This occurred to me in the lift of the Oberoi Trident Hotel in Mumbai. I was travelling to our rooms on the thirty-first floor, rooms from which we were afforded a fine view of the bay. This is the Arabian Sea. There were two mysterious floors above us, harbouring, I suspected, marbled rooms of unspeakable opulence. Who frequented those rooms, and how did they get there? The poem addresses the issue of desert and outcome in terms of the allocation of hotel rooms.

from a mumbai hotel

Obedient in all its essentials

The hotel lift climbs skywards;

We trust the engineering

That suspends us here:

Stairs are solid, can be seen,

Require no faith, but take

Time from those who believe

That time is what they do not have.

To the thirty-first of thirty-three

Floors I travel; right above

Are quarters of unfathomable luxury,

Where only those who have, with purpose,

Fashioned a life of comfort for themselves

Out of the lives of many others,

May look out from quadrilateral windows

On a city of this many souls;

Hotel rooms are not a matter of desert;

Do not make that fond mistake

Made by so many who believe in justice,

That you get in life the hotel room

You deserve; you do not:

Hotel rooms, as we come to learn,

Are allocated on Darwinian principles:

And not on the grounds that the best rooms

Go to the best—that simply is not true.

Hotel rooms say nothing of those

Who pitch their tent in them,

We leave nothing of ourselves behind

To say that we were there;

Chambermaids prepare our room

With quiet impartiality, keep to themselves

The secrets they unearth, or stumble upon;

Only the cost is counted, that alone

Is recorded on the bill, paid and forgotten,

Part of nobody’s history of anything.

Once, at a meeting in New York,

I heard the question posed: Where are they,

These others? And answered thus: I’ll tell you:

They are in a hotel room named failure.

Uncharitable, yes, but, in essence, true:

Our hotel rooms are named:

Do not think you can change the description

Of the hotel room you’re given,

Rearrange the furniture,

Nor keep the world from intruding

When you display Do not disturb

Upon your door; you will be,

For Hubris may occupy

A high enough room, but

Nemesis is the one who operates the lift.

Outside the window is Mumbai,

Circling kites navigate the air

Above the great city spread below;

In the bay, a fisherman casts a net;

Crawling cars are sluggish blood

In the concrete arteries; life is difficult

For most, who must struggle

With this traffic and these distances,

With heat and dust and failed rains,

And the simple mathematics

Of the Malthusian nightmare,

Each in the metaphorical hotel room

Chance and a handful of decisions

Have brought him to; if there are gods

Listening in this city’s temples,

Colourful actors in an ancient tale,

Look with generosity on these

Patient people, bring rain, prosperity,

Happiness—all the things they want,

Make peaceable their dreams.