Lord of the flies and other vermin

After a few days in Poona (since re-spelled Pune in the great re-spelling revolution in India that also re-spelled Bombay to Mumbai), I felt quite at home. Well, at least I was getting used to my new home. Daddy and I checked in to the Hotel Dreamland. Let me just start by explaining something about Indian naming conventions.

The more elaborately delightful and regal a name sounds, the more pleasant, clean, or resplendent, the more you can assume that it's a complete shithole. They have taken wishful thinking, applied it to advertising, and added little creative embellishment on the side. Another thing to note is that over the many years we went and lived in India, my Dad never remembered this little fact and thought, "hey, maybe this won't be as fabulous as it sounds."

Years later, when my family returned to India in my teens, we arrived bleary-eyed and exhausted after an 18 hour flight from the states in the Bombay airport. A sketchy hotel "employee" approached us promising us a lovely stay in a lovely hotel not far from the airport. I tried to talk my dad out of it, but to no avail. We stayed at the King's Hotel. Sounds nice, no? It was a pretty horrific, cockroach-infested stink-o-rama.

The following year, I returned once more with my father. This same man approached us even more enthusiastically in just as deep of a middle-of-the night. I tried to talk my dad out of dealing with him, but he told the guy we didn't want any crappy hotels. The "employee" gets on the horn yelling (in English, of course) that his customers don't want any crappy hotels! They want a nice clean hotel! My dad buys it and we are installed at the grandiosely named Imperial Palace. Even better! No no! Even worse, if you can believe it. Not only were there holes in the dingy sheets and cockroaches emerging from every smoke-filled crevice, but the lightbulbs were either blown or on the way, crackling and dimming. The piece de resistance was the telephone. It was missing the cover over the mouthpiece and reeked, and i mean REEKED of cheap men's cologne. It was absolutely amazing. But again, I digress.

We were living the Dreamland Hotel. I'm not sure if this was a permanent plan, or just a longterm solution to lack of funds and/or planning on my Dad's part. In any case, the Dreamland Hotel was a seedy flophouse in Downtown Poona, about ten minutes rickshaw ride (and no, these are motorized, three-wheeled scooters, not wicker packs on the backs of overworked Indian men) to the Ashram in Koregan Park. The room we shared at the Dreamland Hotel was the first of our insect and rodent-infested abodes. I didn't hate it at the time, though I imagine my dad did, he's not so crazy about vermin.

We did have one run-in with an insect, if you could call it that, that borders on horror-movie-slash-comedy scene. I went to the bathroom one fine morning for my daily ablutions. Crawling out of the toilet was the most incredibly large centipede. One end of the critter was ordinary, if large, but the other end divided into two fully-functioning heads. It was monstrous. I shrieked and dum-daNA in came Superdaddy to the rescue! I have this distinct memory of my father being simultaneously heroic and terrified as he chased around this very speedy bus-sized animal with a trashcan clad only in his underwear. I'm not sure if he ever dispensed with the animal or if the creature escaped, but I do know that I felt safe and sound after that, despite the accommodations.