35053668-Empire-of-the-Soul-Paul-William-Roberts

EMPIRE OF THE SOUL
A year after I first stayed at the Taj, the hotel suddenly received a
new kind of regular guest. Beirut had collapsed into chaos, and rich
Gulf Arabs were looking for somewhere else to spend their summers.
Many picked Bombay. I suspect that wherever they went made little
difference to them, though, since they rarely left their suites.
I remember in 1978 standing in the lobby talking to Umaima
Mulla Feroze, then the talented editor of the Taj’s magazine. The
monsoon had arrived that day. We watched flashing missiles of rain
explode in a swirling river that a moment before had been the drive.
Umaima noticed the old Arab first. He was standing beneath this
deluge as if paralysed. His keffiyah and gelabia were soaked to
transparency, revealing undershirt, boxer shorts, socks with garters.
‘Maybe he’s having a heart attack,’ Umaima suggested,
concerned. We ran out into a hundred tons of crashing water. The
old man was looking up at the swaggering blue-black clouds, rain
stabbing his stained eyes, coursing down the deep lines of his
dessicated clay-brown cheeks. With shaky fingers like turkey toes,
he counted a lapis rosary.
‘Excuse me, sir!’ Umaima shouted at him. ‘But are you all right
out here?’ The man turned in surprise. He nodded his head
nervously, embarrassed. Then he said, ‘I’m eighty-seven years old,
and I have never seen rain before.’
Ghost and memories – the Taj teems with them. Many, I realised in
1992, were mine now, as well: ghosts of myself and others, memories
of other selves . . .
Flying out of Bombay, as I had first flown out twenty years before,
I felt truly haunted. That first time, I’d left to find something, indeed
had to leave, because I’d never thought of staying there anyway.
Now, however, it occurred to me that I was simply going because I
felt like going, not because I needed to go. I knew full well that I could
search for what it was I sought wherever I was. Now, I imagined I
was just a tourist along for the ride. It seemed a liberating thought,
and liberation was, after all, the name of the game. Liberation was
something you could achieve anywhere, and any time you chose.
Well, wasn’t it? Who ultimately knows, though? Who really knows
anything? Was it after all, ironically enough, I considered, perhaps
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