Always, during the long weekends, and this one is surely long, friends invite me to their country estates. To go and spend the weekend with them at Marve, Mandwa, Alibag, Khandala, Mahableshwar. They tell me: “Just come there and relax, put your feet up and do nothing.”

I have found out that relax is the last thing you can do. Unless you are totally insensitive, you cannot relax in somebody else’s house, with your hosts and other people around.

So I decide to take up the invitation and go to Mandwa. The host informs: “You can just laze there, sit under the tree and read. Or lie in the hammock, I have got a nice hammock in the garden.”

The first thing is the host has to arrange the transport for me, I would not know the first thing about hiring boats and tindals. So already I am dependant on him. “Let’s say 1.30 at the Gateway. And be on time, because I want to catch the tide at the other end,” the host instructs.

So, the day my long and easy weekend starts, I rush, rush, rush through the morning and make it to the Gateway at 1.30 p.m., hopefully in time for the tide. The host introduces me to two other guests and their child.

On the boat, I would like to just sit and trail my hand through the warm water and watch the seagulls and the dolphins. But, being a good guest, I have to carry on small conversation.

At Mandwa, we reach the house and we all assist the hostess in opening it and airing it and chasing the lizards back into the cracks. After that, I would like to lie down for a couple of hours, but the hostess has not pointed out which is going to be my bunk and I am too polite to ask, so I stand around, doing nothing, and occasionally mentioning how peaceful the place is. “Yes,” says the host, “it is very peaceful, you can relax and relax here.”

There is, however, no relaxation. The child of the other guests wants to go for a walk in Mandwa village, hoping to find Amitabh Bachchan there, and, after that, the host and hostess have a plan to take us to the Mandwa Club.

I consider the hammock, but children from neighbouring cottages are playing see-saw on it. I decide to read the book I have brought along and which I have been planning to read on the first available long weekend, but the guest tells me: “You have not come here to read!”

The evening is unending. There is no Amitabh Bachchan in the village, but a lot of people who look like Mithun Chakravorty, and at the club there are familiar Bombay faces in sailors’ caps and half pants.

It is late by the time I finally go to bed and the last thing the host tells me is: “tomorrow morning, the village is having its annual bullock-cart race, so we will be getting up early to go and see it, and in the evening we are having a bonfire and sing-song on the beach. Goodnight.”

— Busybee
Friday, April 27, 1990

I notice that Bombay is getting a whole new set of five star hotels and the centre of the city is shifting from the southern tip of the causeway to north-central.

The other day, I had been to see the Juhu Centaur, which, at first appearance, seems to be a considerable improvement on the Santa Cruz Centaur. The entrance is under a large porch, its ceiling done up like the dance floor of a discotheque. The lobby is large and rambling, giving a sense of space, at least in its present empty state, and escalators lead down almost eye-level to a giant chandelier, and then to restaurants and coffee shops. Best of all, the large reception hall and wedding mandap is kept separate from the hotel, somewhere in the rear of the car-park, effectively separating the wedding guests and their children from the resident guests.

The other new hotel is Leela Penta near the international airport terminal. Large acres around it have been recovered by horticulturists and landscape gardeners, and, in the late evenings, as  cars sweep down the driveway, their head lamps light up rows and rows of scarlet flower-beds.

The horticulturists and botanists have worked inside the hotel also and there are real trees growing inside the lobby. From the large windows of the restaurants you can see fountains playing, a designer waterfall, like in one of those lampshades that recycle the waters continuously, and, occasionally, a line of deer passing along the horizon.

South Bombay’s new hotel is the mini-Oberoi, exclusive expensive, elegant. The lobby is a giant solarium, a hothouse with orchids growing in it. The restaurants and their menus are precisely planned to the exact weight of the steak and the temperature of the humider in which the cigars are kept. And the rooms are packed with gadgets of comfort. Truly, there is no hotel in India like the new Oberoi.

I am not familiar with most of the suburban hotels, but I think the SeaRock is well designed with a coffee-shop that runs across the length of the sea, and it has the city’s only exclusive seafood restaurant. Though tucked away in a corner of Bandra, I think it is a waste.

Holiday Inn has good food and its cuisine has improved since it opened its resort in Goa. It also has friendly management.

The continued success of Sun-and Sand is inexplicable. It was and continues to be the favourite hotel of Indian film stars. In a way, it is like the Ambassador and Ritz in South Bombay. New hotels may come, but they do not seem to be affected.

— Busybee
February 5, 1987