically maternal, the Hugging Mother personally receives every person who comes to her—laughing, scolding, consoling and finally wrapping the devotee in a mammoth hug (usually accompanied by a chocolate kiss or some other sweet as prasad). She’s been known to embrace over fifteen thousand devotees in one night, greeting each one with the same radiant, unforced smile. Her disciples estimate that to date she has hugged about twenty million people.

  How rare were the hugs of Theresa’s own mother! Evelyn hadn’t been a physical person at all—too frigid, too English. The thought of her having sex with Theresa’s father was too grotesque to contemplate. Once, when she was little, Theresa had crept into their room and tried to climb into bed with them. Her mother had wordlessly picked her up and carried her back: Theresa’s first experience of rejection, the first of many.

  Theresa became aware of a smell. She looked down. In the cleft between the rocks was a pile of shit. She got up and, crossing the rocks, limped down to the beach. Her wound was now a dull ache. Indian Elastoplast was useless; it fell off after a few steps.

  In fact, her mother’s hugs weren’t really hugs at all; just a brief clasp against her rigid body, a kiss on the cheek. These clasps were treacherous, for they spelled farewell. A brief embrace and then her parents were gone, driving away in their Rover, back to their happy marriage, and leaving Theresa to face the horrors of boarding school. How could they have sent their child away? What sort of love was that? They had always loved Christopher more, of course, their darling boy. Oh, Christopher could do no wrong.

  Theresa limped back to the village. If only she could find a foot guru to heal her wounds. If only she could find a bowel guru to heal her diarrhea. Judging by the evidence dotted around in the sand, she was not the only one to suffer from the runs.

  She made her way past a row of coaches. The village was crammed with pilgrims, many of them Westerners.

  “Hey, mate, how’re you doing?” Two English youths hugged. “We met in Varanasi, remember? Pandit’s Chai Shop.”

  It was with some difficulty that Theresa had found a room: a concrete cell in a house on the main road, next to the cyber-café. Theresa sat down on the bed. Outside, traffic inched past. She could hear people’s voices as they walked past her window.

  “I’m living in Wembley at the moment,” said a girl. “But I’m looking for a place in Kensal Rise.”

  As a rule Theresa avoided the British but she suddenly longed for a conversation, even the limited kind she would have with a stoned Londoner half her age. She took out her packet of Moist Wipes. There was only one left. She tried to clean her wound, but the Moist Wipe had dried up.

  Never mind, she thought. Tomorrow I shall be hugged.

  He who feels neither excitement nor repulsion, who complains not and lusts not for things; who is beyond good and evil, and who has love—he is dear to me.

  The Bhagavad Gita

  “Look, Jo-Jo, elephants!” Christopher pointed out of the Jeep.

  “I seen an elephant.”

  “That was only one. Look, there’s a whole herd of them here, a mummy elephant and a daddy elephant and a little baby elephant—”

  “Dad,” said Clementine.

  “Mom, I’m tired.” Joseph, his thumb in his mouth, snuggled against his mother in the backseat.

  “You can’t be tired,” said Christopher.

  “They got up at six,” said his wife.

  “Do look, kids! It’s a whole family of them!”

  “You’re shouting, honey,” said Marcia.

  “But they’ve never seen elephants before, in the wild!”

  “Yes they have.”

  “When?”

  “In Kenya, remember? The Masai Mara.”

  Marcia sat there, draped with their children. Clementine, who seemed to have regressed on this trip, was sucking her thumb too. The driver, a helpful chap named Hari, had stopped the Jeep.

  “Elephants, sahib,” said Hari.

  Christopher took a photo. Somebody had to show willing, just for the sake of the driver. The elephants were simply gray boulders among the scrub. Christopher urged them to d
o something interesting.

  “Got some photos anyway,” he said brightly. “We can look at them when we get home.”

  Nobody replied. Hari started up the Jeep and drove on. Christopher wanted to say to him: Don’t blame me. I know they’re spoiled kids, but honestly, their friends are just as bad. You have no idea.

  In the backseat, the children lolled against their mother. Marcia hugged them in a proprietary, excluding way. She really did spoil them dreadfully. Guilt, of course. Career women overindulged their children; it came from hardly ever seeing them. How different it was from his own upbringing.

  They bounced along the track. He wished she weren’t so, well, physical. All that hugging, especially with their son. Christopher suspected it wasn’t entirely healthy. Surely it was storing up trouble for later?

  The Mudumalai Game Reserve was only Day Four of their holiday and already the children were bored. They had seen temples and beaches; they had traveled on a boat through the backwaters of Kerala and helped themselves to vast buffets in staggeringly luxurious hotels; they had swum in pools the size of Piccadilly Circus whose palm trees rustled with parrots; flunkeys had served them, bringing them elaborate nonalcoholic cocktails and picking up the sodden towels they left strewn around their rooms. So far the only sign of animation from Clementine was when she met somebody who had met Johnny Depp. As for Joseph, most of the time he had stayed plugged into his Discman, coming to life only when the batteries died.

  “Me and your granddad, we went camping once on Dartmoor,” said Christopher. “Tramped for miles, just an apple and a piece of cheese in our pockets. In the evenings we made our own amusements—playing Battleships, things like that.”

  Clementine looked at him, her lip curled. “Dad, that is so sad.”

  “It wasn’t. It was grand.” Grand? He had never used that word before in his life.

  Nowadays, Christopher felt himself becoming unrecognizable. He was playing at families. He gazed at his angel-faced son, seven years old and already unnerving; at his mulish daughter. Oh, he worried what life had in store for them, but in truth he felt that they hardly belonged to him at all. Now that he was away from home, in their company twenty-four hours a day, he saw them all with horrible clarity. Why couldn’t they just be happy, like families were supposed to be?

  The Jeep bounced along the track, past miles of scrub. It was an overcast morning, the light flat. A few birds flew around, but Hari had given up pointing things out. Christopher turned in his seat, to smile encouragingly at his little family. Bare of makeup, Marcia’s skin looked sallow in the early morning light. She didn’t show her age, he had to admit that, but she really was a remarkably plain woman.

  He suddenly had a vision of the villages they had passed, in Kerala—glimpses of a life so simple, so achingly beautiful that he couldn’t shake it off: a laughing child waving at the boat, a sari-clad woman gracefully throwing grain to her hens. Keep that breathless charm. Each little house they passed, nestling among its banana palms, drenched in sunlight, was a vision of Eden. It was a vision of such unattainable happiness that he wanted to weep.

  “When are we going back to the hotel, Mom?” whined Clementine.

  “Soon.”

  “Then we’re off to Ooty!” said Christopher. “Then we come down from the hills on a steam railway, then we go to some amazing temples at a place called Halebib—”

  “Look, Mom, some bug’s bit me!”

  “And a beautiful city called Mysore—”

  “Look! It’s all swollen!” wailed Clementine.

  “There’s a wonderful palace there—”

  “Am I going to die?” asked Clementine.

  “Darling,” said Christopher, “don’t be such a drama queen.”

  “She’s worried!” snapped Marcia. She turned to her daughter. “Sweetie, we’ll put some stuff on it when we get back to the hotel.”

  “And then on to your granny!” said Christopher. “Granny Evelyn. She can’t wait to see you guys.”

  “Will she be wearing a diaper?” Joseph snorted with giggles.

  “That’s silly,” said Christopher. “Of course not.”

  “Old people wear diapers, like babies.”

  “You wore diapers once,” said Christopher.

  “Gross!”

  “Will she give me a Christmas present?” asked Clementine.

  “I’m sure she will.” In fact his mother was famously stingy, but surely she would buy them something. By Christmas Day, in fact, they would be gone; they had only two nights in Bangalore and then it was on to Goa. Christopher knew they should be spending the day with his mother, but the dates hadn’t worked out. Still, it was near enough. And Theresa would be there for the actual festivities. Surely that was all right, wasn’t it?

  Christopher felt the usual guilt, rising like nausea. He was useless, both as a father and as a son. He closed his eyes.

  There she was: one woman, glimpsed from the boat. She wore a pale blue sari. Squatting at the water’s edge, she squeezed out her washing. The sun caught her hair. As the boat passed she raised her head and smiled at him, a dazzling smile. Just for a moment the mist cleared. Her smile, like the sunshine, dissolved it away.

  “Mom, it’s gotten all red!” wailed Clementine.

  “Yuck,” said Joseph.

  Christopher glanced at the driver. The brochure had promised them a qualified wildlife expert, but never mind; in India, he had noticed, such promises seemed to evaporate. In this case they had been given an elderly man who could hardly speak English. Christopher looked at Hari’s thin ankles, his dusty gray toes. How much did the man earn? Per week, probably less than a gin and tonic.

  Ah, a gin and tonic …

  Hari drove out through the game reserve gates. Boys emerged from some huts, and ran up to the Jeep.

  “What is your name?” they asked.

  “Topher,” said Christopher.

  When he was a schoolboy Christopher had tentatively made up this nickname for himself. However, it had never caught on; none of his classmates had used it, and the whole thing had disintegrated in a vaguely humiliating way.

  “Topher, Topher!” shouted the boys. “You are from which country please?”

  “England. But I live in New York.”

  Christopher looked at them. Suddenly he had a powerful urge to tip out his own children and gather up these laughing boys instead.

  To them I’m Topher! he thought. I could start all over again with a woman in a blue sari who simply smiled at me, glad that I existed.

  “Hi! My name is Madhu Sengupta and I’m twenty-six years old. I’m cheerful, well educated and from a good family. I have a BA Com in Systems Management, but despite my modern exterior I’m very traditional at heart. My interests include bridge, music and conversation—”

  “She’s nice, Rahul,” whispered Evelyn.

  “I’m looking for a man I can depend on and who can depend on me—”

  “Forget it, sweetheart,” Surinda said to the face on the TV screen.

  “Shut up,” said Rahul.

  A group of the residents sat in the TV room. They were watching a video of prospective brides for Rahul, the young man who worked at the call center.

  “—and who is reasonably good-looking—”

  “That counts you out,” chortled Surinda.

  “Please supply a horoscope.”

  Rahul lounged between Evelyn and Madge’s feet, his hair shining in the glow from the screen. He said he wanted some input from people whose opinions he valued. They had been charmed by his confidence.

  Another face appeared on the screen. “My name is Kiran Shrivastav and I am a Christian,” she said, “five feet six inches tall. I am looking for a partner with marriage in mind; he should be well settled and with a good sense of humor. I work as a dental assistant and my age is twenty-two—”

  “Twenty-two?” crowed Surinda. “In your dreams, darling.”

  “I am fluent in Kannada, Hindi and English and would pref
er a nonsmoker. Please email me at the above address.”

  “They all look so pretty,” said Evelyn. She wished one of them had married her son.

  Another face appeared. “I am a divorcée, no encumbrance, and I’m looking for a respectable professional man, any age, caste no bar—”

  “Poor thing, she’s desperate,” said Surinda.

  “The next one is the one I like,” said Rahul. “I’ve replayed her four times—”

  “Oh pu-leese,” said Surinda.

  “What do you think, aunties?” he asked.

  A pretty girl appeared on the screen, eyes downcast.

  “I like dance, drama and eat-outs,” she said. “I’m an affectionate and caring graduate—”

  “Hey, I know her!” said Surinda. “We were at college together. She’s a slag, Rahiji.”

  “What did she say?” asked Stella.

  “And she’s got a fat ass!”

  Just then Evelyn noticed a man standing in the doorway. It was Minoo. He was gazing at the TV screen. Even in the gloom she could see that he was upset.

  Eithne pointed to the TV. “That one’s just like my Lucy. Hardly darker at all—”

  “Sssh!”

  “She says she’s sending me a surprise for Christmas,” said Eithne. “It’s her, I know it is! She’s coming to see me, all the way from Australia—”

  “Do shut up!” somebody called out. “We’re trying to find this nice young man a wife.”

  When Evelyn turned, Minoo had gone.

  The video ended. The elderly audience got to their feet, their knees cracking like pistol shots.