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On Friday July 31, 2015

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The Quirky Brilliance Of The Head Guru

A light hearted profile of the man who put together Playboy, month after month. Nuts and bolts. Brick by brick. The one and only, Arthur Kretchmer.

Tags Basilica of Notre-Dame de Fourvière, Bruno Bonnel, Christophe Sapet, Europe Telematique, French Telecom, La Bonâme de Bruno, Lyon, Minitel, Patrick Magaud, Travel

Categories Dictatorship, France, Lyon, Memoire, Minitel, Playboy, Travel

LOVE AND DEATH

April 9, 2015 //

Reflections On Japan’s Preoccupation With Death

Haresh Shah

Ray Falk and Kayo Hayashi are scratching their heads to come up with something to do with Shah-san that evening. But I put their dilemma to rest. It’s my second night being back in Tokyo and we all have had an exhausting day – especially me, being grilled by the Japanese editors about them not getting the rights to Norman Mailer’s Gary Gilmore piece. Kayo drops me off at the hotel around half past five. I spend some time browsing the Imperial Hotel’s little bookstore and buy a copy of the 1968 Nobel Prize winner in literature, Yasunari Kawabata’s novel, Beauty and Sadness. My intention is to read a bit of it after I have had a light dinner in one of the hotel’s restaurants or just take it easy and order a sandwich and a beer from the room service. I don’t get around to doing either. Soon as I enter the room, I stretch out and close my eyes to relax for a while. The next thing I know, it’s past one in the morning.

I force myself out of the bed, undress and crawl under the covers. It’s now three in the morning, but I just can’t fall asleep. Resigned, I get out of the bed, fix myself a cup of coffee and call Chicago and brief my boss Lee Hall on the meetings of the day. It’s two in the afternoon in Chicago, no wonder I can’t just lie down and fall asleep. I pick up Beauty and Sadness.

Oki Toshio – the protagonist of the book is on his way to Kyoto traveling on Kyoto Express. Upon his arrival, he grabs a cab at the station and checks in at Miyako Hotel. The story flows like a gentle creek. Not too complicated a love triangle among the middle aged Oki Toshio – the novelist of some renown, his long time mistress Ueno Otoko, a painter and Otoko’s young protégée, Sakami Keiko. Already a tricky tangle. Made further complicated by the involvement of Oki’s son, Taichiro. How do you untangle the four gnarly branches so intricately entwined and manage one or more of them not to crack?

Inspired probably by the book, I decide to take a side trip to Kyoto that weekend. I board the Kyoto bound Tōkaidō Shinkansen, and upon arriving take a cab from the station to the hotel, which quite by coincidence turns out to be Miyako – booked by Ray Falk’s office. As the bullet train slithers south west of Tokyo at more than 200 km/h, I take in the blur of the scenery outside the windows while still absorbed in Beauty and Sadness.

I arrive in Kyoto around afternoon. I only have the rest of the day and that night to make the best of that ancient – once the dreamy capital of the country. First I take the guided tour that gives me a bird’s eye view of the city. There are modern areas and buildings that are no different than one would see anywhere else in the world, but what sticks out above and below them are what you would imagine Samurai and Imperial Japan to be. Multi roofed and multi colored pagoda like buildings dotting the lower skyline of the entire city. The vermilion Torris gates to the Shinto shrines and the Buddhist temples, delicately groomed Japanese gardens, narrow and the crowded streets and yet narrower stone tiled labyrinth like alleys lined with clusters of small boutiques, bars and restaurants.

My destination that night is the famous Geisha district of Gion and the surrounding Higashi-oji street and Shirakawa river. I walk the alleys, rubbing shoulders with the locals and the tourists under the multiple-low grey roofed buildings and let myself be amazed at the huge and colorful lanterns hanging outside a variety of establishments, bearing their names. Doused in predominantly yellow and red, the warm hues illuminate the streets that lead and guide your way through the neighborhood, making you feel as if you were moon walking on clouds.

And then suddenly you see the beautifully and artfully painted white faces of the illusive and alluring Geishas, tiptoeing their petite steps on the stone squares of the street. Then you see a pair and before you realize, clusters of them scurrying this way and that, going about their chores, chatting, crossing the small wooden bridges over the creeks, twirling their red oriental umbrellas, their faces peeking out of the automobile windows. Looking more like a movie set, you suddenly become aware that those Geishas are for real. That they live and breathe there in Gion. That they are bred and brought up in a house not too far from where I am walking. That they work in the restaurants, tea houses. They sing and dance and entertain like the famed Tawaifs above the store fronts and in the bazars of Lucknow. And like their sisters on the Indian continent, many of them are mistresses to some of the richest and the most powerful men in Japan.

Overwhelmed, I take a break and as recommended, walk into the restaurant Ashiya. Like in France, it’s Lyon and not Paris, in Japan, Kyoto cuisine shines over that of Tokyo’s. And the must of the must is to have a Kobe beef at Ashiya in Kyoto. So I do. The place is totally mobbed. But they find a place for me at the bar. It’s crowded and it’s loud and it sizzles with the delicious fragrance of the meat searing on the hot metal plates. Even though I am shocked at the price tag of US$ 30.- for a tinny tiny peace of a Filet Mignon – back in 1979 when the hefty T-bone steak in the US cost about $6.-, I would not let pass perhaps once in a life chance of tasting a Kobe steak at Ashiya in Kyoto. So tender it slithers down my throat like a fresh chilled oyster. I love it.

Back to strolling the alleys, I can’t help but think of Beauty and Sadness. And of Otoko and Keiko. As if they were real people and not the characters in Kawbata’s novel. I expect them any moment to emerge out of one of those hundreds of Geishas going about their business through those narrow pedestrian streets. I find something about their real existence mysterious. And then it occurs to me, even if Otoko and Keiko did exist and the novel was based on the real Geishas, what were the chances that they would still be around? And if they are, Otoko certainly would be very very old, but Keiko could still be in circulation. They could even be dead!

The thought nudges me into a nostalgic state of mind. Up until then, the little that I know of this mysterious land, I can’t help but see lingering behind the reticence of the Japanese character a certain shade of melancholy. Not just a mask, but something deeper, something inherent in their being.

As much life and the noise and the hubbub that swirl around me, there is something about the narrowness of the streets, smallness of the shops on the either side and their grey-brown tiled roofs all seem to give me an eerie feeling – the melancholic slippery sweetness of the dark wildflower honey. Other than the slight sliver of the sky up above, the solid stone tiles on the ground and the shops so close across from each other give me a feeling of a cocoon closing in – wrapped inside is a sleeping dead body and the soul, still inhabiting the earth, luxuriating in the ultimate slumber. What a morbid image? Why am I thinking of death?

Perhaps the answer lay in the ending of Beauty and Sadness, which I finish reading the next day on my train ride back to Tokyo. How does Kawabata deal with his four characters all curled up in one single web of loving? Simple! What if one of them were to have an accident and die?

The more I read and get to know of Japan, the more I get a feeling that the Japanese are preoccupied with death – like most Indians are, especially when it comes to the matters of the heart. I fail to see any glory in death. As inevitable as it is, it should be as natural as the birth. I can’t see inducing an end to life. Of the two Japanese authors I have read so far, both committed suicide. In November of 1970, Yukio Mishima committed the ritual Seppuku of carving out his own abdomen with a sharp knife and letting his disemboweled entrails hang out like blood soaked slithery snakes.

The public suicide of Mishima was all announced and choreographed. At the time I was working for Time and Life magazines. I still remember how us in Chicago production waited for the layouts, the photos and the text to arrive from the editorial offices in New York. I don’t remember exactly how we felt about awaiting for him to be done with and for us to put the magazines to bed and then go home. I don’t remember us having discussions about it either. Strange! Now that I think of it, it feels spooky, but then it must have felt a normal occurrence. Those were the days when Vietnam was well and alive and was covered extensively and in all its gory details in the Life magazine, week after week. The photos and the reports of the continuous death stream was hardly shocking anymore.

Mishima lost the Nobel Prize to his fellow writer and the close friend, Yasunari Kawabata, who too committed suicide by gassing himself to death in April 1972. Unlike Mishima, tried to give a rousing speech amidst the boos of the crowd before proceeding to slice his stomach, Kawabata didn’t even leave a small suicide note, leaving his loved ones and the fans wondering forever. There are many theories about his taking his own life, among them, him being haunted by hundreds of nightmares following the death of Yukio Mishima.

The protagonist of Mishima’s Sailor Who Fell From The Grace With The Sea is murdered by a bunch of teenagers. I would go onto read Kawabata’s Snow Country, and realize that in both of his novels the “intruding” characters die of accidents, thus clearing the path of the survivors.

While I found Mishima difficult to read, I find Kawabata’s style and the narratives soothing, simple and nostalgically romantic. Both of the books have made a deep impact on me and yet even decades later, I can’t help but wish that instead of resorting to killing his characters, he could have given his stories delicate twists and left them alone. But the the endings do tell you something about the way the Japanese feel about life – or more precisely about death.

Committing Seppuku is the ultimate glory and so is the Kamikaze pilots taking off on suicide missions in their single engine, non-landing, one-man Nakajima Ki-115 Tsurugi planes and going down with the blazing bright and glorious flames. And Madama Butterfly choosing the path of con onor muore (to die with honor), blindfolds her child, goes behind the screen and plunges the knife into her heart. Applause, applause!

Fast forward to the one of my most favorite Japanese authors of today. At the time of Mishima and Kawabata’s deaths, Kyoto born Haruki Murakami was only in his very early twenties and had yet to publish his first book, which came out in 1979. But it wasn’t up until 1987 did he burst onto the international literary scene with his mega seller, Norwegian Wood, named after the Beatles song of the era. A bitter sweet love story of the young college students set in Tokyo – the generation grooving and grown up to the essence of the music that defined the Sixties, it’s the suicide of one of the lovers that moves the story forward pulling at the heart strings not only that of the Japanese but that of the readers across the globe.

© Haresh Shah

Illustration: Celia Rose Marks

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On Friday, April 24, 2015

THE TUNNEL OF LOVE

Over the years of globe trotting for Playboy, I have stayed in some of the most luxurious hotels of the world. Nothing to frown at the comfort and opulence they afford, but there are times when you just want a simple place of your own. Especially in the cities I would need to frequent a lot and for longer stays. So I rent a wonderful bachelor’s pad in Mexico City. Equally as luxurious or even more so than the rooms at Camino Real, not to mention how unique.

Playboy Stories Goes Biweekly

Having already told 92 of them, I guess I just want to stretch them out as long as I can. Also, to be honest, up until now, the stories just poured out on their own, I couldn’t write them fast enough. There are still stories I want to tell, equally as good or perhaps even better, but these are the ones that require a bit more pondering and more time to write. Like Love and Death, many of them would contain more retrospections and the deeper observations. A bit slower pace will also give me time to work on some other stuff which I hope to share with you in the future. HS

Tags Ashiya, Death, Geisha, Gion, Haruki Murakami, Japan, Kyoto, Love, Miyaki Hotel, Suicide, Yasunari Kawabata, Yukio Misima

Categories Culture, Japan, Memoire, Playboy, Travel

FRIENDLY SKIES NO MORE

February 12, 2015 //

Or How The Airlines Got To Make Us Do Their Work?

Haresh Shah

During my early days at Time, my boss Bob Anderson would emerge out of his office, scratching his head, stop at my desk and go: I think you ought to hop a plane to New York and talk to our friend Arnold (Drapkin). Do some hand holding and get him off our collective backs? And then without waiting for an answer, he would wander back into his office and disappear behind the closed door.

Sitting diagonally opposite from my desk is Pat Murphy – the departmental everything. She has already pulled out her drawer and is yanking out the round trip flight coupon booklet, she writes in the destinations and stamps them. Takes some money out of the petty cash, puts everything together in an envelope and hands it to me.

‘Have a good trip. I will get onto your hotel reservation.’

And soon I am pulling out of the Time parking lot in my phallic Oldsmobile Cutlass and am on my way to my South Shore Drive apartment. Having thrown together an overnight bag I am already cruising I 90/94 and am on my way to the O’Hare. I park right across the path from the airport and am standing in front of the flipping departure board, checking out the first flight out of there to New York’s LaGuardia. There is almost one every twenty minutes to half an hour. Irrespective of which airline it is, I walk straight to the gate of the first departing flight and within minutes I am on my way to the Big Apple.

No standing in long security check lines, not having to take off your shoes and the jacket and empty your pockets of all your personal objects, subjecting yourself to the metal detector and the humiliation of the x-ray machine disrobing you and then trying to be nice to the often smug and arrogant TSA agents whom Shirley McLain tags thugs standing around in her book I’m Over All That. Getting their hands on to the most intimate of your person and the belongings.

In just a few short minutes you have strode over to the departure gate. The flight crew was happy to see you. The captain and his second and third officers gave you a warm welcome. Some times even coming out of their ivory tower of the cockpit to greet you. Seats were roomier and you could actually lean back without dislocating the knee joints of the fellow passenger sitting right behind you. They served real hot meals of your choice – in most cases mini filet-mignon and or a chicken breast with two sides and even a dessert. And other than on the US carriers on their domestic routes, alcoholic beverages were complimentary and they handed out little bags of peanuts to savor your cocktails with. Soon as the plane pushed off the gate, you entered the world of the pampered.

There were no complicated and only an accountant could figure out the pros and cons of various fares and the ones you cliqued “select”, them suddenly disappearing in thin air. There was full fare and excursion fares. Full fare allowed you absolute flexibility and the tickets could have been open ended both ways and valid for a whole year. Excursions normally were cheaper and would have limitation of minimum and maximum stays. Within those parameters, you had all the flexibility you would ever need.

Reminds me of the trip I took to India with Carolyn and then nine months old Anjuli. On our way back we are booked on Swissair to Zürich and then onto the connecting flight to Munich. At the time the new Sahar, now known as Chatrapati Shivaji International Airport had just opened. In confusion, my brother-in-law Rikhav (Vora) takes us to the old Santa Cruz Airport from where we rush to the Sahar – fortunately located in the same part of the town. By the time we rush to the Swissair counter, it’s too late. Their next flight would be twenty four hours later.

It is past one in the morning and with the nine month old soundly asleep in her back pack perched atop my shoulders, I am not willing to wait. I quickly scan the departure board. There is an Air France flight scheduled to leave in about half an hour. Maybe they have some seats available. You can re-route us via Paris. The agent is not happy about relinquishing us to another airline, but reluctantly picks up the phone and calls Air France counter down the hall. Sure enough, they have an entire bulkhead raw open, ideal for the couple with an infant.

The company policy allowed us to fly overseas in the First. But the difference in the fares between the front and the back of the plane was exorbitant and with the economy on the downward slide, the once flushed corporations had began to look at those costs. Based on the focus groups and other surveys, the airlines began to work on introducing something in between. When some companies switched from the First to the tourist class and still paid pretty penny for the flexible full fare tickets and then to be served and seated next to someone with an excursion ticket who paid half as much or even less, the discontent from the full fare passengers was widely heard.

It must have been 1977 or 1978, when I had not yet returned back to Playboy full time, but was covering Mexico and then Spain on a freelance basis that I was traveling across the Atlantic on a KLM flight that for the first time I experience what I thought to be an embarrassing discrimination between me and my fellow passengers. When hardly seated, the stewardess walks up to me with Welcome on board Mr. Shah and then pins a little star shaped tag on the top of my headrest that distinguishes me as a passenger paying the full fare, and therefore entitled to a better service. I got to drink premier wines in real glasses and was offered a special food selection. While the person sitting next to me gives me an envious look, I pull out the pin and look at it, printed within the star are three capital Fs and in and the small letters circling define them as full fare facilities.

As for the tipple F pinned above my head, I think: Those clever Dutch! They must have seen the future. Realizing that the first class was becoming to be too expensive to sustain even for the big and rich corporations. Why not then create an interim class like on trains in India? Whatever, it took several years before KLM and other airlines introduced what is now commonly known as Business Class.

It took some years before Playboy required us to abandon the First in favor of the Business Class. Enter upgrading of their A list passengers like me. Eventually, now KLM and many other international carriers have eliminated the First and the Business Class has become what the First used to be, minus some of the more sumptuous offerings such as being welcomed onboard with a glass of Moët et Chandon instead of Dom Perignon or Crystal. Appetizers are reduced from caviar and lobsters down to tiger shrimps and scallops. And sorry, no big fat expensive Cigars to go with your Cognac after dinner.

And there were no miles to collect and then after having diligently accumulated enough miles to take a free trip, just to find out that the flights you really want are not available for the award travel. What you’re offered are multiple-connection flights that take you a whole day to get from the point A to the point B. The only non-stop flights available for the award travel are either the red-eye ones or following the sleepless nights early in the morning ones. To be fair, when the first loyalty programs began with American’s AAdvantage and United’s Mileage Plus, your earned miles were as good as cash and the tickets issued were the same as if you had paid full fare. You needed 20,000 miles for a round trip within the United States. Soon as you had accumulated those many miles, they mailed you actual paper coupons which then you were able to cash in at any of the airlines’ offices in exchange of a ticket or an upgrade.

And there was no such thing as the miles expiring. No use being reminiscing and being nostalgic about it, because just a couple of months ago I was having an irate telephone conversation with the AAdvantage supervisor at American’s Dallas Forth Worth headquarters about them having unilaterally swallowed my 26,000+ miles on the ground that there was “no activity” in my account for eighteen months and that I can have them reinstated for… never mind, because the cost benefit ratio of me forfeiting them forever turned out to be better than what it would have taken to see those miles credited back to my account. While I was telling her about how the mileage programs operated in the past, she retorted: Those days are gone. Now we are living in a different world. Right you are Ms. AAdvantage.

But what has turned the airline industry upside down is the subject United wanted to discuss with us in small and intimate focus group held at the private dining room of the posh Four Season’s Hotel in the trendy near north side of Chicago, and the participants treated to an exquisite and elaborate dinner. What they wanted to know was: How would we feel about our secretaries being able to book the flights for us on our own computers? This is the early Nineties. It wasn’t until 1991 that the ban over commercial traffic on the Internet was lifted. And not until 1994, Netscape and Amazon were founded, following which web based commerce began in the mid-Nineties. Which is when email was just beginning to emerge and the internet with its limited access was something only nerds were aware of.

Certainly, the consultants hired by the United must have seen the future – at least to the point where like traveling agents, their corporate clients too can be hooked up to the airlines’ networks, thus saying good bye to having to pay commission to the traveling agents and save on their own telephone booking clerks and be able to close down their city offices. In other words, though I don’t remember exactly the way our conversation went, I’ll make one up to illustrate the gist of it.

Me: If I understand it right, you want us – your customers to do your work?

Consultant: Not at all. We just want our best customers to have more freedom by giving them exclusive access to our network.

Me: Right! Buts it’s us who would have to do the looking!

Consultant: It wouldn’t be you personally, I presume you would have your secretaries do that.

Me: As if she doesn’t have enough to do already?

Consultant: I guess she would. But once we have provided the proper training, it’s as easy as one-two and three.

Me: So she would become de-facto traveling agent?

Consultant: Precisely. And who would know your preferences better than your own secretary?

Me: Right! So does my traveling agent and he would always know better of the other options available to his clients.

Consultant: So would your secretary. The screen will list ALL the available IATA flights, irrespective of the carrier. And she will be able to do it right away. And if you wanted, you too could look over her shoulder and see all the available options. No need for her to call your agent and then wait for him to get back to you. Just imagine how much time you would save!

Me: It still doesn’t change the fact that we – your clients would be doing your work. And if so, my question is, if we are going to do yours or traveling agency’s work, what is in it for us? Would you kick back a percentage for our trouble?

Consultant: We haven’t thought about it. But the kind of freedom you will have has never been available before.

The more he tries to convince me, the more unconvinced I become and I can see the frustration creeping over his face. This is not going too well. This is not the answer his clients are looking for.

But fortunately for the consultant, while a couple of other execs seem to see my point, the rest are intrigued enough to want to know more about the freedom they would have in booking their own flights. Especially the younger ones, the ones with some knowledge of the computer and the possibilities of the “net” that was not too far in the future. I wonder if they are as frustrated today as I find myself when trying to book a flight on my own. For someone my age, I am quite apt at navigating the internet, and yet, it has never taken me less than close to an hour to book a flight, even when I have already decided on the exact flight. And what with the ever changing fares and the temptation of checking other sources, or put it off until the better fares magically burst through the bright screen. Something that is not only time consuming, but can verge on a stressful obsession until you have finally bought the ticket. Leaving you still wondering if you got the best deal or not.

I hate, hate, hate it.

© Haresh Shah

Illustration: Celia Rose Marks

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Next Friday, February 20, 2015

THOSE EYES

Over the period of my lifetime, and especially during those twenty one years at Playboy, I have known and worked with an enormous amount of people. Many of those business relationships morphed into closer personal friendships. Among them, Poland’s Beata Milewska.

Tags Air Travel, Airlines, Bob Anderson, Booking Flights, Death of Traveling Agents, Internet, Nostalgia, Pat Murphy, Shirley MacLaine, Time

Categories Airlines, Memoire, Playboy, Travel

THE TRAVELING AGENT EXTRA-ORDINAIRE

January 13, 2015 //

Too Good For His Own Good

Haresh Shah

I am sitting in the Lufthansa city office in the center of Barcelona across from the petite German blonde staring at her computer screen while leafing through my four-booklets-thick-stapled- together ticket. She is tap taping her keyboard accessing my original itinerary and then checking it against my neatly handwritten used and the remaining ticket coupons. She looks confused and she looks amazed. One thing she doesn’t look is sure of herself. I have been on the road now for almost three weeks and have practically been around the world with my original itinerary that reads: March 25, 1979, Chicago-Los Angeles-Santa Barbara-Los Angeles-Sydney-Melbourne-Sydney-Bombay-Rome-Zürich-Barcelona-Munich-Düsseldorf-Frankfurt-London-Chicago. April 12, 1979.

I am on the final lag of my journey and am there to re-route my flight back to Chicago via Munich and Frankfurt instead of via Düsseldorf, Frankfurt, London. Normally a simple switchover. But that’s not the problem. It’s no restrictions ticket valid for twelve months.

I watch the blonde shake her head and murmur something to herself.

‘Who wrote this ticket?’

‘Why? My traveling agent in Chicago, Satya (Dev), who is also a friend.’

‘This is really fantastic. But a bit complicated and I need to figure out how he came to the fare base he did. It’s gonna take me a while. Can you leave the ticket with me for a while?’

What Satya had actually done was this: Instead of the real and the obvious Sydney as the turning point of my around the world flight path, to calculate the fare, he had me turning around in Jakarta, Indonesia, a fictitious turning point. Totally legit, and by doing so, he was able to reduce the total fare by as much as a thousand bucks. Cheating himself out of at least $150.- in commission. Something didn’t matter to me and the accountants at Playboy certainly wouldn’t have cared. And the reason he had me return to Chicago from London was because by writing the ticket on the British Airlines stock, he would add to his volume with them and therefore get an extra percentage or two commission from them. Knowing well that I hated the idea of connecting in the congested chaos of London’s Heathrow Airport. But I agreed to do it as a small favor to him. You can always switch to Lufthansa or KLM when in Europe, he would say, the two of my most favorites on the trans-Atlantic route.

‘Your traveling agent must be brilliant. We couldn’t have figured out the fare the way he did.’ The blonde tells me.

●●●

Playboy had in-house traveling desk represented by a woman from the local traveling agency by the name of, I think Mary. The only time the in-house agency had to issue my ticket was a three way Chicago-Munich-Chicago-Munich ticket when I was first hired by the company and promptly shipped off to Europe. Beyond that, I was handed a corporate TWA Air Travel and an American Express cards. By the time I was brought to the corporate offices to work and live in Chicago, six years later, I had mastered ins and outs of how airlines worked. I always booked my own flights directly from the airlines and picked up the tickets at the airports just before boarding the plane. While still living in Santa Barbara, I would book my flights over the phone and take a bike ride to the little airport only a stone’s throw away from my home and pick up my ticket from the young man I will call Joe, at the United counter. He was quite pleasant and we would have good visits. It was a one man operation in which Joe did everything – checking you in, loading and unloading the baggage, taking your flight coupon and whatever else that needed to be done.

But when my itineraries began to get longer and a bit complicated, once with a friendly frown he hinted, why don’t you have one of the local traveling agents issue your tickets? It wouldn’t cost you anything and I am sure they certainly would appreciate your business.

Enter voluptuous Debbie Kaufman and the Professional Travel. I would still book my flights and Debbie was quite happy to issue my tickets. But then I relented and let Debby also book the flights. Carolyn and I even had her over for an Indian dinner one night.

When we moved to Chicago, the house rule was to book our flights and hotels through Mary. But I was so used to and in tune with the international travel that I plain ignored this rule. Also because by then Satya had approached me. He and I were never close friends, but we were classmates from the first through the fourth grades – growing up in Borivali, a northern suburb of Bombay with no running water and no electricity. Beyond that, over the years, we would run into each other sporadically, while I was still in India and later during my visits back home. And then one day I get a call from him in Santa Barbara. He too had made his tracks to the United States and was now living in Chicago working for a traveling agency. Eventually he would open his own Blue Skies Travel. I began to give him my business.

Curiously, no one ever questioned my taking care of my own traveling needs. I think Mary once brought it up, but then realizing that I was better at the international routing and the flights than she ever could be – and when I pointed out to her that I had gotten a better deal for the same flights she had booked for my boss Lee (Hall) on the Varig flight to São Paulo, she must have decided to leave me alone. So Satya became my de facto personal traveling agent.

For Satya, the intricacies of the airfares and routes had become an obsession and a challenge. Finding all sorts of options became for him like computer games. Sometimes he would hold me on the phone for quite some time, and every couple of minutes come up with different fares and different itineraries. Mind you, this was before the arrival of the internet and before the fares were ruled by algorithms.

But he was more than the finder of better fares and the itineraries. He was an old fashioned traveling agent who also took care of your visas and other necessary paperwork. Would often show up at the airport to see you safely off. In those days, there were only the First and the Economy classes. So the upgrading from the Business to the First didn’t come into the picture. But when he hand delivered the tickets, he would show up with a variety of airline goodies. An Aerolineas Argentinas backpack, Lufthansa’s weekender sturdy little suitcase and the matching garment bag, KLM’s large ticket sized genuine leather wallet, Pan Am’s classic flight bag, Japan Airline’s poster sized framed world map with the round clocks mounted on the top, showing four time zones across the globe.

More importantly, he would build you up so much with the airline that at every connection the computer would flash the letters VIP right next to your reservation. Not because the business Satya brought to them would have amounted much to their bottom lines, but he had brilliantly managed to establish congenial personal relationships with many of the Chicago based airlines sales people, especially with the foreign owned airlines with small offices in the city.

Always impeccably dressed in his navy blue three piece suite and shiny shoes, he would show up with a big smile on his face and often treat them to Indian meals at one of the Indian restaurants in town. And he was good at dropping names. In the beginning, Haresh Shah wouldn’t have meant much to them, but he would build up my status at Playboy and spin the stories of how we knew each other practically since we were still in the diapers. And perhaps even drop a hint that in theory he could talk the company’s other executives that traveled abroad frequently into begin flying their airlines. Over a period of time, he did indeed started getting business from my then boss Bill Stokkan. Through Satya I got to know and meet many of the sales people as well and at least with Lufthansa and KLM I had become an instantly recognized name among the city and the airport staff.

So much so that I was almost always upgraded. Once when Lufthansa wasn’t able to bump me up, the station chief Herbert apologized profusely with: Extremely sorry Mr. Shah. The flight is fully booked, But wait before boarding. Just in case someone doesn’t show up. As I wait at the mobbed gate, I sense someone approaching me with, You must be Mr. Shah. Standing in front of me is a very tall and distinguish north German looking man. Perhaps seeing a question mark on my face, he continues.

‘I am Werner Kellerhals, the regional manager for Lufthansa.’

I had never met the man, but remember his name being mentioned by Satya. We exchange pleasantries. Clasped in one of my hands is the blue boarding card. I notice that his card is red for the First Class.

‘Can I have your boarding card for a sec Mr. Shah?’ And he gently snatches it away from my hand and walks over to the check-in counter. Soon he returns and hands me a red boarding card and the one in his hand is blue.

‘No Mr. Kellerhals, I really appreciate it, but I just can’t…’

He cuts me off.

‘No I insist. You’re one of our best customers and paying for your seat, while I am traveling gratis!’

Once when I arrived in Rio, they announced my name on the PA system to be met by Varig’s PR lady just to say Welcome to Brazil Mr. Shah. Other time I was traveling with Anjuli on the United and connecting in Miami on our way to Brazil. I hear my name announced just as we were deplaning. Waiting at the gate was the United’s station rep to welcome and escort us to their Red Carpet Lounge. As we are walking through the airport, he hastily tells me that we have upgraded you and Ms. Shah-Johnson to the First – hope it’s alright with you? Once we’re seated in the lounge, Anjuli breaks out in a smile, No, it’s not alright. She is all of twelve years old and this is all too exciting for her. Incredible! And I had paid for Anjuli’s ticket with my mileage.

Of course, he was able to do this also because I traveled extensively and paid full First/Business class fares. But even so… He walked that extra mile for you.

I remember the time when Christie (Hefner) and I flew back together from Taipei to Chicago. By then they had long introduced Business Class and the company policy dictated that we travel Business. Christie to her credit wouldn’t make an exception for herself. On her outbound flight from Chicago, she was upgraded, and was told by the travel desk that so we would be on our way back. Before we approach the check in, she takes my ticket and rushes to the counter. The girl behind the computer screen checks in our baggage and hands her two Business Class boarding passes. Christie looks at them and handing back to the agent tells her we are supposed to be upgraded.

The girl punches a few keys on her computer: ‘Nothing here says about upgrading!’

‘Did you look at Christie Hefner?’

‘Yes. Nothing.’ This would have been unthinkable in the States or perhaps even in Europe. But the young Chinese girl behind the counter has absolutely no clue who Christie Hefner is! I could imagine how humiliated Christie must feel. So I step up with let me talk to her! Christie steps back. Almost whispering, I ask the girl,

‘Don’t you know who she is?’

‘Who?’

‘Christie Hefner, the President of Playboy Enterprises. She is here to promote Taiwanese Playboy, haven’t you seen her on the news or read about her?’ It draws a blank on her face.

‘I am sorry.’ She answers.

‘Okay. Look. If this would help!’ And I pull out the upgrade certificate issued by the United, something Satya made it his business to acquire and deliver to me along with my ticket. I was holding it back, thinking why waste it if Christie had been guaranteed an upgrade for us?

The girl scrutinizes the upgrade certificate and plugs it into the computer and prints out another boarding pass and hands it to me. She has upgraded me to the First.

‘No. You have to upgrade both of us.’

‘Yeah, but you only have one certificate!’

‘I am sorry, you don’t understand. She is my boss, I can get fired!’

The girl is still not sure and I don’t see her yielding. Not to make further fuss, I give her back the both boarding passes.

‘If you can upgrade only one of us, then upgrade her!’

I see a confusion and conflict cloud her face. She picks up the phone to call someone – probably her supervisor. After letting the phone ring for a while, she puts back the receiver. Resigned, she relents and issues the second boarding card now with both of us upgraded!

© Haresh Shah 2015

Illustration: Celia Rose Marks

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Next Friday, January 23, 2015

OCCUPATIONAL HAZARDS

As glamorous as the life at Playboy could be, you would never imagine the kind of hazards lurk behind such publications. The most recent example being the cold blooded massacre at the French publication Charlie Hebdo.

Tags Airlines, Bill Stokkan, Blue Skies Travel, Friendship, KLM, Lufthansa, Professionalism, Satya Dev, Travel, Traveling Agent, Werner Kellerhals

Categories Friendship, Memoire, Playboy, Profile, Travel

THE ARABIAN NIGHT

December 18, 2014 //

From Irish Eyes To The Razzle Dazzle

Haresh Shah

The year before, Helga and Fred Baumgärtel (Mr. Playboy of the German edition – retired by then), Gudrun (Thiel) and myself had gone to the Oyster Festival on a private trip. On the second day or so, Gudrun suggested PLAYBOY-Germany organize an Anzeigen-Meeting for next year’s festival. The participants, so she predicted, would sure be thrilled. I can still see her sitting by the portside, a glass of Guinness in her hand, warming to the subject, as it were, while developing this wonderful idea. And so it happened.

Reminisces Andreas Odenwald – the editor-in-chief of Playboy Germany at the time. And I happened to be one of the dozen or so to join Germany’s top advertising executives who were invited with their partners to spend a long weekend in Ireland and experience the annual Oyster Festival. I don’t remember having eaten many oysters there, but drinking lot of Guinness to be sure.

We all meet up in Dublin and check into Gresham Hotel. That night Andreas and I stay up until three in the morning. Earlier, our guide, an attractive blonde, Clare Finnegan shows up and Andreas and I promptly develop incredible crush on her. That night sitting in the bar named Night Train, I hear a pretty and pretty drunk lady calling out: Hey handsome devil! Could have been for Andreas because he is certainly better looking, tall and handsome. The next day, it’s onto Shannon and Fitzpatrick’s Hotel. Late night again.

The morning after, Clare leads us to Galway and soon after we check into Ardilaun Hotel and to the Oyster Festival. The day is cold and windy. The only way to stay warm is bar hopping. What I remember vividly is that I urged you all to follow me into the pub “King’s Head” the history of which had thrilled me the year before. Myth has it that the tavern was given by Oliver Cromwell’s people, to one Richard Gunning as a reward for beheading King Charles I in 1649.

When that’s not enough to keep us warm, Andreas and I pop into a clothing store and buy ourselves identical plaid flannel shirts – forming what I have come to call Plaid Brothers. We watch the Oyster Festival parade and admire the Oyster Queen Maeve. There is a gala banquet at Great Southern Hotel, which is where it all began back in 1954. Held there is the ceremony and crowning of the Queen. We have a Playboy table up onto the balcony. When everyone is properly fed and drunk, Maeve floats from table to table spilling her sweet smiles, hugging some of us. As she grazes my neck with hers, I hear her say: I would like to take you home with me. Wow! I am 53, and she is, what? Eighteen. I guess they grow them differently in Ireland!

It’s raining that night and it’s as late as the previous nights. Clare has plans to get us up earlier in the morning and take us to show another Irish landmark. We’re all dreading it. But she is duty bound and insistent. She offers sweetly to even be our wake up call. Still, we strike a compromise. It’s a no go if it’s still raining. We all go to bed praying for rain like the drought ridden farmers in India. The phone rings at seven. It’s Clare crooning softly: I’m singin’ in the rain.

Two days later, I am sitting in the restaurant Casserole in Munich with Andreas and his deputy Bernd Prievert. Andreas and I are still savoring our weekend in Galway and begin to talk about how we can do something similar the next year, but on a bigger scale to celebrate the 20^th anniversary of Playboy in Germany.

Within three weeks Andreas is fired. Our partners Bauer Verlag replaces him with Wolfgang Maier. Sad, but that’s how the corporate roller coaster turns. I miss soft spoken and suave Andreas, who had also become a good friend. Now I am subjected to deal with loud and arrogant Wolfgang. Which is a bit difficult. Because he is pure and simple defiant.

He has a vision to turn back the tide of the declining circulation and the advertising revenues. Whatever his claim to fame, I haven’t seen one ray of hope in his ability to do that. His resume looks like hop, skip and jump. He has his own image of Playboy, which has almost no relationship to the magazine Hugh M. Hefner created forty years earlier. My job it is to make sure that each foreign edition, even in it’s diversity retains certain salient features of the mother edition.

Not that I haven’t butted heads with the others, but at the end of the day, we would have always managed to come to a mutually acceptable and satisfying compromise before moving forward with our combined ideas. Not so with Herr Maier.

‘I will make us all so much money that neither Chicago nor Hamburg (Bauer Verlag’s headquarters) would have any reason to complain!’ He once tells me condescendingly, as if handing a bag of candies to a little kid to pacify him.

By the time twentieth anniversary rolls in in August 1992, we have established some semblance of working relationship. The anniversary issue and its celebration is pushed off a month to accommodate the return of the Europe’s vacationing advertising executives. In the meanwhile, the event has been hyped and built up to be the happening of the decade – the self proclaimed BIG BANG affair.

For the first time three of us U.S. Playboy executives are going to be attending the party. So is the top brass from Hamburg. We are assembled in Munich’s newly opened City Hilton on Rosenheimerstrasse. I have just flown in from Chicago. Playboy’s Publishing Group President Mike Perlis and the divisional marketing director Henry Marks too may have already landed from New York and should soon be on their way in. Also joining us is Ivan Chocholouš from Prague.

This landmark anniversary means more to me personally than to anyone else present. As far as I can tell, I am the only one who was there as a part of the German team almost from the very beginning. Several editors and art directors and advertising directors have come and gone and as the reality of the corporate life goes, none of the past creators of the magazine have been invited.

The event is held in two of the big glass houses of Munich’s Botanikum. Set up in the Theaterhaus are various arcade games with pinball machines and the popular fuss Bal, the games room made in the image of Playboy Mansion West, but roomier and more dramatic with the multi-colored track lights beaming down from the ceiling high up above.

The adjacent Grashaus with the slanted glass roof and the glass side walls are lined with the panels of white fabric and is set up like an elaborate and lavish tent in the desert. The atmosphere in it is a bit more relaxed and is set up for mingling and eventually would serve as the dining room. It is decorated with tall potted plants, huge white cushions placed on the ground in circles around cloth covered very low square tables. The ground is the naturally grown lush grass lawn. Wafting from the piped in music are soft tunes and the chirping of the birds. It’s to be the Garden of Paradise à la the Sheikhs and the Pashas.

Creation of Bettina and Heinrich Bunzel, the Botanikum is conceived to seamlessly blend together the humans, the art and the nature in an urban setting of North Western Munich. We too have good memories of the Playboy event in our green houses. It was one of our first big party at the Botanikum. Herr Bunzel fondly remembers, reminding me of the long forgotten details about the venue. The photos he was kind enough to send me shows how much planning and work went into preparing the two green houses for the events. The result is absolutely spectacular.

Invited are who’s who of the industry, pre-dominantly the top executives of Germany’s advertising world. The party is to impress upon them that the new & improved Playboy under Wolfgang Maier’s helm was just the right vehicle to showcase their luxury cars, higher end liquors and no-one can afford brands of watches, computers, electronic gadgets and other toys for the grown up boys.

We make our way to the venue, dressed formally in our evening best. The low tables and sitting on the pillows on the ground is not something we’ve anticipated. But the first hour or two are us standing, cooling our hands with the chilled glasses filled with champagne and other beverages. Scurrying around, serving drinks and appetizers are not the ubiquitous Playboy Bunnies, but equally as young, curvaceous and pretty women dressed in billowing multicolored loose and transparent pants, thin see through scarves wrapped around their heads like Gypsies and tight fitting tops over their bare midriffs like that of the belly dancers. The band of them scuffling and delicately negotiating their prancing in the middle of us conjures up the image of the Houris – the sex slaves of the paradise, made to descend to the earth to entertain every whim of the men on earth and make themselves available in total submission. As Naomi Chambers describes in her article Houri – The Islamic Sex Slave In Paradise: When he (her master-husband) tells them to bend over – they must bend over. When he tells them to open wide – they must open wide.

They have hired professional models to do the job. The girls are obviously beautiful with near perfect bodies. Just like Ms. Chambers quotes from numerous Hadiths and Quran – whitish virgins, beautiful with tight transparent bodies, wide eyes, of the firm pointed breasts and permanently Brazilian waxed pussies. Their bling adorned curves make pleasantly soft jangling sound and throw back the blinding rays at the every move they make. There is a sudden hush in the air, appreciation even and wonderment. Probably because we are still in the process of deciding whether or not we like what we see. And if the tableau reflects what Playboy as a magazine and the lifestyle should project. Not to mention the misogynist message the event would communicate.

But we file away those thoughts because while we’re getting drunk without realizing and beginning to feel the chill in our bones, for the unseasonably cold air outside has permeated through the glass walls and it has suddenly turned cold and we’re all starving and yet there is no sign or whiff of the food wafting our way. They are having some logistical problems transporting our dinners from wherever and then having to keep it warm.

Now we are seated on the floor, cross-legged. Soon our legs begin to go numb and some of us begin to feel the cramps ripple all the way down to our feet. We wiggle and shift our weight from one hip to another – change positions. We try to keep each other amused for a long while before we see the Houris parading down the aisles towards our tables with the large trays perched atop the palms of their hands. They are having hard time negotiating the open spaces and balancing the plates while trying to avoid tripping on the flowing fabric of their loose pants and managing not to be blinded by the scarves flailing over their heads. Absolutely amazing how they successfully avoid dropping one or more of the plates and gracefully place them on the barely two feet high tables.

We all take a collective breath of relief and like famished Neanderthals tackle the feed. Just to find out that the gourmet dinner was barely lukewarm. We gorge it down nevertheless – or could be that that we may have stopped at the City Hilton’s all night cafeteria and grabbed ham and cheese sandwich and beer? But I certainly didn’t.

By the time I make it to bed, it is four in the morning. Famished, disillusioned, jetlagged and absolutely drained, I immediately fall asleep. I have seven o’clock breakfast meeting with Mike and Ivan before I depart with Ivan on a several hours drive to Mariánské Lázně in Czechoslovakia and get ready for that night’s reception for Playboy sponsored fund raiser.

Charmed life indeed!

© Haresh Shah 2014

Illustration: Celia Rose Marks

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Next

CHRISTMAS BREAK FOR TWO WEEKS

Playboy Stories to return on Friday, January 09, 2015

TENDER LOVING CARE

The winter of 1983/84 in Chicago was as severe as the one we had in 2013/14. The mounds of snow on the ground. Constant sub-zero temperatures for days on end. The cars wouldn’t start. Our radiator freezes and cracks. And one of my office plants is frozen stiff.

Tags Andreas Odenwald, Botanikum, Clare Finnegan, Fred Baumgärtel, Galway Oyster Festival, Houris, Naomi Chambers, Oyster Queen Maeve, Playboy Germany 20th Anniversary, Wolfgang Meier

Categories Corporate Matters, Germany, Memoire, Playboy, Playboy Promotion, Travel

JINGLE BELLS IN TOKYO

December 11, 2014 //

A Fleeting Glimpse At The Land Of The Rising Sun

Haresh Shah

I have landed in Tokyo during the day on the Christmas Eve of 1977. I am enroute to Bombay with a non-business related stopover in Japan. Even so, Playboy has arranged for me to be met at the airport by one of our Tokyo rep’s people. This is my very first trip to the land of the Rising Sun, and I am excited to be here, even for a short stay of 48 hours.

Arriving and negotiating through Haneda International Airport feels like a free fall into a total disaster area. Even considering that the Japanese like and thrive on things small, neat and functional, their international airport is ridiculously small, overcrowded and chaotic. And yet they somehow manage to maintain order within what would seem daunting to anyone else. As I claim my baggage from the carousel and look around, I see a huge easel, wrapped across it is a wide band of paper sign saying: Mr. Shah – next to which it is repeated in katakana using the Japanese characters for my name. When I present myself by the sign, a uniformed hostess walks up to me with Welcome to Japan and pins to my lapel a name tag and informs me that someone is waiting for me outside at the MEETING PLACE. Keiko Shirokawa is there to pick me up and take me to the hotel Dai Ichi in the famous Ginza district – that bustles with restaurants, bars, night clubs, department stores and boutiques.

I am on my own, so they have booked me in a modest place. As small as the room is, it lacks for nothing that a weary traveler may need or want. In-room amenities include a happi coat, a short kimono like garment to relax in – very attractive in bright blue and black. I am almost tempted to honestly steal it. Also provided are a pair of vinyl slippers and a green tea center with a small electric water heater and tea bags. The bedside drawer contains Teachings of Buddha, in English as well as in its Japanese versions. Just like in a five star hotels in Europe, the toilet paper is folded at the end in a triangle every time the room is cleaned. It is not only equipped with the bedside telephone, but there is also a toilet-side phone in the bathroom! A glass for drinking water is placed over a matching glass coaster. There is also a mini-pack containing of the Japanese one sided toothpicks. I have never seen them before. In that the flat ended top looks like a crown atop the thin lines grooved around its diameter. This is so that you can snap off the top and rest your toothpick on it for later use. And the bedside lamp has twin fixtures. One lights up to allow the reading and another one with a mini bulb provides very faint shadow illumination. And everything in the room is computerized. The billing of course, but what is now common place, I encounter it for the first time – being able to punch in the time for the wake up call through the key pad on the telephone. When it rings in the morning, you hear a gentle opening of a flower like jingle – the kind which can come from a slight touch of a single sitar string. And the vending machines in the lobby are stocked not only with soft drinks, but also with beer and whiskey, and little chilled bottles of sake. As well as conveniences such as shaving and tooth brushing kits, hair grooming products and the ice cubes. What else could one have wanted even in a luxurious and expensive hotel?

The thing that impresses me the most about the Japanese is how inquisitive they are. I am amazed at the questions they ask me during our short introductory meeting I had with some of the editors. Pounded into them must have been, there is no such thing as a stupid question. This seems to answer, why they are so detailed oriented and how they go about not stealing, but learning by heart the secrets of the most complicated of the machinery.

Unlike any other city around the world I have been to, nothing comes even close to the list of things I have made about what I see and experience in Tokyo within those two Christmas days.

What is most astonishing to me is, even though only less than 1% of Japan’s population of 112,000,000 people are Christians, nowhere else have I noticed a city so commercialized with Christmas as is Tokyo. The department stores such as Sogo, Mitsukoshi and Matsuya decorated in things Christmas would put to shame even the Christmas decorations of Marshall Fields/Macy’s of Chicago’s State Street. It’s winter time in Japan also. No snow on the streets, but the air is crisp and cold and there is enough cotton glittering with tinsel is spread out into the store windows to make up for the lack of the real thing. Wafting in the air in continuous loops are Jingle bell, jingle bell, Santa Clause is coming to town and I am dreaming of a white Christmas and other holiday tunes permeate the Tokyo streets, give you a feeling of having landed in the Christmas themed Fujiland. There are more blinking neon signs arched at the street fronts wishing you MERRY CHRISTMAS in this land of Buddha than I have seen anywhere else in the world. The stores are open through all Christmas holidays and crowds emerging from them are bulging with bags and bags of Christmas, nay, Winter gifts.

Over a period of time I would learn that the Japanese love to give gifts. It’s a tradition you have to respect and accept. So much so that even Playboy with its strict corporate policy of its employees not allowed to accept any gifts had to bend the rule in order not to commit the embarrassing social faux pas and risking the congenial relationship with our Japanese partners by letting me bring those gifts home – even allowing me to keep them. And the gifts wouldn’t be perfunctory. I still have their top of the line Canon Sure Shot – came in handy just in time, because I was getting tired of lugging around my heavy camera bag stuffed with Pentax Spotmatic, a set of lenses and filters and other accessories – now made obsolete by the digital cameras. And a set of beautiful Seiko watches, his and hers – the ones both Carolyn and I still wear.

Though I can’t help but wonder, who can afford anything at those prices? Okay, the ones given to me were from the corporate PR budget. But what about the personal gifts that I witness people carrying out of the stores? One of the things that totally flabbergasts me during this first visit to Japan is, how expensive everything is!! The first night Keiko takes me out for dinner at a small unpretentious neighborhood Chinese restaurant costs US$ 30.-. That is just the food. At the time, something you could do back in California for $10.-. As expensive as the food is, in the most cases you get to see it “live” even before you enter the restaurants. The standard dishes are on display in the glass showcases fronting each place, little hand made signs indicating the names of the dishes both in Japanese and English and the price of the respective dish. I still haven’t been able to figure out whether the food on display looking so appetizing is so beautifully frozen or is made of very natural looking plastic. Even basics like a cup of coffee, a glass of beer, a single tomato in the department store, sight seeing tour, day-to-day clothing, all cost three or four times as much as they do back in the United States. You would think the small luxuries that are made in Japan, like cameras, transistors, Walkman, calculators and such should at least be cheaper, Nope! They are cheaper to buy across the Pacific. Curiously enough, other than the electronics and some things obviously Japanese, such as Kimono and Kabuki masks, the stores are filled with the products foreign – mainly European high fashion and American. American jeans and the movies, the magazines, the McGregor spices and DelMonte tomato ketchup in the grocery store.

When I first arrive in Tokyo, I feel more squeezed and boxed-in like nowhere else. There are ocean waves of people, wherever you set your sight. As I walk the streets, one thing you can’t escape is how loud the people are. And how crowded and noisy are the streets. And the cacophony of the deafening noise made mainly by millions of wind pipes blowing at their highest decibel level seems unreal. There must be something psychological about them being out and a part of the crowd. Because in the meeting rooms and during the social encounters, they are meek as lambs facing hoards of lions. And their multiple bowing at every stage of the life including the petite females with their doll like slit eyes bowing and un-bowing, whispering domo arigato gozaimasu every time you get on or off an elevator. Not only to the attendants, but there is absolutely no tradition of tips even in restaurants and bars. There are other things I marvel at: The reverence with which business cards are exchanged. Held delicately by the fingers of both hands and offered with a gesture that of a religious tribute – the way Indian worshipers do when making an offering of flowers in a temple. The cards themselves are simple, a little larger than the standard size, stark white, devoid of the fancy corporate logo, printed on each side in black and white type face with the name, the designation and the contact details of the bearer. In English on one side and katakana on the other. And you are expected to receive them equally as reverently, look at it, bow your head slightly and then tuck into your pocket as delicately.

The passenger doors of the cabs swing open automatically as they slow down to pick you up. And then close at a touch of a button soon as you get in. Drivers all wear thin white gloves the kind English butlers do. That there is no such thing as an exact address in Japan. The first time I had gotten into a cab with Keiko, it took her almost a minute to communicate the directions to the driver indicating the exact location by listing the landmarks such as crossroads, the most prominent building around there, the neighborhood, just like we do in Bombay. Just like Bombay, Tokyo was never planned to be an easy city, hence the house numbers and streets have almost no or a very little meaning to them. And they drive on the left side of the streets. Something so obvious in Britain and its past colonies such as Australia and India. But Japan?

Also the thing you can’t ignore is the fact that many of the people walk the streets with their mouths and noses covered in white masks. Something Jains in India do in order not to inadvertently inhale the living insects. I am not sure whether the Japanese wear them because of the pollution of Tokyo or it could have something to do with the Buddhism. Majority of Japanese all dress in conservative western clothes. Unlike India and other traditional countries where you could see both, it would be a rare sight in Japan to see the men dressed in anything other than the western suits and casual shirt and pants and women mostly in two piece suites or the skirts and a blouses.

Outwardly they’re totally westernized and yet, not withstanding some of the obvious social etiquette and the public behavior, you can’t help but wonder whether behind the appearances, they have somehow managed to mask their real identity, leaving us guessing what their internal world really is like.

© Haresh Shah 2014

Illustration: Celia Rose Marks

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Next Friday, December 19, 2014

THE ARABIAN NIGHT

As announced last week

Of the multitude of PR events sponsored by Playboy across the globe, Playboy Germany’s 20^th anniversary BIG BANG party sticks out the most in my memory. And then there was a low key event just a year before.

Tags Christmas, Customs, Impressions, Japan, Tokyo

Categories Christmas, Culture, Japan, Memoire, Travel

THE NAIL THAT STUCK OUT…

November 20, 2014 //

Haresh Shah

Daring To Be Different

When our Japanese partners were reported what Shah-san was up to all through the week, flabbergasted, the executives and the editorial team are in awe of the fact that an executive of Playboy Enterprises was in their country expressly for meeting with them and yet they would not see him for an entire week. They were equally astonished when heard from Ray Falk’s office that Mr. Shah, nay Shah-san, accompanied by Sasaki-san, was crisscrossing their country and visiting places in an attempt to glean first hand some understanding of the land and its culture, its people in general and the young existing and potential readers of the Japanese edition of Playboy in particular.

Even though they didn’t know what to make of this Shah-san, they were positively impressed and intrigued, not to mention amazed. And then approved of my itinerary as was set up by Ray’s office. The places I would visit and the people I would be exposed to should give me a fair idea of some of what they had hoped to communicate to me when Lee (Hall) had originally conveyed to them what my mission would be working with the new team. That my role would go beyond giving them pep-talk,, turn around and then catch a plane back home. That I would roll up my sleeves and work hand-in-hand with them, not only in making and re-defining the magazine itself, but also talk about and make possible ancillary publishing activities as an extension to the regular issues.

I have returned to Tokyo that Friday night from our six day long exploratory trip through the country. On Saturday morning, I am met by Yuko Kato of Shueisha. American educated, Yuko is not a part of the creative editorial staff. She is more of an “it” girl who is assigned to expose me to the bustling with colors and the neon lights in the high decibel city of Tokyo. Yuko is in her mid-to late twenties, moon faced – sort of an attractive girl who is brimming with energy and enthusiasm to add and to finish up what Yastaka Sasaki had started out. It’s a rainy and a crowded day. Not that Tokyo is ever without crowd, but it’s Saturday and the people are out in troves, further cramming the space with their colliding umbrellas. Yuko and I huddled under a large umbrella loaned by the hotel, we negotiate the streets and alleys of the city. Duck in and out of the various places that I would visualize years later when I began to read works by Haruki Murakami. Neighborhoods clustered with cafes and jazz clubs and the cozy little bars and down home compact and crowded mom and pop eating places. The dark and narrow alleys, dingy little public establishments, the smallness of everything that would eventually define Tokyo and Japan for me.

After having stuck to the typical Japanese eating places through the week, Yuko takes me to the Italian Toscana and French Ile de France. At night we end up at the Tokyo branch of the discotheque Maharaja. We spend most of the Sunday roaming about the all alluring neon signs bedecked Ginza. That night I have a date with uncle Jaman’s publishing associate Frank Watanabe accompanied by Mrs. Watanabe and his son Nori. They take me to Zakuro, an exclusive and expensive Shabu-Shabu restaurant. Sort of like Swiss fondue, cooking your own food in the boiling water in a larger pot, instead of in smaller fondue pot sizzling with oil. We are seated on the floor and are served by traditional Geishas. They prepare the spread for us, making sure that the water is properly heated and spiced and then bowing, reverently walking backwards, leave us to prepare and enjoy our meal. Popping in now and then to make sure our Sake cups are filled and if we’re in need of anything else.

Submerged in all things Japanese for an entire week, now I feel ready to face the Shueisha crowd and hopefully be able to ask and answer and defend a group of them sitting across the long conference table, with me alone on the other side, albeit Sasaki or Kayo Hayashi interpreting by my side.

Even though I have already forgotten about the hot water I had found myself in five years earlier over Norman Mailer’s The Executioner’s Song, however faint the memory, it still plays out in the front of my eyes.

As I face about ten of them, sitting across the table from me, the showdown about to erupt, conjures up the image of a hundred Kauravas to my lone Arjuna with Krishna as my chariot driver on the battle field of Mahabharata. Me having to fend off my hundred step-brothers, the bows tensed and the arrows ready and pointed at me like in a modern firing squad, over something I had presumed settled between them and the rights manager Jean Freehill in my office. The Japanese language rights to the excerpt of the Mailer book. That was 1979 and to the best of my memory the beginning of splitting of the rights to the text that was bought by Playboy. Up until then, the rights to the text would normally be available to all of our editions around the world. But not in the case of The Executioner’s Song. The foreign rights were sold separately. Playboy wasn’t even given an option to bid on them.

I no longer remember exactly, but to add an insult to the injury, the Japanese rights were sold to Shueisha’s arch rivals, Kodansha. I knew our rights department had fought and negotiated hard for our international editions, but to no avail. I remember some clever literary agent summing it up for me. There is no such thing as exclusive rights any more, that the rights now could be infinitesimally divisible. Whew!!

Soon the pattern followed when Playboy bought a bunch of short stories by Gabriel García Márquez, our internal table of contents started showing up with NO FOREIGN RIGHTS stamps in the bold type face. In my naiveté, I show up at García Márquez’ agent Carmen Balcell’s office in Barcelona. I offer her $10,000.00 for foreign rights. She all but laughs me out of her office. But considering that after all I was a señor de Playboy, gives me as a gift, the original first edition of the master’s El Amor en los Tiempos de Cólera. The book I still cherish and from which read a paragraph now and then and be in awe of how fluid his original words in Spanish are.

Even though this phenomena of NO FOREIGN RIGHTS by now is more of a norm than an exception, I am still prepared to face the “squad” with whatever grill worthy issues they may have to confront me with.

But wonder of all wonders, this time around, not only they don’t have any bones to pick with Chicago, there are absolutely no group meetings planned. My whole week of already being in Japan and not wanting to see them so that I would have a better feeling of things Japanese, have thrown them off balance. Instead they have decided to meet with me individually or in pairs to discuss with me section-by-section of how they envision the future editorial direction of the magazine and are eager for my input. And even more astonishing is: other than a perfunctory quick visit to the editorial department, they have arranged to meet with me informally at cafes and bars. In restaurants and talk over lunches. Absolutely un-Japanese thing to do.

I guess I have earned my stripes over the five years since my last visit to Tokyo by collaborating closely with them and having facilitated several mutually profitable special projects. My week long trip through their country expressly designed to get know them better has added to the PR rhetoric from Lee and Ray. It has become clear to Shueisha, that Shah-san is not there to lecture them. That honest to God, as communicated to them, I am indeed there to roll up my sleeves and become a part of their team in Tokyo and their solid ally when back in Chicago. They are appreciative and welcoming in the way I would have never imagined the Japanese would ever do.

I am overwhelmed by the biggest honor bestowed upon me one evening by the top Shueisha executive Mr. Tadashi Wakkana by hosting a dinner for me at the garden restaurant Happoen. Invited are about twenty of the company’s top executives and the editorial staff of Playboy.

It’s a traditional Japanese affair in which we are all seated on the floor in a large circle and are being entertained by a group of Geishas. What I remember fondly of that evening and with a smirk on my face is: as we settle down, an aging and experienced Geisha kneels down in front of me. She is holding a platter full of little ceramic Sake cups surrounding the tokkuri (carafe), ready to be filled . The polite most and the traditional thing for me to do would have been to motion her to fill the cup and then wait for all the glasses being served and for Mr. Wakkana to propose a toast.

As much as I love Japanese food, raw fish as in sushi and sashimi and all, I just haven’t acquired taste for the two of their most traditional beverages. Green tea and Sake. And what I really feel like having is and normally drink with the Japanese food is one of their great beers – fresh and chilled. Either Kirin or Sapporo. But at the time, I am in my newly acquired taste for the crisp and cold Asahi Dry phase. I almost accept the cup of Sake, and then thinking to myself, that would mean an evening full of drowning the potent liquor that I didn’t care for in the first place, why not be honest and have a beer instead? After all, I am the guest of honor! I also know that by then I have accumulated fair amount of capital in the goodwill, perhaps I can risk just a little bit of it and dare order a glass of the thirst quenching beer instead.

So I ask the Geisha, whether they had any beer? For a moment, just for a split second, there is a palpable hush in the room. I have knowingly committed a faux pas. But then, without missing a beat, from the opposite side of the circle, Mr. Wakkana commands: ‘I’ll have a beer too!’ And guess what? Everybody in the room orders biru. Very Japanese thing to do. Deru kui wa utareru. Literally: Nail that sticks out, gets hammered down!

It turns into a lovely evening. Along with the exquisite food, first the beer and than the Sake also flows. Rest of my stay goes well. The discussions, the agreements, the concrete plans and the time table for their execution of editorial changes and the promotion to follow.

But there still had to be a group meeting. Not the kind I remember from my earlier visit, cooped up in a windowless corporate meeting room, sitting around with a group of editors at a long conference table with me alone on the opposite side with Kayo or Sasaki sitting next to me to interpret.

This time around, they have another surprise waiting for me. On Thursday afternoon, Sasaki and I board yet another bullet train and head for the resort town Hakone, known for its hot springs and picturesque Mount Fuji, about sixty miles (96 km) south of Tokyo. After having checked into yet another Ryokan, Sasaki escorts me to the inn’s spa featuring its own private hot tub. Sitting around are all the editors I have worked with through the week, naked as jaybirds and sipping on their Kirin beers, the bottles resting by them over the rim. The splashing in the tub and drowning of beer and an elaborate dinner that follows makes for a wonderful farewell. Mission accomplished, I am touched at finally being admitted to their inner circle.

© Haresh Shah 2014

Illustration: Celia Rose Marks

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Next Friday, November 28, 2014

UNDERNEATH HER CLOTHES

You might think that the glamour photographers who shoot the nudes would be devoid of any such male fantasies. After all, what would remain to fantasize about when you see the most beautiful women in their most seductive attributes through your lens and watch them prancing around the studio in the nude, day in and day out?

Tags Geishas, Lee Hall, Ray Falk, Sake, Shabu Shabu, Shueisha Inc, Tadashi Wakana, Yastaka Sasaki, Yuko Kato

Categories Corporate Matters, Culture, Food & Wine, Japan, Social Customs, Travel

BACK IN THE USA

November 6, 2014 //

Haresh Shah

All I Want To Do Is To Take A Beak

As I roll off the QE II in my Buick from the port of New York city, my plan is to drive cross-country with the destination of Santa Barbara, California. Or more precisely, Mark and Ann’s (Stevens) farm house in Goleta, some twelve miles north of downtown Santa Barbara and a stone’s throw away from the carefree Isla Vista off UCSB campus. Awaiting me is the culture and the people so unlike the America I have known so far. Three years earlier, just before Playboy offered me the job, I had planned a long vacation to explore the California Coast from Los Angeles to San Francisco. Instead, on the very day I was to fly west, I end up making a sharp hairpin turn to fly east over the Atlantic. I owe it to California to make up for my sudden turn. But I am not in a hurry. And I am open to any other possibilities that may exist or arise.

Chicago awaits for me with its arms wide open. Lee (Hall) throws a staff lunch for me and am treated like a homecoming war hero. He has even arranged for me to meet with the Photography Director Gary Cole. Lee thinks very highly of me and feels I would make a good photo editor for Gary. Gary is congenial, but not so sure. He has probably agreed to speak with me more out of courtesy than to consider me for a position he didn’t have in the first place. As devastated as Lee is at having to let me go, this is his way of demonstrating that it wasn’t his decision or within his power to keep me.

Of all the people, the person most upset and concerned about my departure from Playboy is the production boss, John Mastro. Even when he hired me away from Time, he had his apprehensions. Not because he had any reservations about the job I would do, but to take me away from what in the industry was considered to be one of the best jobs around. Worrier that he is, it ended up being just what he must have feared in the beginning. What if things with the foreign editions of Playboy didn’t work out the way they had planned and envisioned?

After all, these were uncharted waters. They had not yet figured out the cost-benefit ratio of maintaining a staff abroad. So there were going to be all sorts of uncertainties and the growing pains to deal with. It was not the performance, but the cost cutting that caused my position to be eliminated.

John feels personally responsible for my well being. And he is intent and insistent on finding me a comparable, if not a better job once I returned back to the States. He himself doesn’t have anything to offer, but with his wide spread contacts and the influence within the printing industry, he is sure to find me a desirable position. Totally ignoring my protests and wish to take a little break after the nineteen years of squeezed together hectic life.

I am only thirty five years old, but I have spent nineteen of them going to school. Joined my uncle’s publishing company Wilco soon as I graduated from high school, while enrolling myself for college education. First majoring in Economics and Political Science and then taking a ninety degree turn and joining the printing school. For two years, I served apprenticeship at the Precision Printing – a small printing house to learn the ropes. That was between eight in the morning until the noon. Hurry home and have a lunch on the run and be at my desk at Wilco by one. Dart out of there at five and off to the evening courses at the Government School of Printing, which took me until nine or later. Come home and barf down the lukewarm dinner my mother had shelved – still an hour or two of homework and that day’s diary entry ahead of me and make it to bed around mid-night. My mornings would begin around the time when I heard the first clinking of the milk bottles being unloaded at the government owned milk kiosk down the street. My eyes still half closed, I would pick up family’s ration. Perhaps grab another hour’s sleep and be under the cold shower and gulp down a glass of hot milk before running out to start my apprenticeship.

But I never felt stressed. On the contrary. My back-to-back long active days invigorated me. After I graduated from the London School of Printing, I loved every minute of the several odd jobs I had to take on before the three post-school real jobs that stretched into nine years. I am suddenly tired, exhausted even. I certainly need a break from the routine, and for now, all I want to do is write. I want to get off the speeding train – side step the rat race and stop to smell the roses. What’s more, I have saved enough to live on for a couple of years, supplemented by the unemployment benefits I am entitled to collect.

But how do I explain this to the man to whom having a job rates on the top of his priorities? And how do I fend his genuine concern for my well being?

‘You have all your life ahead of you to rest and write and do whatever else you want to. But I have just the job for you. Go talk to them. What you’ve got to lose?’

John’s gentle but insistent prodding reminds me of how my mother and auntie Shukla had began to nudge me soon as I had turned barely eighteen. All they thought of was to hook me up with one girl or another at every opportunity they got.

‘Doesn’t cost you anything to see her. I bet you’ll fall in love with her. And she is from a family just like ours. Will fit right in. You’ll never find anyone as pretty and sweet. Longer you wait, the best ones will all be picked clean.’ And auntie Shukla, the poet as she is, would even recite a couplet or two to describe her beauty, as if she were a serious contender herself. Not to mention, how pretty she herself is.

Once it became clear that I was going to go abroad for further studies, they begin in earnest their campaign to convince me to at least get engaged before I left for London. Their crafty underlying logic being, once committed, I would have to come back and not be lost forever to the West as did most others. And the horror or all horrors, what if I were to succumb to the wicked charms of a gori – a white woman? But I was steadfast and so it came to pass. And then when fifteen years later I came home, indeed not only with a gori in tow, but also nine months old Anjuli perched atop my shoulders in a back pack, they couldn’t have been happier.

But John turns out to be more persistent than my mother and the aunt were. So I relent. As much time and energy he has put into finding me another job, I don’t have a heart to tell him with any more emphasis that I really wanted to take bit of a break for some months, give my first passion at least a chance and then decide if I want to go back being the color guy. Not to mention that long ago, I had decided I didn’t want to work for a printing company in the same position as I would for publishers. Because I would rather be in a position to give shit than having to take it. Never mind, John has arranged an interview for me with the World Color in Louisville, Kentucky. As much to please him as with the thought, what have I got to lose? An airplane ride and bit of a diversion would do me good. Now it’s been six months since I had been on a plane last, something that had become practically a part of my daily routine, so to say. And I am beginning to miss it. It feels good to get on a jet and fly to Louisville.

First I meet with the production boss Grover Plaschke, who sounding serious, talks to me at length about the organizational details of the World Color and how the company is growing by leaps and bounds and how they are proud of their ultra modern equipment and the talented professionals who help them grow. Hopefully I could add to their pool of talents. I can tell I have positively impressed him. He enthusiastically turns me over to his press supervisor Bob Saxer. I like Bob. He is soft spoken and easy going no nonsense kind of a production guy like Ben Wendt of Regensteiner. My would be boss if I took the job. I get a good feeling about him and I am sure, we would get along well. I spend a whole day walking the huge World Color plant and I am indeed impressed by their streamlined operation, the cleanliness and the efficiency of the plant and the quality of the signatures rolling off web presses. I make appropriate comments and compliment him on how impressed I was with the plant and the people. And doing so, I can see that I have impressed him too without really trying.

‘I am sure we could use someone like you. I am very positively impressed by your resume and your experience of the last few years at Time and Playboy. So is Mr. Plaschke.’ Bob concludes.

To which I thank and tell him how I too would be proud of being a part of his team. But lacking from my voice is the excitement and the enthusiasm that of a man really wanting the job. I am struggling with how best to tell him what I am thinking. But he is more perceptive than I give him credit for. He doesn’t say anything, that is: until late in the afternoon when we are having lunch at a local bar and the grill. He lifts his beer mug, says cheers and while putting down the mug, looks at me point blank: You aren’t really looking for a job, are you?

So I square with him and tell him the truth. The only reason I was there was to please John, that I wanted to take a break first and give my desire to write a chance. At least give it a try, while I am able.

‘Fair enough. But when and if you ever want to come back into the work force, give us a call first.’

© Haresh Shah 2014

Illustration: Celia Rose Marks

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UNLOVED IN THE LANDS OF L’AMOUR

A Recent Lufthansa ad goes: Seduced by Paris. Inspired by Rome. Shelves are filled with dozens of books raving about wonderful and romantic experiences of the people who have been to Italy and France. I can’t even count how many times I must have been to Paris and Rome and Milan. And yet!!!

Tags Anjuli., Ben Wendt, California, Cross Country Travel, Ddropping out, Gary Cole, Job Interview, John Mastro, Lee Hall, Mark and Ann

Categories Employment, Memoire, Playboy, QEII, Travel, Writing

OH,TO BE IN RIO…

June 30, 2014 //

My First Taste Of The Feral Passion Of Soccer

Haresh Shah

We are in Rio de Janeiro for Playboy International Publishing’s conference, being hosted by our Brazilian publishers, Editora Abril. Other then sweating all day long in the windowless conference room of Rio Sheraton, which is also where we are staying, this is also an opportunity for the local hosts to showcase their country and the culture. Introduce us to the best of everything Brazil and Rio have to offer. Combined with organized and free social outings, we get to eat in various restaurants about town. Among them, Chalet, Churrascaria Carreta, Hippopotamus. But time and time again we end up at the Sheraton’s in-house churrascaria for their cornucopia of grilled meat and fish.

You can’t be in a city like Rio and not hit some night spots. The one we are most impressed by is their world famous Samba House, Oba Oba. Doused in the blinding flash and sparkle, the show mainly features the most beautiful, built-solid-like-a-brick-shit-house bronze skinned mulatas. An exotic mixture of the African and the Portuguese stocks. Young and pretty with their quivering tight bundas, doing Samba costumed in narrow strips of bling to the Afro drum rhythms is the sight to be in awe of and behold. The speed and the motion glaze their shiny skins with oily slipperiness. To watch the sweat dripping like the rain drops running down the smooth surface of ebony illuminated by swirling spots is spellbinding. And they certainly can dance and move their booties in a way that leave you breathless.

When you see a whole bunch of them lined up next to each other– all looking so beautiful and in possession of near perfectly sculpted anatomies, which one do you pay attention to? I normally end up fixated on one or the two of them. This evening they are the dancer Elizabeth and the lead singer Stella. The show is spectacular to say the least and though mostly performed to the crowd of tourists, and if somewhat glamorized, what you see is as authentic as the way they do them at the Samba Schools of the favelas in preparation for the carnival. Something I’ve had an opportunity to experience earlier in the year. If devoid of all that glamour and the glitter, I could certainly feel the heat and the raw vibrations of the partners I got to dance with.

The next day, after we have a nice dinner at Chalet, some of us are on the prowl. I go disco hopping with Germany’s Wolfgang Robert and Wolf Thieme. We first check out Regine, one of the upscale discos, but seeing there wasn’t much action, we end at Assidius. Turns out it’s a hustle joint in the disguise of a discotheque. The place is large with what sounds like good music and is populated with hoards of hustling women, some attractive, others not so. It is dimly lit and the girls are dressed so provocatively that after a while they all look desirable. I hang around for a while, but nothing turns me off faster than the whores hustling and poking at you. So I make my exit before anyone else does, and head back to the hotel.

A couple of days later, we walk into a place called New Munich. A halfway decent looking dancer is performing topless on a tiny stage while four or five not so attractive women parade in front of us, asking us for light, trying to make conversation. It’s a small dark, dingy and dirty looking dive. We soon decide it wasn’t our kind of a place and depart promptly even without finishing our drinks.

The whole world knows Brazilian cuisine by now from its chain of churrascarias that have sprung up in almost all of the major cities around the globe. Many of them also offer sumptuous buffets of fish and vegetables, it’s the grilled meat they specialize in. The waiters called passadores file past every table with a long sword like skewer studded with variety of meats that include beef, pork, lamb, chicken, delicious sausages and some grilled fish. But none of that compares with a down home meal of feijoada.

Feijoada is the ultimate Brazilian national dish. Traditionally it’s served only on Saturday afternoons, the reason being, it’s so heavy that once you have had a feijoada meal, it’s impossible to even think of going back to work. Cooked at a very low heat in a thick clay pot similar to that used for the tandoori dishes in India, it’s cooked together with black beans and a variety of meats, served with rice, spinach and raw flour. A must when you’re in Brazil, unless of course you happen to be in the country only during the weekdays. Too bad. Even though at the end of my first time around tasting it, I wrote in my journal: nothing to write home about, over a period of time, I have developed a definite liking for it, so much so that I often crave for it. Like right now. Alas, Brazil is thousands of miles south of from where I sit at my computer here in Chicago. And today is Tuesday! And then to be able to wash it down with the local beer Brahma interspersed with another Brazilian must, kaipirinha. The cocktail made of sugarcane liquor cachaça, sugar and lime. Served over rocks of ice and with a twist of lime and the wedge thrown into the mix. This refreshing translucent green elixir goes down your palate ever so smoothly. An afternoon filled with feijoada and kaipirinha, what can be better? Though a snooze would be nice.

To be in Rio and not be seduced and lead by Tom Jobim’s tender crooning of Garota de Ipanema would be impossible. One free evening, from our hotel on Copacabana, Don and I hop a bus and shoot out to Ipanema beach, hoping certainly of spotting multitude of the alluring Ipanema garotas. Instead we are met with shoe shine boys harassing us every few minutes, little girls shoving chiclets in our hands and sub-teenagers pandering all sorts of little junk. Even when we sit at a beach front café, they brush by. A little boy goes from table to table, placing two unshelled peanuts on every table, comes back after a few minutes to retrieve them, or if lucky someone would buy a paper cone full. A clever sales strategy. The whole scene is reminiscent of Chowpati beach in Mumbai.

So we submerge ourselves in things Brazil. But what spells Brazil better than its unbridled passion for the Football? By then in 1979, already three World Cup championships under their belts, they would go on to win two more championships to the date. Have had our fill of feijoada and several kaipirinhas on Saturday, organized for us on Sunday is the football game. Playing today are the two arch rivals Botafogo and Flamengo, both of Rio de Janeiro. This isn’t an ordinary cross-town game. It’s the final game of the annual regional championship Campeonato Carrioca. The stadium is swarming like tidal waves of red and black and black and white colors representing the rival teams. The atmosphere is vibrant and the roar and the noise are sky splitting – a carnival incarnate of kicking the ball.

The general atmosphere is tenser than Chicago’s White Sox playing the deciding game against the Cubs in their annual six games series, Crosstown Classic. So we are in for some buoyant soccer treat. Our hosts have us delivered at the stadium and then unencumbered, disappear to spend the evening with their family and friends, watching the game on the TV in the comfort of their homes. A smart move!

This is my very first live football game to watch. What can be a better place to be initiated in than Rio de Janeiro in Brazil? I am teamed up with Don (Stewart), Lee (Hall), Regis (Pagniez) and Laurent (Grumbach). We’ve got seats up front closer to the field with a perfect view. As we arrive, we hear a few hoots from up above, but none of us suspects as them being pointed towards us. We take it as no more than a part of the overall exuberance inherent to such games. But the assault begins in earnest at the half time when we stand up to stretch our legs. First come down the big blobs of fresh spits hitting us like targeted bird droppings. Then we are showered with the yellow gobs of phlegm and snot that smear my pants and the shirt. And then a plastic bag filled with piss hits Don’s shoulder and bounces off to the edge of a stair and splashes all over like the bursting of a punctured water balloon. We are confused and scared. Could it be because we looked foreign? Gringos? We look around and wonder, don’t notice anyone in particular, and the people sitting around us just shrug at us, and they are not being sympathetic at all. What the fuck? Don, Lee and Regis split immediately. Laurent and I dare stick around in the defiance to the attack. For whatever reason, the assault stops. We watch the game to the end and experience the jubilant spirit of bright and wide red and black strips of Flamengo floating in the bleachers – mostly across the arena on the other side, whereas the fans around where we sit with their black and white banners, hats and jerseys depart long faced and defeated. The scene reminds me of the two sides of a river story told frequently in India. The left bank is jubilant with music and laughs and dancing leading the bridegroom atop his prancing white horse while the mood on the right bank is somber with the funeral procession, the pall bearers carrying up above their heads the deceased body wrapped in white kafan, only the face showing. Laurent and I return to the hotel, with a feeling of humiliation still weighing heavy on our hearts. Not to mention how exhausted we are. But we still have the whole evening ahead of us.

I shower, change and feeling a bit better, go out on the town with Laurent and Patrick (Rousselle). Have dinner at Churrascaria Carreta where we run into Patrick’s acquaintance Arturo Falk and his girlfriend Amelia. Feeling much better now, we decide to go to Regine’s. Today it’s in full swing. I ask Amelia to dance. She does, but not before asking Arturo’s permission. Didn’t know such a thing still existed. But we’re in Brazil. Anyway, we have a good time. What’s more, Arturo seems some kind of a rich man and picks up the tab for the whole evening.

The cherry on the top comes when the winning team of the day, Flamengo walks in to the roar of applause. They are there to celebrate their win. We watch the largest golden trophy being passed from hand to hand and being kissed over and over again and the bottles of champagne popping open, and the gushing fountains of foam hitting the ceiling. The music picking up the tempo. Everyone is dancing, hugging and kissing strangers – just like in a carnival. Such happiness!

We couldn’t help but tell our horror story of the earlier in the day. Arturo asks, which part of the stadium we sat at. We tell him. What colors were your clothes? Why? Because you were on the Botafogo side of the bleachers, and if any of you wore red or the combination of red and black – that’s why. I guess one of us did – not Laurent or I. At least the one who did had erred on the side of the winners. To see Flamengos mingling with us makes up for some of the humiliation we had felt earlier.

© Haresh Shah

Illustration: Celia Rose Marks

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Tags Botafogo, Brazil, Feijoada, Flamengo, International Conference, Rio de Janeiro, Samba, Soccer, Tim Nater, World Cup

Categories Brazil, Memoire, Playboy, Rio de Janeiro, Soccer, Travel, World Cup

SAILING THE QUEEN

May 29, 2014 //

The (Interim) End Of The Longest Cocktail Party

Haresh Shah

The night before the sailing, I have checked into Hotel du Louvre in Cherbourg, France, right across the street from Gare Maritime – the port from where I would sail away on board the celebrated Queen Elizabeth II. Am I excited? Nah! It’s been hard, having to leave Europe. I would have liked to stick around a little longer, but my residence permit is to expire tomorrow and just the idea of having to deal with the German bureaucracy is painful enough to dissuade me even to attempt an extension. Might as well, because I have accomplished writing an entire book containing of 455 A4 size typewritten pages. It still needs to be edited and revised, something best done after a certain time lapse. Geographical distance wouldn’t hurt either. As for my charmed life at Playboy, to be honest, I am not sure how much longer I would have been able to take it. As abruptly as it has ended, it did on the right note and at the right time before I burned myself out.

Helga (Heilmeier), someone I dated for some months had often commented, du bist immer müde. And she was right, because the kind of traveling I did and the whirlwind existence I lead in a continuous loop was already beginning to take its toll.

It feels good to be free, looking out of the window of my hotel room and idly watch life happening around the harbor. Something about the waterfront I find soothing, just the way I do listening to the falling rain and the comforting feeling it brings after a long and scorching hot summer. Feeling nostalgic, I see the window opening up through which the events of the last few nights flicker pass.

It was ten days ago that I receive a phone call from Krystine. I haven’t spoken to her in months. Sometime I just feel like throwing myself into someone’s arms and say, save me. Exasperated, she cries out. Our affair was short and intense and circumstantially doomed from the very beginning. You have come into my life at the worst possible time. I neither have time, nor energy to see her before I leave Munich. I resign to the fact that I won’t see her for a long time – if ever. And yet her tall frame, floating blonde hair and the pretty angular face still lingers in my memory.

The flickering image changes to the night I would sleep for the last time in my Johannclanzestrasse apartment. Gary (Wake) and Michelle (Davis) and I stand huddled together, our arms wrapped around each other and our bodies swaying sideways in unison in the subdued L shaped hallway. Michelle is dressed in black, her wrinkled tramp hat crowning her shiny long blonde hair. Gary looks as unkempt as ever, his shoulder length hair all tangled up in knots. I feel drained and we all are sad. Our shadows move with us. The flickering candles from the living room light our path to the door. We survey and take in each of the three rooms. The stark reality dawns on us that within hours of tomorrow morning, all the walls will be stripped bare, the floors deserted, the sound of my Quadrophonic system silenced!

There are twelve of them to see me off three days later, on the morning of my departure.

‘Let’s go for one last beer.’ I say, and we walk to La Torre and have one last glass of Löwenbräu. As I drive away, I am glad that Coja (Rost) is going with me to Paris. She is Marianne’s (Miller) best friend and is going through a rough patch with her boyfriend Jochen (Wanz). Marianne thinks it might do Coja good to be away from Munich and spend a few days playing tourist with me in the City of Light. I have been to Paris dozens of times before, but now that I see it at a leisurely pace, this is what I write in my journal – perhaps bit of a reflection of my own mood.

Fear of big city. Burdened humanity. Different kind of people. Singing, playing, begging in the underground. A hooker hiding her face. The café world it is: small round tables. Sweating, smelling people. Oily looks.

As much as I reveled in my longest cocktail parry and loved the people and the friends that made it happen, I feel content in being alone face to face with myself. You are a loner, aren’t you? Visiting Karen (Abbott) had said a couple of weeks earlier. Something my mom always said about me. A bit of contradiction in my personality trait, because I am the one who also had her always rolling dozens of rotlis for so many of my friends, as if rolling them for the eight of us siblings weren’t enough. True, I do like my own company. There are times when I just want to be by myself. I don’t have to be surrounded by people all the time. So it is right now. I watch the evening fall on the gleaming water and the swaying private boats anchored along the piers. I take a deep breath and empty my mind of all intrusions. Put myself in a meditative trance and center all my energy within.

The first thing I do the next morning is drop off my car to be prepped for it’s journey on the Queen. I come back to my room and watch the Buick lifted up not much below the height of my room on the fourth floor window. Held up by ropes slung around the wheels, it conjures up the image of an immaculately conceived baby on its way to be delivered to the waiting mother, wrapped in a sling dangling down from the long beak of a stork. I see a man dressed in shiny rubber overalls hosing down the bottom of the car, a forceful jet stream of water pointed upward. To make sure it doesn’t carry with it infested European soil and contaminate the sterilized soil of America.

●●●

I am onboard and we have already began our westward journey of five nights and four days. The sea is calm and friendly. Gentle waves slushing several decks down below lapping the edges of the ship. Mild breeze caress my skin. I have walked all the way up to the observation deck. I am leaning against the rail, my eyes fixed on the darkened horizon which looks close enough to touch. A mirage in reverse. I take a deep breath and fill up my lungs with the fresh oceanic air. I jump up and down, walk to and fro from forward and aft of the ship. Finally, I sit down on top of the stairs.

I have left Elayne sitting all alone in the bar. One of the very few young and attractive women onboard. We dance for a while. The feel of her pointed braless large breasts on her slender frame keep reminding of Jutta (Kossberger). I buy her a drink and after the initial icebreaking ritual, neither of us have anything to say to the other. I excuse myself as politely as I could and escape.

As I sit up the stairs and let all the tenseness peel out of my body and soul, I try to think of an angle that would make for an interesting travel piece I am assigned to write by Playboy Germany’s service editor, Nikolas (Frank). On the heels of the short fiction I have already sold, Nikolas is quite impressed at my ability to write and has asked me to contribute to the front-of-the-book short pieces about America. The magazine pays handsomely and sustains me for the early months of my not being gainfully employed. A major piece on QE II could open up an entire new frontier for me. The piece obviously has to conform to Playboy’s core philosophy of hedonism, romance and the pursuit of pleasure.

Judging from the first few hours of being onboard, I shouldn’t have much of a problem observing and describing and perhaps even experiencing the excitement and the multiple pleasures of crossing the Atlantic on one of the floating Shangri-La. There is no dearth of things you can do onboard. Being up until wee hours in the morning, eating, drinking and dancing. I don’t remember having made it even once in time for breakfast. You’re served hand and foot and spoiled rotten, even if you reside at the bottom deck.

Regular but staggered mealtimes allow you to play table tennis, swim, linger in the Double Room and ogle pretty service staff or just cavort with fellow passengers. Jog around the deck. Learn to dance and Yoga. Go to the movies or read that brick thick classic off the library shelf. It even has a radio station of its own, WQE2. The multiple bars and lounges featuring live bands and loud discos to keep you twisting and shouting. You can switch from one venue to another and not ever go to sleep, if you so choose.

The only problem is: I have never seen such a vast sea of grey hair roofing the leathery wrinkled faces. They are mostly rich and retired Americans. Heavily made up women wearing mask like faces, dressed in their double knit pantsuits clinging their flabby flesh. The men in their loud striped and checkered pants, also double knit, wide white belts tightened around their protruding waists, white shoes worn under their floods. Even I too had worn similar rags years earlier. But I am totally Europeanized. I am 35 years old and don’t see how to fit in with the majority of them. I would have as hard a time even now at 74!

There are some young people on board – most of them kids. But the lounges, the bars, the bands and the music they play are all oriented to American night club music, Lawrence Welk, Frank Sinatra – the kind basically patronized by the middle aged expense account executives. Not a pleasure or swinging stuff here for young and horny – sorry Nikolas!

The most exciting thing that happens on board is a harp recital by Mary Ann Sherman– an oval faced plane Jane with thick tortoise shell glasses, the teenager traveling with her parents. She is dressed up in conservative below the knee length navy blue velour dress, while her mother sits next to her in her black floral frock, assisting her with the score. Something probably arranged by her parents to show off their talented offspring. But the daughter doesn’t seem much into it and you can see how nervous she is. Good thing is; she has a built in appreciative audience in her co-voyagers. Sort of solidarity of the onboard community. In all fairness, what she plays is pleasant – especially in the backdrop of a spacious cocktail lounge. She is appropriately applauded.

But I am enjoying the trip. It’s stress free and relaxing. The ship isn’t full, though there are enough people onboard, whenever I feel like running upstairs. But I seem to prefer spending most of my time down in my cabin. Reading, writing or just doing nothing.

On the second night I join the group of young set. After initial exuberance and animated conversations, most of them drift away, leaving behind Elayne – the woman I had a drink with the night before. Tonight, she looks fresher and in her long cocktail dress quite appealing. To her tall and slender framed glamorous blonde, the brunette Amy is more down to earth. Both in their early to late twenties are the center of our attentions. That is, the remaining four of us males hovering around the two pretty females of the species. Trying to outsmart each other. To impress them. The girls seem to be enjoying our attentions.

The scene takes me back to my earlier days in Chicago. We are buzzing over the girls like moths over the flames, just to be zapped and fall. Or more like four dogs in heat. One of us just may get lucky! Trying to get them drunk and then make a move. Two of the guys are from the upper deck, angling for the tasty morsels to take back to their cabins, which they must feel they are more entitled. I find the tableau all too familiar and sickening. Disgusted, I abruptly leave the lounge wishing them all good night! As I am climbing down the stairs to my cabin, I can’t help but think: Why don’t they just fuck and have good time instead of the same old bullshit?

The last night onboard, we dance and drink until four in the morning. I try to go to sleep, but while I am still tossing and turning, the night steward knocks on my door. We’re already in New York, U.S.A.

© Haresh Shah 2014

Illustration: Celia Rose Marks

SISTER SITE

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As you already know, this is my 75^th Playboy story. Do you believe it? When I first started this blog in November of 2012, I thought I had in me maybe about twenty five good stories to tell. I have done three times as many with a couple of shorter breaks. As much fun as I am having writing and publishing them, I suddenly feel that a little longer break might do me good. Give me bit of a breathing space and for a while do nothing or focus on other things I have already written or want to write. This is not by any means a good bye. Just a so long… an auf wiedersehen if you may. I don’t want to commit to an exact date, but I hope to be back with more Playboy stories in a couple of months – probably in the early fall. In the meanwhile, I want to thank you all for staying with me for now almost two years. I am extremely appreciative and touched! Please don’t go too far, I will be back before you know it.

Have a great summer.

Haresh

Tags Buick, Crossing Atlantic, Memoire, QEII, Retrospective, Transition, Travel on a Luxury Liner, Travelogue

Categories Germany, Memoire, Playboy, Sea Travel, Travel

A NIGHT OUT IN TOKYO

May 1, 2014 //

A Postcard From London Carrot

Haresh Shah

Keiko (Shirokawa) of Ray Falk’s office takes me out for what I thought to be the most expensive Chinese dinner. Apparently, what is French cuisine is to us in the West, in Japan, Chinese cuisine is considered a notch above any other kind – exquisite and exclusive.

After dinner, we stop at a cozy little whiskey bar. It reminds me of the Booze & Bits in Chicago, located right in the heart of the hubbub of Rush Street, invisibly tucked away behind an inverted L-shaped narrow passage north of Oak Street. Must have been a storage room turned into a nice little watering hole for the people in the know. A bunch of us at Time Inc. used to hang out there frequently and collectively we all had incredible crush on Sherry – the blonde bombshell of the bartender. No one could ever touch her, but she did well with her smiles, excellent service and bit of a coquetry thrown in.

Back to Tokyo. The bar we are in is a private club and every member has his or her own bottle lined up on the shelves. They are all filled only with whisky containing every known and some unknown brands. Majority of them are the different grades of the two top Japanese labels: Suntory and Nikka. Bottles are all outfitted in variety of clothing, most of them custom made, but you can also buy them ready made in the department stores. Some of the ones in my line of vision are adorned variously with a white furry puppy and black cuddly teddy bear. Short Chinese silk jacket, the like of what Suzie Wong wore and the long Japanese kimono and even a frilly floor length white bridal dress. Keiko’s bottle is dressed a bit differently. It’s wrapped in a maroon colored suede cowboy jacket, with frills and all. Cute! I look at Keiko sideways and could easily imagine her wearing a grown up version of just such a jacket, over a checkered blue shirt, wrapped around which a blue paisley bandana, tight leather pants, cowboy boots and the cowboy hat, riding a wild horse, tightly held reign in on hand and flaying lasso in the other.

Five some years later, Japanese Playboy editors host a dinner for us – myself and the staff of four from Ray Falk’s office – the Americans. After dinner, Ray and his crew excuse themselves leaving me alone with the BOYS. They are to take me out on the town. Kayo (Hayashi) winks at me and wishes me luck. The editors I am left with barely speak any English, except a word here and there.

We all pile into Mr. Nanao’s Nissan.

‘Do you like Turkish bath Mr. Shah?’ Sugimoto asks. I don’t know what he is leading at, but as tired and jetlagged as I am by now, I wouldn’t have mind also to have left with Ray and company and crash. Alternatively, a nice serious oriental massage wouldn’t be bad either.

We’re driving through Ginza, which is a mob scene, the kind I have never seen in any other big and crowded city. The streets are swarming with people like hoards of ants climbing on top of each other over a lump of sugar crystal. And they are loud. Many drunk out of their minds and absolutely out of control. A group laughing and screaming has one of their men lifted up above in the air and they are swinging him up and down like a hammock in the storm, while a group of women standing on the sidelines are laughing and applauding.

And then suddenly, Mr., Nanao hits the breaks. For a small moment everyone and everything comes to standstill. As if to observe a moment of silence in honor of someone or something. We’re at the crossroads at the multiple streets merging on a large square. In an instant the square is completely emptied out. Not a car in sight, nor a human being. And then I see tidal waves of pedestrians rushing forward upon it from the eight different directions – crossing the streets in swarms, crossing each other in a hurried but at a uniform pace. And then it’s all over. Mr. Nanao puts his car back in gear and we’re on our way. Just like in that first scene of My Fair Lady, which begins with a peaceful dawn – not a thing or a creature in sight, empty streets and the store fronts, deserted stalls – the damp looking streets lying lifelessly in slumber. And then the morning kicks in. There is a flurry of motion. Every empty space is occupied. The frenzy of the day begins. I’m told that what I just saw is called sukuramburu kosaten – the scramble crossing. And the chaos resumes.

Now I see a man slung over the shoulders of two women, barely able to walk. The women are practically carrying him. And here is the winner! A young man has unzipped his pants and pulled out his penis and begins to pee right in the middle of Ginza, the district wide awake and full of bars, clubs, the late night shops and all. He is quite oblivious of the people skirting around him. No one noticing him as if it were the most natural thing to do, like a stray cow letting a long string of a stream out on a street of Bombay.

We cut through all of that and arrive at what looks like an office building. We take a smallish elevator up to the seventh floor and enter what looks like a cocktail lounge, which it is. But there is a difference. A different kind of a private club, it’s a hostess bar. The place is filled with business men, most dressed in their dark suits and ties. And there are a stable of young hostesses, who sit next to and entertain men, pouring drinks, dancing with them and converse as if the customers were their long lost friends.

The atmosphere is relaxed, even though the hostesses hop from table to table or run to the new arrivals to greet them and to bid bowing goodbyes to the ones departing. But their attention to details and to each individual is incredible. They don’t push, but make sure that everyone’s glass is full, like any attentive host would. It’s not like damen unterhaltung’s places in Germany or the rip off joints of Rush Street in Chicago. The girls are employed by the place and receive a fix monthly salary. The price of drinks include the company of the ladies on the premises.

The girls don’t try to dry hustle you or make you buy them expensive drinks. Their clients are big corporations, who maintain an account with the establishment. Every girl seems to know every customer who comes in. They refer to them as their “friends”, and it shows in their congenial hospitable behavior.

The place is called London Carrot, its ambience is definitely English, with the colors and the lighting somber and sophisticated. I am their regular friends’ guest and being bestowed extra attention. The first two hostesses that snuggle up to me on the couch, try to converse with me in less than rudimentary English, depart after a short spell, replaced by the third one, who stays with me through rest of the evening.

Nana is her name and her English is better than the others, which is not saying much, but she seems to have infinite amount of patience and the curiosity and genuine interest in what I have to say. As difficult as it must have been, she is still interested in hearing about my impressions of her country and the people. To make sure she understands what I say and that I understand what she does, she repeats every single word I say, like my five year old daughter Anjuli does at home. She is barely twenty one, a bit on the plump side with the rounded baby fat on her frame. She asks me to dance with her, and we dance a couple of slow songs while the editors gently pull at my coat sleeves.

‘Time to go to another place, Mr. Shah”

Nana politely releases me and bids me goodbye, extracting a promise from me to return to London Carrot the next time I am in town. And she asks me for my address, telling me that she would write me a Christmas card.

All the girls are lined up at the exit, and bowing, bid us goodbye, domo arigato and sayonaras are exchanged and we are out back on Tokyo street.

Most everyone excuses themselves, leaving me alone with Sugimoto and Oniki. They hail a cab. We are in Ginza, which is the south east part of the city, the cab is to take us diagonally across the city to the north-western Shinjuku. The cab drops us off in a quiet residential neighborhood. Not much going on. I see a couple of rundown buildings that are being renovated and their construction work is blocking the way to where they want to take me. We walk around the construction and enter a very narrow, dark and dingy entrance, which reminds me of the crumbling old tenement buildings of Bombay. The cage like tiny elevator takes us to the third floor and delivers us in a strip of a dark hallway.

Another hostess bar. But this one is dark and dank. Even a bit sleazy. Hostesses are not as pretty or as nicely dressed. They are still restrained and polite in the Japanese way. They serve you and keep company with you. But then when their turn comes, they rush to the stage. In addition to being a hostess bar, it’s also a small cabaret. The girls preform comedy skits on the little squeezed-into-the-corner stage. They are more sparsely dressed than their sisters at the London Carrot and from the frequent and what I perceived to be lecherous laughs from the crowd, tell dirty jokes. It all goes over my head of course, except the lewd physical motions that accompany their speech. From what I can tell, they are pantomiming various acrobatic contortions of the sexual positions. The one I still remember is three of them huddled together in a chorus moving their hands made in the fists that come out of their crotches and move upward in vertical rainbow, suggestive and jerking their fists as if masturbating a giant cock. And then they would look at each other and burst out in lewd laughs. The place is crowded with flesh pressing against flesh. By then I can hardly keep my eyes open, let along pretend to enjoy the show. By the time the editors drop me off at my hotel, it’s past three in the morning. I hit the sack. Feeling I’ve had enough education in the rituals of the night life in Tokyo.

Switching back to the gentler of the two clubs, towards the end of the year, I receive a Christmas card in the mail bearing a postage mark of Tokyo and on the top left of the envelope is the red rubber stamp of London Carrot.

© Haresh Shah

Illustration: Celia Rose Marks

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Next Friday, May 9, 2014

FOR THE LOVE OF MARY JANE

When I arrived in America in 1968, pot smoking was already around, especially amongst the young and the “hip”. Something I never got into, other than having tried it here and there as I would a menthol cigarette – without inhaling. Honestly:). While it was still a hush-hush backroom and the campus phenomena in the east, when I arrived in Southern California some years later, it was offered openly and abundantly at most of the parties. Fresh, dynamite and homegrown!

Tags Hostess Clubs, Japan, People, Tokyo, Travel, Whiskey Bars

Categories Japan, Memoire, Playboy, Travel

OF BOOKS AND WHORES

April 10, 2014 //

Scattered Gems Of Practical Wisdom

Haresh Shah

The train pulls up at some unknown station. The peacefulness of the night turns into a little puppet show for those few minutes. The flickering dim gaslights illuminate the platforms, the guard blowing his whistle, the signal man running in front of the locomotive with his red and green flags, the tea and food vendors reciting their sales pitches, “chai garam babuji, chai garam, garam garam bhajia, khalo saab, aisi puri bhaji aage nahin milengi, pani, thanda pani. (hot tea, hot hot fried dumplings, have some, you won’t find them as delicious at the next stop, cooled water)The people getting off the train and running to the water fountains to fill up their water flasks with fresh drinking water, some sipping the piping hot delicious local chai in clay cups, some savoring the spicy puri bhaji. Sudden burst of activity, the train will pull away in a few minutes, the station would doze off once again. If there is another train arriving in an hour or so, they would just sit around puffing on their chillums, and the next puppet show would begin at the sight of another approaching express. It’s amazing to watch all those people moving around in such synchronized harmony, like in a well choreographed musical. Everyone has his own place, his own kind of product to sell, his own price, his own lyrical voice to recite and get his product to his consumer’s ears and eyes who only have seconds to make up their minds. Make a quick sale. And then once again, they disappear, they fall asleep. The train moves on.

I still feel dreamy and nostalgic about those train rides of more than fifty years ago when I crisscrossed India and played traveling salesman for Wilco – my uncle’s book publishing company. Train stations were some of the biggest outlets for the periodicals and the paperbacks. If there were an impulse buying, the train stations with their continuous transient stream of passengers were it. People would have just enough time to glance at the display out of their windows. It wasn’t good enough just to have a good product tucked away some place under the counter. You had to make sure that your product jumped at them before anyone else’s. As one of the stall managers, Vidya Kapur at Kiul Junction put it, Look Sahib, books are like whores, if the whores and the books are not dolled up and displayed, neither of them sell. What incentive do we have to give your books prime display space and sell more copies?

Pure and simple. True. What incentive did they have to display our titles up front at the standard discount of 25% as compared to other publishers doling out 33% and even up to 40%? The young Sureshchandra Jain in Nagpur throws at me, “We are banyas – business people, we do anything to make money, even sell your books.” And his brother Jagpal Jain in Calcutta even recites a poem of sorts for me: “It doesn’t help sitting on the shore if you are looking for the pearls, all you find on the shore are the shells. For the pearls, you have to explore the depth of the ocean.” Simplistic maybe, but their message was clear. Something no business school or the bestsellers can teach you.

Thus my first lessons in How To Succeed In Business Without Really Trying came from the folk wisdom of those down home but cunning operators of the book stalls across India. I am still young and naïve, but this month long crisscrossing the sub-continent teaches me more than up until then, fifteen years of schooling.

●●●

My father’s way of dealing with crisis was to not react hastily, but sleep on it. Depending on the time of the day, he would either take a long restful nap or literally sleep it off over the night. And when he woke up, most of the time, the crisis had passed. Or he had woken up with a solution to deal with it. I have inherited this trait from him and must confess, it has served me well. But there are times when you don’t have such an option. Especially in the business world. I run into what could have been a major crisis the very first week of having taken up my job in Germany. It’s almost middle of the night and the crisis has arisen over my denial to sign off on the centerfold of that month’s Playmate Marilyn Cole. The only way to make it better would be to reprint the entire lot. We are talking tens of thousands of Deautsche Marks.

‘Where do we stand with this fucking folder?’ I am standing face-to-face with the publishing director Heinz van Nouhuys, who has taken a special trip from Munich to the printing plant in Essen, with his girlfriend Marianne Schmidt over that election night in Germany on November 19,1972.

‘This is how we stand with the fucking folder.’ I counter, and then sit down. We talk, and then both of us realize some other solution had to be found. I am not yet established enough to make that kind of decision. I call Bob Gutwillig, our group head in Chicago.

What do you think I should do? I ask. There is a brief pause. I could almost hear him figuring out what it would mean in the long run for us to take a harder stand. Do nothing. Go back to your hotel and get a good night’s sleep. Just like what my good old dad would have said. Sky didn’t fall because Marilyn didn’t look quite as radiant. And the goodwill created by our letting go that night puts our partnership on the solid ground.

●●●

I enjoy years of steady growth and the fun but secure work environment under Lee Hall. I am quite comfortable with my role of playing the second fiddle without having to worry about profit and losses, contracts, budgets and the ever present corporate politics. He’s happy that I have taken to the heart his mantra of iron fist in the velvet glove. And I respect his axioms of I don’t like surprises by keeping him informed and always telling him the truth – one thing about lies is that you’ve to have good memory. I am good at my job also because I like people and love what I do. He passes on appropriate compliments to me with comparing my diplomatic way of doing things to that of the Secretary of State Henry Kissinger’s.

What I appreciate the most about him is that he would give me an assignment, sit down with me and discuss it at length, introduce in minute detail the cast of characters I would meet and work with. Tell me what my mission would be. He may throw in a hint here and there, but all in all, leave it upon me to take it from there and pursue the course of action as I saw fit. His job was then done. He could then close his office door, sit down with his New York Times and put his feet on his desk and light up one of his smuggled Cohibas.

Despite his ivy league stiffness at times, Lee feels special affinity for me, because he has spent some time in India during his youth and remembers fondly those days and also because both of us have come to Playboy from what was and still is the gold standard in the industry – the house of Time Inc. He is pleased that in addition I bring to the equation the solid educational background of two completely different and yet quite compatible fields, including the philosophy of two of the teachers who felt it important also to teach us about the thing called life.

Professor Nadarsha Mody at Jaihind College in Bombay taught us Shakespeare, but would often drift away talking about “life”, instead. If you are thinking God has given us these knuckles on our fingers so that we can count how much money we’ve got, wrong! Because in India we use the knuckles as if they were built-in calculators. When you’re on your death bed and if you could count even half as many friends, you know that you have earned and lived a good life.

Leap forward to our teacher Edwin Banks at London College of Printing, where I studied technologically oriented printing management. He would pound into us time and time again, don’t be afraid of trying anything. Mistakes will be made and sooner you make a mistake, better off you will be. And that you know that the foreman is doing a good job when you walk into the plant and hear the consistent drone of the printing press running, he is sitting on his chair with his feet up on his desk, reading the newspaper. Not the one who is frenetically trying to re-start the press with broken web and the ribbons of paper flying all over.

●●●

This all changes overnight, when after years of Lee having successfully run the department is suddenly usurped in a corporate coup d’état. Now I have a new boss – Bill Stokkan. It takes us a while to adjust to each other. But somehow we manage. Bill leaves me alone even more than Lee did, because he is not a publishing guy who believes that his managers should be able to do their jobs well on their own. But he does find his ways into all his direct reports’ areas more as an advisor/guardian than a boss. I like his modus operandi.

At times it takes me several days or even a couple of weeks to get him to sit down with me. Then suddenly he would show up at my office door just before lunch.

‘Let’s go!’ He would say. Hurriedly, I would collect my files containing things I need to discuss with him and we would dart out of there and walk a couple of blocks to our favorite Japanese restaurant, Hatsuhana, have our first course of sushi and tempura washed down with sake and beer, and then walk next door to the Shucker’s and top it up with fresh soft shell crabs, shrimps and oysters with some chilled vodka.

His favorite jargon is: That’s a no brainer, which would follow quick decisions.

‘Do it.’

‘Let’s discuss.’

‘Not now.’

And we would be done. But Bill is also given to what his other direct reports and I came to call, pontificate! He has an extremely analytical mind in which he has looked at a given situation from every possible angle. And he has a set of business philosophy that is plain and simple and above all fair to everyone concerned. Something I absolutely admire.

We are on our way to Brazil and Argentina. Up are two very delicate contract renewals. I have provided him with copies of the contracts and am giving him rundown on what we maybe up against when sitting down at the negotiating table.

‘They’re right. We should consider giving them reduction in the minimum guarantee!’ This is a new concept to me. He senses it and he knows what the corporate philosophy has been all along.

‘Minimum guarantee shouldn’t be a minimum penalty. I see that we actually make more money than they do!’ This too is a new concept for me.

Aren’t we supposed to be? I don’t even have to ask.

‘We may try to get 51% out of the deal, but even if we end up with 50/50 split, it’s still a win-win situation and therefore a true partnership.’

‘But that would throw off our budget…’

‘Don’t worry about the budget. Just make one up the best you can. In the end you could be either over budget or under budget.’ Well, he is right. But no one has put it to me that way before.

‘Just look at these numbers. What’s in these contracts for our partners? What incentive do they have to invest more and make more money? So they can pay us more in the royalties?’

The question hangs in the air while our Varig flight bound for São Paulo pierces through the dark of the night. His question what incentive do they have? takes me back to ten thousand miles away and twenty five years earlier. And to my month long jaunt across the Indian sub-continent and to a different kind of dark nights, not up in the sky, but down on the earth. And instead of the jet engines roaring, I hear the screeching of locomotives on their tracks and the train slowly inching into a station. And hear the echo of Vidya Kapur, loud and clear:

Look Sahib, books are like whores, if the whores and the books are not dolled up and displayed, neither of them sell. What incentive do we have to give your books prime display space and sell more copies?

Illustration: Celia Rose Marks

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Next Friday, April 18, 2014

HUGH GRANT IN MY SHOES

When in June of 1995, Four Weddings and a Funeral and Notting Hill star Hugh Grant was arrested and booked by LAPD, his police mug shot along with that of the prostitute Devine Brown were splattered all over the international print and television media. I couldn’t help but think: it could have been me nineteen years earlier.

Tags Bill Stokkan, Edwin Banks, Jai Hind College, Lee Hall, London College of Printing, Professor Mody

Categories Corporate Matters, Memoire, Playboy, Profile, Time Inc., Travel

DINING WITH THE STARS

April 3, 2014 //

Or How To Raise Quick Cash

Haresh Shah

I am between the bookends. My first year of living in Santa Barbara, California. Or more precisely in Goleta, twelve miles (17.2 km) north along the Pacific Coast off the UCSB campus. I am jobless and slumming, actually writing my novel The Lost Identity, and yet surviving with a certain style with four hundred some dollars a month I collect form the unemployment benefits. I kick in an extra hundred from my savings in order not having to struggle too much, almost half of the total goes towards the rent. I have rented a decent apartment because I like the feeling of space. It’s a spacious two bedroom apartment with an ample terrace outside the large glass sliding doors overlooking San Ynez mountain range. I am only a walking distance from the Pacific shore and the ocean front Enchanted Forest.

Subsidized on and off with freelance contributions to the German Playboy and Oui, I also have beginner’s luck in selling three short stories between German Lui and Playboy. But all in all, I live on a tight budget devoid of any frivolous expenses. Even my beautiful Buick languishes under the gentle protection of the car port most of the time. My friend and Goleta guru, Mark (Stevens) has required me to buy a swift and shiny brand new ten speed Azuki, which I have equipped with a rubber banded back career to comfortably transport my groceries and books. The bike also helps me stay fit as I spend at least an hour every day sprinting along the ocean front and shed about thirty pounds along the way.

Just like in Munich, my apartment in Goleta becomes the center for all of us to come together, cook, party and hangout at the neighborhood’s cheap student joints, among them, the popular McGill’s – the Mexican restaurant where you can have a 12” (26.2 cm) succulent flauta stuffed with chicken, avocados, lettuce, tomatoes, all blended together in his most delicious (secret?) sauce served with refried beans and Mexican rice. We would share a pitcher or two of the dark Dos Equis beer – all for about five dollars or less a throw.

Thanks to Ann (Stevens) and Guusje (Sellier) and my own culinary repertoire, we cook a lot at home and I still can feel the taste of Guusje’s Nasi Goreng and Ann’s fresh fish fried with onions, served with brown rice and soy sauce. At times we would get lucky and one of Mark and Ann’s diving buddies would show up with the tender-most abalone steaks, which Ann would prepare with her delicate touch without turning them into chewy white rubber. And we would make do with beer and cheap but good wines from Two Guys, settling for semi-sweet German Liebfraumilsch, and when we could afford it, a bottle of California Cab or a Zin. And sometime even treat ourselves to a good cigar. All in all, I could say, I manage to live well on the cheap. The life, if not Munich affluent, is as exciting and full of fun.

On and off I would have visitors from all over as I usually do. Among them, Raimund Le Viseur – the first editor-in-chief of the German Playboy. His then girlfriend and now wife, Inge Grams too worked with us in Munich – the couple I remember as donning what looked like very expensive matching long fur coats – swaying as they walked. Now a freelance journalist, Raimund, or as we all called him Levi is on an assignment in the USA, following the first lady Betty Ford and her entourage covering their campaign trail of 1976 Presidential Election. Levi calls me from L.A. wondering if we could meet up and have dinner together.

I drive a hundred miles (160 km) to Los Angeles to Beverly Wilshire in Hollywood. He is traveling with two photographers. Steve from Sygma and Ron from UPI. Even though Levi and I were never that close, away from Munich we’re delighted to see each other and catch up. Talking with him makes me homesick for Munich. What blows me away is Levi pulling out photos of their newly born son. Unbelievable!! Or like the Germans would say, nicht zu glauben. Because I remember clearly the lunch I’ve had with Levi and Inge at Zur Kanne in Munich, about three years earlier and them telling me that they could never imagine themselves being parents. Levi hated the idea of anyone ever calling him father. Absolutely not. And here he is, as incredibly delighted as can be, drooling over the wallet size photos of Inge and their little boy.

I join Levi and the photographers in the hotel’s Blvd Lounge where we have a couple of drinks before going out for dinner. Levi proudly tells us that he has reserved a table for us at the Hollywood’s most exclusive celebrity hangout, Levi remembers it to be Rodeo, only a stone’s throw away from the hotel. Just like Hollywood’s Star Walk, the Bistro is a must, a pilgrimage if you may. I have been to L.A. several times by then and curiously enough have never even heard of the place. Then again, I had never heard of Beverly Wilshire either. Little did I know, fifteen years later I would end up in one of their larger rooms and would have a pleasure of being dwarfed and lost atop Beverly Wilshire’s California King bed. One of the Playboy preferred hotels when traveling to Los Angeles on business.

Levi tells us, the restaurant is frequented by all the top A-list stars such as Jack Nicolson and Candice Bergan, Sharon Stone, Michael Douglas and over the years, their cliental included luminaries of the years past. The stars of Hollywood’s golden era as well as the movers and shakers big producers and the directors – in short the crème de la crème of who’s who of the tinsel town. He also tells us how difficult it was to acquire a table. Instead of relying on the concierge, earlier he personally walked over to the restaurant and was told the place was fully booked and there was no chance of us getting a table that evening. He had to plead with the maître d’ to please give us a special consideration – especially because he was there all the way from Germany and even invoked the name of Playboy in vain. Mentioned big name German publications such as Der Spiegel and Stern. All of it went over maître d’s head until Levi decided to persuade him the old fashioned way, by peeling out ten dollar bill from his billfold.

‘Well, I don’t know. But let’s see what I can do. I can’t guarantee a good table, but we’ll try to somehow squeeze you guys in.’ Maître d’ tells him, smug and patronizing as can be.

We’re all excited and are looking forward to running into some of the big ones. So we stride over to the restaurant. Standing in front of us is the maître d, now dressed in his tail coat, middle aged and bald. Behind him the place is completely empty. Not even a stray bird fluttering.

‘You’re in luck. They haven’t showed up yet. Kind of early for the Hollywood set. I have blocked the best table for you.’ And he escorts us to a booth in what I would say a quite desirable spot with view to the entire restaurant and that of the front entrance. Deflated, Levi looks at the maître d’, who is apologetic but is sheepish in the way he looks back at him, as if saying: what d’ ya want? This is Hollywood! They exchange knowing looks and then we settle to a bottle of Mondavi Brothers Cabernet Sauvignon and turn the evening into our own private little party.

As I look around, the place is reminiscent of Chicago’s Gene & Georgetti’s – one of the city’s oldest steak houses and it boasts the patronage of Frank Sinatra, Lauren Bacall and Bob Hope. Not far from the Union Station, I was told during one of my earlier visits there that on their coast-to-coast – New York-Los Angeles-New York train rides, they would avail themselves of Gene & Georgetti’s hospitality and their exquisite steaks during the train’s longer stop over in Chicago. Mementos of their visits are visible on the walls all over the restaurant, mostly in the form of framed 8” x 10” (17.6 x 22 cms) prints. Similarly, the walls of The Bistro too are crowded with multitude of celebrities past and present, most of them living in their own backyard.

We don’t see even a single star walking in and out to dazzle us, neither do we see many more guests through the evening. But we make believe as if all those photos of the celebrities from the past and the present that cover all four walls of the restaurant and are looking down at us from the wall behind the high backed rounded leather-upholstered-in-the-period-burgundy-red, are there with us in flesh and blood and we’re indeed rubbing shoulders with them. I am sandwiched between Marilyn Monroe and Katherine Hepburn happily babbling away. Similarly, Levi, Steve and Ron are surrounded by Cary Grant, Vivien Leigh and Clark Gable, Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman, Lauren Bacall and Spencer Tracy. Groucho Marx and Charlie Chaplin. Elizabeth Taylor, Dean Martin, Rock Hudson, Frank Sinatra and Grace Kelly too are peering over us from not too far. Making us feel we’re the real stars and we are happy to share the table and the space with them.

To be fair, the food is quite good. It’s been a while since I have been treated to such a nice meal in a good restaurant with wine and all. Something no longer within my budget. But tonight, I am with the people with expense accounts and am relaxed in the knowledge that one of them is certain to pick up the tab. Wrong! The bill with the tip comes to an even $80.-. The three slap on the table $20.- bills each. I would be lucky if I had half that much in cash in my pocket. I had left home with a twenty dollar bill and some change, ten of which I spent on filling up my Buick. It’s turning into an expensive evening for someone on the dole, struggling to make ends meet with his unemployment benefits and whatever extra he manages to make by doing freelance stuff. The wheels in my head are wheezing frantically. But I don’t let any of what I am thinking show on my face. Without missing a beat, I slide out my Amex from the wallet I am holding and throw it on the table like tossing a dice while swiftly swiping the three twenty dollar bills off as from the gaming table. I come out of the restaurant feeling flush, my pocket stuffed with hot cash!

‘Not a bad way to raise some quick interest free cash,’ comments Steve – the man from Sygma.

Illustration: Celia Rose Marks

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Next Friday, April 12, 2014

THE WORDS OF WISDOM

No business school or a bestseller can teach you how to succeed in business as much as what you learn on the job and from the people you work with. And if you happen to be as lucky as I was to have had the kind of bosses I did, they could become your ultimate gurus and pass on the secret mantra to guide you for the rest of your life.

Tags Attitude, Beverly Wilshire, Celebrities, Celebrity Hangouts, Gene & Georgetti's, Hollywood, Raimund Le Viseur, Restaurants, Snobs, The Bistro

Categories Celebrities, Hollywood, Memoire, Playboy, Travel

THE STRANDED BRIDE

March 27, 2014 //

Lost In The Labyrinth

Haresh Shah

I am at Rome’s Fiumicino International Airport, temporarily delayed because of the cancellation of Alitalia to Frankfurt, which is where I was to connect with Lufthansa’s overnight Frankfurt-Johannesburg flight. They have re-routed me on British Airways to London and then connecting there to onward journey to South Africa. Suddenly I have a couple of hours to kill. I avail myself of the first class lounge, leave my belongings there and venture outside to check out the renovated expanse of the airport. As I am walking down the glass walled passage bridging two wings of the terminal, I hear a timid female voice trailing me.

‘Uncle, uncle. Please! Please!’

I turn around and see that striding behind me hurriedly is a skinny young Indian woman – sort of pretty and petite, probably weighing no more than 90 pounds (41 kg.). In her early twenties, she is dressed in the traditional sari. She is almost limping, trying to keep balance between what seems like a heavy carry on bag on one shoulder and her purse dangling down from the other. Both of them are precariously close to slipping off her shoulders and thump on the ground. She is wearing a pair of red chappals – the light weight Indian sandals. I notice the orange-red outlining the bottom of her feet and intricate mehandi motif applied to the top of them. Her hands too are mehandi covered on both sides. Climbing up her hands almost up to her elbow are clanging multi-colored glass bangles intermingled with thin gold bracelets. Her forehead is daubed with overlapping multiple vermilion tikas, to which a few grains of rice still adhere.

I stop and respond ‘Yes?’

‘Help me uncle, please!’ she looks scared and disoriented, giving me a confused look. Sensing the question what? on my face, she somehow manages to put down her carry on and fishes out of her purse a crumpled little booklet of the old fashioned hand written on flimsy sheets of the paper flight ticket and hands it to me.

‘See, please see!!’ It becomes apparent to me that she doesn’t speak much of English, so I switch to Hindi. She seems to understand it a bit better, but not quite. From her darker skin and the features, I place her somewhere in the country in Maharashtra, outside of Mumbai. She is from Pune. I switch to my limited fluency of Marathi to which she responds with a sigh of relief. I glean from her itinerary that she boarded the Air India flight from Bombay bound for Rome, and from here she is to continue on to Montreal. I look at the departure time on the ticket and realize that her scheduled flight has long left. I quickly glance at the flipping departure board, it’s already close to five in the afternoon and there are no more north America bound flights scheduled that day. Actually, there aren’t many flights scheduled to go anywhere for a while. Other than a lone passenger walking past here and there, it’s just the two of us standing in the middle of the wide passage.

‘You know that your flight has already left?’

‘Has it? No, it can’t be.’ And then I see the expressions on her face change from disbelief to dismay to I don’t know what to do helplessness.

‘Uncle, uncle, please help me.’ She urges. Her face contorted on the verge of breaking down in a cry. She obviously has no clue as how to negotiate her situation and/or what to do next.

‘It’s alright. Don’t worry. We’ll figure something out.’ I try to comfort her. I still don’t know what though! But as we stand there for a couple of undecided and uncomfortable minutes, the whole scenario unfolds in the front of my eyes.

She is newly married. Probably plucked hastily from a bevy of eligible suitable young candidates by a newly graduated and a year or so in his well paying job as an engineer in one of the western countries. The usual routine would be: a brilliant young man graduates from prestigious school in India, enrolls and is admitted for the post-graduate studies abroad, most probably in America. Alternately in England, Germany or Canada. Earns his Master’s degree, probably with honors and is offered a job. It takes him a year or two to feel settled, acquire his Green Card or an equivalent thereof from the respective country, and has saved up enough money to take a month long trip back home in quest of finding a mate. His family has lined up several prospective brides from other compatible families for him to see and to consider.

I imagine him making rounds of their homes in company of a close friend and couple of his own family members. I imagine one of them being the home of the young woman, standing in front of me, whose name I know from her ticket is Kajal. Sitting in her parent’s living room is the man she may or may not marry, depending on how they like each other, and if from a conservative family, whether or not their astrological charts concur.

Even though it’s a hundred degrees outside, he is dressed up in his suit and a tie. His brother and his friend accompanying him not so. Only slight comfort from the heat comes from the ceiling fan whirring up above. They are surrounded by the male members of the girl’s family, involved in animated chit-chat about the way of living between the east and the west. The young man, let’s call him Manoj, is, if not exactly nervous, is a bit fidgety. After all, this is one of the most important moments of his life that would define the rest of it.

Waiting in the inner room and in the kitchen are the females of her family. Kajal is dolled up in her best sari and the glittery jewelry like a Bollywood starlet. When an appropriate amount of time has passed, as if on a stage managed prompt, she walks slowly towards the living room with other women following. Her hands slightly shake as she tries to balance a snack tray with cups of tea already poured in, and little dishes and bowls filled with Monaco crackers, Glucose biscuits, home made chivda and sev, penda and other sweetmeats bought from the best Punjabi halwai.

Anxious, her heart is filled with the fear of unknown and yet she feels incredibly excited as she walks across the hall and places the tray on a low table next to the man who could become her husband. Her head is partially covered by the end of her sari. Her eyes are lowered. She raises them as discreetly as she could to get a closer look at the young man she has already seen photos of and glanced at from the slight opening of the door from the inner room. He is allowed to be a bit more obvious in raising his eyes and taking her face in and whatever else he is able to discern of the rest of her torso covered by her sari.

Whatever the outcome, this has got to be one of the most thrilling moments of their lives. They may choose to meet once again and sit face-to-face in a café for small talk, mostly accompanied by a friend or two, who may discreetly excuse themselves for a short while, giving the two some private moments.

Let’s suppose that everything goes well and both families pop a rock of sugar in their mouths to celebrate forging of this new lifelong union. Now there are only a couple of weeks left for Manoj to hurry through the rest. First of all, to get married. As importantly, to apply for the papers for now his wife to come and join him in Canada. Both of the families switch to the whirlwind gears. The wedding is arranged, hundreds of friends and relatives have blessed the couple. The days filled with lots of laughters and happiness. And then they see him off Mumbai’s Chatrapati Shivaji International Airport. His face smeared with vermilion, flower garlands hanging around his neck and a coconut in his hands, which he must discard before landing at his destination. Go back to his job and wait for the immigration formalities to clear and wait for his bride to join him.

‘Come with me and let’s see what we can do.’ I say and pick up her shoulder bag and return to the lounge with Kajal in tow. The receptionist is hesitant to allow her in but seeing that I am Lufthansa’s gold status Senator, she reluctantly allows me to bring her in as my guest. Settling her on a couch and getting her some chips, nuts and Coke, I let her tell her story.

I have guessed it right. She is indeed a newly married bride on her way to join her husband in Montreal where he works for a large multinational corporation as one of its engineers. She has landed in Rome several hours earlier and has managed to get lost in that vast labyrinth of an international airport. It is because of her limited knowledge of English and sheer timidity – afraid to ask anybody and confused about the time difference and finding herself in an environment totally alien to her, she is totally disoriented. Scared, she looks helpless like a wounded bird fallen to the ground, its wings fluttering, but disabled, not able to rise even an inch off from where it has fallen. Soon as she sees me walk past, a face familiar to her and someone recognizably from her country, does she dare open her mouth. In the meanwhile, not realizing how much time has elapsed and that the plane that would take her to her husband has already left without her.

When I explain all this to the receptionist, she softens and even tries to see if there is any way she could help her get on her way.

‘I’m afraid nothing today. The best option for her is to spend overnight in Rome and catch the same Air Canada flight tomorrow afternoon.’ Easier said then done. Whereas she has failed to even make it on her own from one gate to another within the confines of an airport, how would this woman ever manage to go outside, find a hotel, stay there by herself and come back tomorrow? To further complicate the matter, even if it were manageable with some help, that’s not an option for her. She has no Italian visa to even venture out of the airport.

It takes me back to that chilly late August early morning when I was on my way to London to begin my studies, when the Swiss immigration officer yanks me off the train in Basel. Basel is uniquely complicated tri-border town where Switzerland, France and Germany meet. I have arrived on a German train that slides along the German platform. I will connect to London train from the platform that is in France. To get there, I must walk through the Swiss platform, for which I do not have a visa. But that’s yet another story. Only the receptionist notices my momentarily frozen face.

Her gaze pointed at me, she continues: ‘I don’t know if they would let her stay here overnight. They probably shut down the airport after the arrival and the departure of the last flights.’ I tell Kajal all of that. She is beside herself and understandably so, because where is she going to go? In the meanwhile the time is ticking and soon I should be walking to the gate to make my flight to London.

‘Don’t leave me here by myself uncle. Please, please.’ Her pleas are heart breaking and as torn as I am I really don’t know what else to do.

‘I doubt it, but perhaps someone from Air India or Air Canada is still around the terminal. After all, she is their passenger!’ I hear receptionist say. When she notices the hopelessness on my face, she taps on her computer. ‘You still have thirty five minutes.’

So I take Kajal practically by the hand. ‘Let’s go see if we can find someone.’ The banks of the service counters that are within the international departure areas are all absolutely empty and deserted. No one in sight. Won’t hurt to try the other wing. So I walk with her through the passage where she had first stopped me. We cross the passage, and I notice a lone young man, curly black hair, chiseled dark face. An Indian!! He is going some place, his gait is harried and swift.

‘Excuse me!’ I scream. I have managed to stop him in his tracks. He turns around to look at us. His breast tag identifies him as an Air India personnel. He rushes towards us.

‘Here you’re. Kajal Kamat. We’ve been looking for you for hours now!’ I don’t even wonder how he recognizes her right away. Who else could she be? When he looks at me, I give him a quick rundown on how she happened to be with me.

‘They waited for her and even delayed the flight for about fifteen minutes calling her several times on the PA system.’ But then he realizes that she couldn’t have understood a word of it. As lost and distracted as she is; she couldn’t have recognized even the sound of her own name. Seeing that I am looking at my watch; ‘You go ahead sir. We don’t want you to miss your flight as well. Thanks for helping her. I’ll take her from here.’ Before darting out, I put my hands over Kajal’s shoulders and wish her luck. She doesn’t say thank you, instead she brings her palms together and bows her head.

‘Bless me please, uncle.’

Illustration: Celia Rose Marks

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Next Friday, April 4, 2014

QUICK CASH

During my hiatus in Santa Barbara, I meet up with Playboy Germany’s first editor-in-chief Raimund Le Viseur in Los Angeles. He is there following the promotional trail of then the First Lady, Betty Ford and wants to get together one evening. He is accompanied by the photographers from the news agencies Sygma and UPI. We together go out looking for the Stars.

Tags Arranged Marriage, Bride, Culture, India, Indian Customs, Marriage, Travel

Categories Culture, India, Love Story, Marriage, Memoire, Travel, Women

IN THE DEPTH OF HIS EYES

March 13, 2014 //

The Spanish Civil War Looped Into A Gaze

Haresh Shah

Sebastian Martinez is my first encounter with Spain. We have never met before, but he seems to have recognized me instantly as I emerge from the customs’ sliding doors of Barcelona’s yet old but functional airport. It’s the summer of 1978, scant two some years after Generalissimo Francisco Franco’s death. The air is still thick with the repressive regime of Franco that lasted for almost forty years. Trampled and suppressed during his ruthless decades, supported full heartedly and under the stringent conservative principals of the Catholic Church, it would have been impossible to even dream of the existence of an edition of the “derelict” Playboy in Spain. But the times they do a change!

By now I speak good Spanish. Sebastian welcomes me with bien venido a España, as much to welcome me as to test my Spanish. I answer with plain gracias. He has been told by Lee (Hall) that I speak the language fluently. But Sebastian is not the one to take anyone’s word for it. It takes him a couple of days and me speaking in Spanish with the people he introduces me to, does he admit that I indeed do. If with a bit of a soft lilt in the way the Mexicans speak it. I myself have a hard time getting used to Spanish Spanish or the way it’s spoken by the Catalans. I find Mexican Spanish sweeter. Well! Sebastian might question my taste as he does everything. In this case, it would be the way British dismay at the way they demolish their language across the pond in America. He is the most skeptical person I have known. He would never accept anything on its face value.

Sebastian would be my counterpart in Spain and therefore I would be his charge. As different as we are, we get along famously. Based on his pre-conceptions of the Americans and a bit of an exposure with some of them, he has this European stereotypical and cynical view of them. It helps that I am an American born in India. Years later, still in our Playboy days, the best compliment anyone could have given me turns out to be my super skeptical friend Sebastian Martinez. You’re the human face of Playboy.

He is as secretive about his private life as he is skeptical in his day-to-day dealings. I feel lucky to be taken in by him and know this much – he is married to Berit, a Swede, and they have a young daughter Maria – four or five years of age. They live in a modest two bedroom apartment in the center of the city. I don’t know anything about his parents and whether he has any siblings. I think he is the only child. Over a period of years that we worked together, I would be a frequent dinner guest at his home and later at his weekend cottage a couple of hours drive from Barcelona. And he would be ours during his visits to Chicago. The two or three times he comes to Chicago, I try my best to expose him to the American life and the people that run contrary to his preconceived image and the opinion of the country. At times he is impressed. Others not so much.

Beyond that, I can say Sebastian is a true bon vivant. He has good taste in food and wines. Even though he makes fun of me sprinkling generously the best sea food paella in the world with Tabasco, like the most Americans he has seen dousing everything in ketchup – he forgives me my – this one horrendous sin. So do the maître de and the old time waiters at the restaurant Quo Vadis, tucked away in a dark alley behind the wide strip of the famous pedestrian zone of Ramblas. For in all other things culinary and otherwise, I am an ideal open minded American, who is willing to and tries everything. Be it drinking Jerez from a streaming beak held up above your head at an angle, drinking cognac over teeth crushed pomegranate seeds and the juice lining inside of your mouth to enjoy eating basic bar foods, such as tortas de papas, Spanish ham, the different varieties of sausages and a whole slew of tapas served at the counter.

We’re a good pair at and away from work. Normally of the stern demeanor and a permanent frown on his face, his eyes squinting behind his rimless glasses, you never know what he might be thinking. Does he feel happy? Unhappy? Indifferent? Anyone’s guess is as good as mine.

Not that I ever try to dig deeper into his personal life or into his past, but as guarded as he always is; when and if the subject comes up, he would answer: it’s not that interesting! And then you see his eyes suddenly go still and sad, fogging up the inside of his glasses and assume a distant look as if staring in infinity – somewhere far far away. I don’t think he is aware of it. Seems he is turned off momentarily. And then, as if suddenly waking up from a deep sleep and realizing the silence that has fallen between himself and the person he is talking to, he emerges from the frozen frame of his face and shakes his head. Like someone with apnea having stopped breathing for a moment and then springing back to life. You notice the lower part of his body shudder a bit. He removes his glasses, pulls out the handkerchief from his pants’ pocket, wipes his eyes lightly, gets himself together and shaking his head again, this time sideways, goes well! and picks up where he had left off. More often than not, I have observed him mesmerized by the twirling bulbous glass over the flame of the silver cognac warmer, his eyes and the frozen look reflected in the whirl of the liquid gold. I could almost feel and see the tumult he must feel watching the swirls inside the glass rushing like wild waves of an ocean.

I don’t want to say that this ever bothered me beyond the moment, but something I often think about without ever reaching a conclusion.

One afternoon, we’re taking a leisurely walk through the dark alleys of Ramblas. It’s likely that we’ve just emerged out of Quo Vadis after a long sumptuous Spanish meal, even fueled with my favorite sea food paella washed down with a Rioja and have had chilled huvas – grapes served in a bowl placed on the bed of ice, gulped down with freshly warmed cognac. He seems to be in a nostalgic mood and is pointing out buildings where he used to play when a kid. The bodega where he would accompany his mother to buy the produce, the cafes that he used to go with his dad. The neighborhood bakery, the cobbler shop and all. Along with it all, he suddenly stops on a narrow side walk and points at the gate across the alley, and spits out just like that.

And that’s where they shot my Dad. I was walking with him. I was just a kid! And I see on his face the same distant look that I had often encountered. Looking far far away. I am trying to imagine the scene. Going through my mind is the brutal history of the two and a half years of the Spanish Civil War and the years of atrocities that stretched beyond and up until the end of the second world war in 1945 and for another thirty years until Franco’s death in 1975. Franco ruled his country with the iron fist, crunching anything and anybody on even an inch left of his ideology. And all of it instantaneously coming undone. But the fear and the stories and the aftermath of it all remain even in the shards of that immediate past shattered to smithereens. I see it all summed up in the depth of my friend Sebastian’s frozen and framed eyes. I see them fogging up, there may even have been a tear or two streaking down his cheeks, followed by his head shake and the body shudder and then with a deep sigh, retreating back into the moment with his Well!

Illustration: Celia Rose Marks

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Next Friday, March 21, 2014

AN INDIAN AMONGST THE INDIANS

With the passing of the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act (IGRA) in 1988, that allowed the American Indians to open and operate the casinos on their land had them suddenly bathing in the wealth and prosperity they couldn’t have imagined even their wildest dreams. In 1995, Playboy Netherlands assigned me to travel across America to some of those casinos to find out how after centuries of suppression, they were striking back at the “white man”.

Tags Food & Wine, Francisco Franco, Sebastian Martinez, Spain, Spanish Civil War, Travel

Categories Friendship, Memoire, Playboy, Profile, Spain, Travel

TENDER TRAPS

March 6, 2014 //

Sweet, Silky And Slippery

Haresh Shah

I flash my room registration card at the receptionist who is busy talking to a young man and a sort of pretty, short dark haired young woman in white, both of whom stood on the other side of the counter. ‘Room 416’, I tell him. He hands me my key. I throw a quick glance at the girl, making perfunctory eye contact and walk to the elevator. As I press the floor button, I notice the girl waving at me as if to wish me bon voyage. But the sliding doors have already closed and I am on my way up. I see her smiling face through the transparent glass door and wave back at her.

I am staying at the hip Hotel Americain in Amsterdam. I am not too impressed with the place, but built in 1900, it’s listed as one of Amsterdam’s landmarks with its turn of the century art deco and the roaring twenties atmosphere and because of its proximity to the theatre DeLaMar, it has an illustrious history – something I am often attracted to. And it’s frequented by the actors, directors and other art types of the city.

The window of my room looks down on the most popular town square, Leidseplein, which is filled with hoards of people engaged in multitude of activities. Rock & Roll band blaring out the sounds from their portable amplifiers, a group playing African drums, the flute players, a magician, the lone guitarist strumming in the early morning rain and an audience as attentive as it is appreciative. It feels like a multi-ring circus, a happy carnival. The grinding of the gears and the screeching of the trams somehow blend in harmoniously with the sounds of the street side shows. Wafting in through my room windows is the sad soothing sound of a violin. The lukewarm breeze carries-in with it a mild fragrance of the pink roses that Playboy Netherland’s editor designate Jan (Heemskerk) has so kindly delivered to my room to welcome me to Holland, as I eventually doze off for a while.

Dirk (de Moei), the art director designate and his live-in lady Ans pick me up at nine. We drive a few blocks to the restaurant de Warstein where Jan and his wife Gemmy join us for dinner. Towards the tail end of the evening, we run into the bad boy of the Dutch literature, Jan Cremer of Ik Jan Cremer fame and his girlfriend Babette. Him and Babette join our table and Cremer treats us to a couple of after dinner drinks. It is after three in the morning by the time Dirk and Ans drop me off at the hotel.

The elevator moves upward. I wonder about the girl’s sweet smile as I get off on the fourth floor. Those last two Remy Martins and the entire evening has put me into a very pleasant, if not euphemistic mood and I don’t even feel tired in the least. As I walk towards my room, the key in my hand at ready, I hear a female voice coming out of nowhere

‘Hello,’ it says.

I don’t see anybody around. The entire hallway is deserted. I look around and respond to the voice.

‘Yes!’

A smooth sentence floats in the air like a streamer, which I don’t understand a word of. It sounds very much like French, and now there is a face to the voice. It’s the girl from behind the reception. I am amazed at how she made it up to the floor so fast. She must have jumped right away into one of the two idle elevators waiting across from the receptionist. I stop briefly and turn around to took at her.

‘I thought you might like some company. ‘ I hear her say, with that certain sexy and seductive smile on her face.

I am tempted for a second. But the answer that rolls out of my mouth on its own is: ‘Thanks lady but not tonight! I am just too tired.’ I lie.

‘Maybe tomorrow?’ She persists.

‘Maybe! I don’t know.’ To which she throws a sugary goodnight at me, turns around to go back to her post downstairs.

●●●

Even before I have had a chance to sit down, Luis (Moretti), Playboy partners Editorial Perfil’s corporate counselor hands me a piece of paper. Crudely torn from a notepad, it’s crumpled. I smooth it out on the table and read the scribbles. It says, Rosario, and underneath is what looks like a phone number.

‘What is it?’ I ask.

‘She wants you to call her.’

‘Who is Rosario?’

‘The girl on the other set of the studio where you were photographed.’

I am in Buenos Aires during my routine South American trip. One of Perfil’s weeklies, La Semana wants to do a profile of me as a part of their in-house cross promotional efforts. They are photographing me with another girl, the skin on whose bare butt I am scrutinizing with a large magnifying glass. On my way out, I notice a buxom blonde with big head of bleached blonde hair fanned out on a pink pillow, scantily dressed in Victoria’s Secret like sexy lingerie, she is curled up seductively on the bed, her voluptuous figure spilling out of her small frame. I don’t remember even having made as much as a quick eye contact with her.

‘What does she want?’

‘I guess she has taken liking for you. You will make her very happy if you called. She said she will be up and around late in the night.’ Answers Luis with a sly smile on his face, a bit envious perhaps?

I have landed in Buenos Aires that morning after an all night flight from Miami and have put in the whole day. I meet Luis for dinner at Las Nazarenas, my favorite steak house in the city. All I want to do is to have an early dinner, walk across the street to the Sheraton, where I am staying and hit the sack. That’s precisely what I do. When in the room, I empty my pockets and out comes the crumpled piece of the paper with the phone number. I look at the phone on the bedside table. Temptations, temptations.. But do the right thing and soon I am snoozing. On that trip, I spend several days in Buenos Aires, and yet never call her. She just wasn’t my type.

Or could it be that my encounter the night after had her pushed back in the obscurity?

The lights are dim. The music is slow and soothing. The dance floor is well-attended, but not crowded. Dancing close to me is Dulce. She is sweet, just like her name. We are dancing close but not too close. I can feel the contours of her female form and then feel her head gently drooping on my shoulder. I pull her closer ever so lightly. She allows herself to be nudged into a slight squeeze. Her perfume is pleasant – not overbearing. She is dressed modestly in a pair of well fitting pastel peach slacks and a black low necked top. Nothing glittery like most other girls in the crowd. She is down home pretty with shoulder length dusty blonde hair that smell of a faint whiff of shampoo. She fits snugly under my arms. It feels good to hold and feel so close her female form. It’s been a while.

The night is young. It’s little after midnight. That’s early for the disco world. The place, if not as crowded as earlier, is still buzzing. It’s Playboy Argentina’s anniversary that we are celebrating at Hippo – the “in most” night spot in Buenos Aires. As we dance to the whatever soft melody they’re playing, I am wondering. Perhaps I get to take her back to my hotel. That would be nice. With every dance and every whisper, I’m liking her more and more. Even falling for her tender, almost motherly ways. When the music stops for a minute, she lifts her face to look at me and I feel a sudden melting of my reflection into her honey brown eyes. When the disc jockey finally decides to take a short break and when I walk her back to the table where she sat with some friends, the booth is empty. I look around for some Playboy people still around. I don’t see anyone I recognize. For a moment we stand there, wondering.

‘I guess our friends have abandoned us.’

‘I think so too. One of them was going to give me ride back home.’

‘I can drop you off by cab on my way back to the hotel.’ I offer.

‘That would be nice. Thanks.’ And then there is bit of hesitation. ‘Don’t you just want to take me to your hotel room instead?’ I see a pleading mellowness in her eyes. Almost heartbreaking somehow. Not up until that very moment does it cross my mind that she could be anything but a young society woman out on the town with her friends.

‘Let’s sit down for a while and have a drink.’

‘Bueno!’ She says and snuggles next to me.

Dulce is a single mother who works in a small boutique on Calle Florida, the city’s most popular pedestrian shopping zone. The job barely pays for her living expenses. She doesn’t walk the streets to make ends meet, instead frequents high end places like Hippopotamus in the ritzy and popular tourist district of Ricoleta as well as five star hotel bars. I like it that she is in no hurry and we’re able to talk. I appreciate what I perceive to be her honesty.

But taking her back to my hotel room is no longer an option for me. Not that I have never been out with one of them, but a couple of times that I did was at the end of the long nights of eating and drinking and with a friend or two having wandered out kind. I don’t regret those outings, mainly because those women and the experiences were pleasant. But as a matter of not even some moral principal – but the sheer fact that I am very romantic at heart, I just wouldn’t/couldn’t bring myself to forge such a liaison.

I am being honest and I tell her how very much I like her and was even falling for her charms and the sincerity, but taking home a profi wasn’t something I did.

‘Pero soy buena!’ She urges. ‘But I am good!’ Even sounding like a saleswoman in a boutique.

‘Lo siento!’ ‘I am sorry!’ She doesn’t say anything to it, just scoots closer to me, takes my hand in hers and lets her head fall on my shoulder. It feels good that she feels at ease doing that. That perhaps in my small way I am a comfort to her as she is to me.

‘But I can still drop you off if you want?’

I get out of the cab in front of her home to see her off and press into her fist a $50.- bill.

‘It’s not much, but…Gracias!’

‘Gracias.’ She echoes, and gives me a quick hug. I watch her opening the front door and disappear inside her building.

Illustration: Celia Rose Marks

SISTER SITE