Sandstorm In A Teacup

It seems the only hospitality we do in England is preceded by the word “Corporate”. In the privacy of our own homes, we do a little entertaining, but hospitality is far more important in India.

Apparently we do “customer service”, but that seems to be a faded concept these days, with shops employing monosyllabic teens who can’t even pronounce the letter ‘t’ and “customer service centres” that bring up electronic messages asking you to press “1” if you want to kill someone in customer service. Or something like that. We’ve forgotten how to serve customers, we’ve forgotten how to deal with people, and we only offer hospitality to corporate fat cats. And we can’t even pronounce the ‘t’ in courtesy, let alone be courteous.

To be fair, many Indians don’t exactly excel when it comes to courtesy – and I’ve been told that’s quite normal in North India. I wanted to learn the Hindi word for “thank you”, but so few people say it, it was hardly worth bothering. There hardly seems time for “please”, “thank you” and even “goodbye” – a far cry from the often effusive politeness of the French who spend an average of 7 hours per day just offering greetings and wishing each other a nice day. Then again, when everything is flashing by you at 50 miles per hour, and when everyone wants to get where you are - but before you – there’s no time for pleasantries.

So it goes without saying that in a land of extremes, the opposite is also true. Take the Taj Hotel in Jaipur as an example, where servants were literally falling at your knees. Well, almost. Anyway. The Rajasthanis are brilliant at hospitality, and they show it off with their big moustaches and whopping great big turbans. This isn’t just customer service, this is Rajasthani customer service! They’ll plump up your cushion, bring your coffee on a silver platter and look after you as if you were royalty. Unless they’re auto-rickshaw drivers, of course. They are bad, bad people.

From Shanaz’s family, who made sure I was always well fed and looked after, to the driver who wanted to show off the molasses behind the roadside café, you always get the impression that Indian hospitality is natural, and borne of an honest desire to make you feel at home. Just as the French do bread and the Belgians do beer, the Indians do hospitality and put everyone else to shame.

And perhaps that is why so many people come back from India with their heads spinning.