The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel Read Online Free PDF Page A

offered twenty-four-hour room service and health clubs where executives sweated out their curries. There was no way that The Marigold had been able to compete with that. Though it had a small clientele of budget travelers none of them stayed long, for despite Sonny’s words, Bangalore had little to offer the sightseer and was mostly visited as a stopover en route to somewhere else—Mysore or, for the adventurous, the ruined city of Hampi. Even then, most tourists were on some package deal tied in with one of the five-star hotels.
    So The Marigold had gently declined. Its owner was an easygoing Parsee named Minoo. Through a combination of inertia and sentimentality he had resisted the offers of developers to buy him out, for he had inherited the hotel from his parents and was loath to see his childhood home demolished and made into an office block. Sonny Rahim’s offer, however, was more attractive.
    “Just think of it, my friend,” said Sonny. “One hundred percent occupancy guaranteed, no vacant rooms, no canceled bookings—it’s the hotel wallah’s dream!”
    They were sitting in the deserted dining room. Minoo knew Sonny because he owned the building opposite—Karishma Plaza, a concrete edifice hideous even by Bangalorean standards, with shops below and office space above. Sonny had get-up-and-go, that was for sure.
    “A little updating is needed,” said Sonny, “some minor alterations, but we’re not talking old crocks here; these people won’t be on their last legs, incontinent and senile—”
    “What happens when they become so?” asked Minoo. “It will happen to us all.”
    “Then I will make arrangements for them to be transferred to the Victoria Hospital or to be sent home—these are the conditions that operate in British establishments of this kind. Of course we’ll have a qualified doctor on call; I have already approached Dr. Sajit Rama, he is a good chum of mine, he runs the Meerhar Clinic in Elphinstone Chambers, and of course on the premises we would have a trained nurse in residence—your good wife.”
    This was true. Minoo’s wife had been a nurse before their marriage. Well, a nurse of sorts. Everything slotted into place.
    “My cousin, Dr. Ravi Kapoor, lives in London,” said Sonny. “He’ll run the British side of the operation; we have set up a company together, Ravison Residential Homes. His own lady wife will be our co-partner as she’ll be involved with the travel arrangements. We’re talking big, my good fellow.” Sonny stretched out his arms, jolting a bottle of soda. “Join us now, my friend, and you’ll reap the rewards! I see an empire growing, retirement homes in sunny climes—South Africa! Cyprus!—away from the rain and the crime, where the living is cheap and the service excellent; I see a chain of homes so our customers will be able to travel freely between them if they wish, a time-share for the active elderly, this is the way the world is going. From little acorns, great oak trees grow, acha ?”
    The man was a human dynamo. Every few minutes they were interrupted by the squawk of Sonny’s mobile. He paced up and down, shouting into it. A damp patch spread across the back of his shirt.
    Minoo gazed across the dining room. The curtains were closed. Shafts of sunlight blazed through the cracks, so bright they hurt his eyes. What happens when we die? he wondered. How can we truly know? Suddenly the room was filled with residents, their white heads nodding as they talked together. They were older than he; they had been shunted nearer that blaze of whiteness.
    “What happens when they die?” he asked.
    “The same as in England,” replied Sonny. “Cremation, burial … I will make the arrangements, leave it to me.”
    What happens to us all? Minoo wondered. Vultures will pluck out my eyes, for I will be dispatched in our Parsee manner, and then what?
    The chair creaked as Sonny sat down again. The man was waiting for an answer, but Minoo was lost in a