MODEL GUESTS

and the perils of amateur photography for commercial purposes…

We spent November of 2003 in the Tamil Nadu city of Coimbatore, India’s 16th city and the home of the “wet-grinder” – a kind of food processor for making dosa batters among other things… Our visit had little to do with dosas (although we did enjoy them as a regular lunch snack) and was primarily concerned with Dido supervising the setting up a clinic of her own design, for children with autism – the first of its kind in that region of India.

It was an exciting challenge, but also an exhausting one so after two-weeks work the chance for a few days break at the nearby “hill station” town of Ootacamund – affectionately known as Ooty by most people – was welcome and timely.

During the time of the British Raj, dozens of hilltop towns in India became popular escapes, especially for the administrative classes, away from the heat and bustle of the cities. Over the years several of these towns developed into luxurious resorts known as hill stations, with perhaps the two best known in India being Shimla and Ooty.

Before our visit, the only thing I knew about Ooty was that it was where the game of snooker was invented in the 19th century, by British army officers bored with playing billiards. That it was also a much used location backdrop for the Bollywood Film Industry, and the site of India’s finest boarding schools, where the country’s elite send their children, was all new information.

We ended up staying at the Holiday Inn, which despite its IHG associations felt like an authentic Indian hotel, with a particularly good kitchen, turning out excellent Tamil and Kerala cuisine. It also had a terrific little bar overlooking the lush Nilgiri hillsides, where we were introduced to the local version of the Polly’s Folly cocktail, (comprising, Vodka, soda-water and very spicy green chillies!)

It must have been about our third or fourth evening at the hotel, sipping Polly’s Follies probably, when we were approached by the hotel manager, who asked us if we would be happy to to model for the new online hotel brochure he was preparing. He wanted pictures of a “nice European couple” enjoying the cuisine of the hotel and he thought we “were just the ticket!”

We agreed, and the photos presented here are the slightly surreal fruits of the manager’s own sincere but amateur camera work, plastic food and all. Sadly, I don’t think these pictures of the “nice Europeans” did much to help his booking figures as the Holiday Inn morphed into the Gem Park a few years later. As for us, we did rather well from our half-an-hour being served plastic delicacies, for, to show us his gratitude, the manager gave us each a gold IHG loyalty card loaded with thousands of priority points. The following year we used our booty from Ooty for a free stay at the Intercontinental Hotel in Singapore. A restful and rewarding experience all round…