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Moorish Architecture And Olympic Pentathletes

That's Ilie Nastase, the Olympic pentathlete!" As the fuzzy image of a man flickered across the television screen in front, this breathless inanity floated over my shoulder from a voice behind us. As inanities went that evening, this one was just one more in a stream of them. You see, the image was not of Ilie Nastase; it was not of an Olympic pentathlete; Ilie Nastase was certainly not an Olympic pentathlete. Only six words, but they managed between them to be wrong on three counts. Yet, all three were lost both on the voice behind as well as on the couple like us it was offering this information to.

All in an evening's work at the Royal Goan Beach Club marketing presentation.

It began when we got there for our appointment. Three young men in broad ties stood outside the front door. Their job? To accost visitors with a too-wide smile, a too-familiar hand on the elbow, a too-firm handshake and a too-plastic "Welcome to The Royal Goan Beach Club!" Extricating ourselves with some difficulty from the one who waylaid us, we darted gratefully through the door. Only to find we had landed in some distant planet where everyone is required to sport huge, hearty, vapid smiles.

The exception, for a while, was the lady at the reception table. She was all business as she located our name on her chart. But as soon as she did, the vapidity hit her as well. Magically, a vast grin appeared on her face and she burbled, honey-sweet as can be: "Welcome to the Royal Goan Beach Club! Arun will give you your presentation this evening!"

As Arun took us to a table at the back of the room, I looked around. It was a bizarre panorama. The people who worked here were almost unhealthily cheery. They exchanged silly jokes, foolish patter and those vast smiles all the time. It went on through every minute of the three hours that Arun took to make his "presentation." If he asked a colleague for a book to show us some pictures, both made some stupid joke out of the transfer. If he called his manager over to examine and "approve" our answers to a few meaningless questions ("Do you like to relax on your vacations?"), the manager skipped across, perched jauntily -- oh boy, aren't we having fun? -- on the arm of Arun's chair and asked some more meaningless questions.

It began to dawn on me at some point during those hours. Selling timeshares must only be possible if you use a plasticky bonhomie to cover for what is really the obvious truth: it's a lot of hot air. They may show you pages of figures and pretty pictures, not forgetting the promotional video that stars Ilie Nastase the Olympic pentathlete, but it's still a lot of hot air.

A timeshare, as you probably know, is a week in a resort. You buy such a week from one of various timeshare retailers. This purchase entitles you to spend that week of every year on vacation in that resort. Why you might consider your life so utterly insipid that you would pay for something like this, I don't know. But a lot of people must, for the concept has been a boom industry for years. In recent times, in India as well.

Like poisonous mushrooms, timeshare properties are sprouting in every possible tourist destination, in India and abroad. Lovely spots the world over are being rapidly defiled by cookie-cutter resort developments. "This one in Goa," Arun proclaimed with head held high, "is an exact copy of one in Austria." I couldn't see why this made the Goa resort more attractive, but Arun clearly thought it did. Arun clearly thought we thought it did.

Oh, they make it sound so wonderful! Yes sir! You've never heard such effusive, breathless praise before: for buildings and swimming pools and lawns, as also for the essentially intangible commodity a week is. You can live in a suite instead of a hotel room! You get maid service! You can exchange your week in Goa for one anywhere else in the world! This resort in Spain has traditional Moorish architecture!

To go with it all, Arun showed us dozens of pictures. We saw interiors, exteriors, the resort in Goa before and after construction -- no prizes for guessing which looked more inviting -- an "affiliated" resort in winter, in summer. With an emphatic flourish of his hand, Arun would open to a page in a book filled with pictures and lay it out before us, waiting for us to gasp in wonder.

Gasp we most certainly did. The pictures were truly impressive. Impressive, in that every single one looked exactly the same as all the others. I don't know how they managed this feat, but prominent in each photograph were the same manicured lawns and arched doorways. The same sofa sets and tables. Even the same bikini-clad women, eyes closed and faces turned towards the sun. Strangely camel-like.

About now, I know you're getting ready to ask: "Fine and dandy, dude, but what about that Moorish architecture?" Ah, that. It was there all right. Thin spires topped with domes, poking like weeds from the roofs of the buildings in that resort in Spain. No doubt that's traditional Moorish architecture. And I'm the Rani of Jhansi.

We learned lots of things that evening. But what was hardest to learn was only the most important: the price. The Whole Deal Including Fine Print, preferably. Our efforts to find out were met with an inordinate amount of hand waving. A later report in The Times of India told us why: it is RGBC "company policy", its agent was quoted, "not to give a copy of the agreement to subscribers before [they] decided to become RGBC members." Just charges you with faith in the company, doesn't it?

Still, Arun did tell us about a yearly maintenance fee of Rs 3,500. But especially because he kept emphasising that we could sign up ONLY TODAY, RIGHT NOW, what the hell we were expected to pay today?

Silly us! Arun treated that figure as a war secret that he did not know, would never come to know, and could not divulge even if he did. He skirted around it, dodged the question when we asked him directly, gasped audibly at our execrable audacity when we asked him again, and pointedly.

What he did show us instead was a table that calculated the cost of taking a room in a "fancy" hotel for one week each year. Rs 179,000 over 21 years, it added up to. Which hotel, how did he get these prices, were details left unsaid. But naturally, that figure compared unfavourably indeed with 21 years of the maintenance fee of Rs 3,500: a total of Rs 73,500. Naturally, that's the comparison Arun hoped we would keep in mind.

We did. All the way till the last moments of our happy experience with the Royal Goan Beach Club. That's when another hearty manager came over, thought long and hard, scratched at his beard, scribbled on a piece of paper, scratched some more. Finally he told us what we would have to hand over right now. A one time offer specially for us! Just for us! Available only if we wanted to pay up RIGHT NOW RIGHT NOW RIGHT NOW!

Rs 190,000.

Wow! What a deal! Over 21 years, we would pay only Rs 190,000 + Rs 73,500 = Rs 263,500! Rs 84,500 more than their own tabled estimate of charges at a fancy hotel! Over two thirds of it to be paid today! Sign up immediately!

And if we needed still more persuasion, it came from -- where else? -- behind us at the video showing. At another meaningful moment in the film, a disembodied and still fuzzy hand leafed through a book.

The Voice boomed out, loud and proud: "See? That's the SAME book that I'm holding in my hand right now!"

Tailpiece:

More quotes about the Srikrishna inquiry report. As always, draw your own conclusions.

"A Shiv Sena delegation which called on Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee here demanded that the Srikrishna Commission report on the Mumbai riots of December 1992-January 1993 should be shelved. Shiv Sena spokesperson and senior leader Subhash Desai told the media that it was the party's policy to shelve the report which might be biased against the majority community. ... Mr Uddhav Thackeray later told this newspaper that in the coming days, the Sena would launch an agitation against publication of the report. ... Chief Minister Manohar Joshi was present when [the delegation] met Mr Vajpayee."

The Times of India, May 2, 1998

"The demand by Mr Desai, a close confidante of Sena chief Bal Thackeray, for junking the report comes at a time when already there are doubts about the state government's intentions, as the report is likely to indict several Sena functionaries."

The Asian Age, May 2, 1998.

"Vajpayee said a delegation led by Sena leader Subhash Desai urged him to reject the report on the ground that if it was published, it would lead to fresh violence in the metropolis. ... As per the provisions of the Commissions of Inquiry Act, it is binding on the state government to table the report in both the Houses of the state legislature within six months of its submission. 'I hope that the Sena-BJP government will abide by the provisions of law and table the report as required under the Commissions of Inquiry Act," Vajpayee added.

The Indian Express, May 2, 1998

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