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Archives for category: Memoire

The Quirky Brilliance Of The Head Guru

Haresh Shah

I have just swiped my card and entered the sixteenth floor through the glass door. I see Arthur sitting by himself through the glass wall of his office across the atrium – the bank of offices we have come to call the fish tank, overlooking the square. I hurry to my office, remove my outer garments and pick up the phone and dial Arthur’s three digit inter-office number. Might as well get it out of the way before I chicken out. Having to call Arthur is something of an ordeal, because you never know what kind of mood you might catch him in. But there is nothing I can do about it. I am the one who needs him. Most of our telephone conversations would go something like this:

‘Good morning Arthur!’

‘What’s so good about the morning?’

‘Hi Arthur. How are you?’

‘Why do you want to know?’

‘Hi Arthur. This is Haresh.’

‘I know who you are!’

This has me flustered for a small moment. Both of us breathing on our side of the line. While I am still trying to form my next sentence, I hear his curt

‘Hi Arthur, this is…’

‘What do you want?’

And when I try to explain the reason for my call, he would cut me off abruptly.

‘Come to the point. I don’t have all day to talk to you.’ The gruffness of his voice scratches the skin of my ears.

Sitting in my windowless office, I imagine the frown on Arthur’s face, his eyes squinting behind his thick Coke bottle glasses. And when I do get around to tell him why I was calling him, rest of our conversation is brusque.

‘Why do you want me to meet with a bunch of Hungarians and tell them what you have already told them?’

‘Because you’re the head guru.’ Or, ‘So that they can hear directly from the horse’s mouth!’ While I’m just a chela, I am thinking.

He is not in the least flattered.

‘Cut it out. Have Mary (Nastos) call me later and I’ll look at my schedule.’

Done! Whew! And I take a breath of relief. I am on the edge of my chair, but now push my butt backward and make myself comfortable before picking up the pile containing that morning’s faxes from the editions around the world.

Arthur, if  you are wondering, was the Editorial Director of Playboy magazine for the thirty of it’s first fifty years up until he stepped down in 2003. He had started at the magazine as an associate editor to A.C. Spectorsky in the mid-Sixties, he took on as its editorial director in 1972, the year I too had joined Playboy, stationed in Munich, Germany. I don’t remember ever having met him up until 1979 when I was brought to Chicago. Even so, in my job as the Production Director for the international editions – if not for Lee (Hall) having handed me the organizing of the annual international conferences, I would have no reason to cross paths with him. And eventually working my way into everything international publishing including assuming the same title as that of Arthur’s, the Editorial Director, albeit of the International Editions. But even years before it had fallen upon my shoulders to orient and train the creative teams of every new edition that were launched over the years, being one of the most frequently traveling members of the division – based on my sheer fondness and acquired knowledge of the magazine, I would end up answering questions that were way beyond the realm of my job description and the responsibilities. Something that didn’t go unnoticed – resulting in me eventually running the whole show.

During my early days in Chicago, one of my most important tasks was to do major in-house PR. International Publishing, then referred to as the Foreign Editions was tucked away on the ninth floor, which most everyone must have passed on their way to the production department without giving much of a thought to our existence. Some of the U.S. Playboy people may even have looked at us if not with some disdain than with indifference. To the most of them, we had become just THEM, the people who came bothering them wanting something or the other.

It took a while, but over a period of time, I was able to establish close working relationships with most of the top editors on the 11th floor. That is, except with Arthur. As much as I would have liked to have a pleasant and friendly working relationship with him, it wasn’t any consolation to be aware of the fact that neither of my two bosses, Lee Hall and Bill Stokkan were able to crack the hard shell that was Arthur. While Lee was quite reticent and tight lipped about it, I know that it frustrated Bill not being able to communicate with Arthur with both of their hair down and over a couple of drinks. I didn’t know anyone else who did. Bill once told me that on one occasion, he even went as far as approaching him at a party thrown by Christie Hefner for her top executives aboard a boat cruising Lake Michigan. Hi, my name is Bill Stokkan, I run the Merchandizing and Licensing division of the company. Unfortunately, to no avail.

‘Are  you kidding me? Him and Ed (Wattlington) get along famously. They even play tennis together!’ Tells me Karen (Abbott), my first heart throb in the U.S. when we worked together at Time, and coincidentally who now worked at Playboy along with Ed, both as photo lab technicians. Similarly, my assistant Mary had absolutely no problems communicating with Arthur. This was a sign of relief for me, because even though as a matter of protocol I would make the first call, Mary would take it over from there, sans any difficulty. And of all of my international editors, he got along famously with Holland’s Jan Heemskerk. Most every time that Jan came to Chicago or during the conferences, they made it a point to get out and hit some tennis or golf balls. I envied them, because I was never included in those soirées. I would often share with Jan my “conversations” with Arthur. He would find them funny. Somewhere along the line, we both came to refer to Arthur as Mr. Speak. And so it continues even today.

I have often wondered why? Because other than his exterior demeanor that can make you feel totally uncomfortable, when the time came, he always came through. He met with the editors, and once we were in his office, he never rushed us out. During the conferences, when he took the floor, he would be the most fascinating and precise speaker of them all. He knew Playboy inside out, from cover to cover. He would define for you the purpose and the philosophy behind every single page, rubrics, the graphic style, the focus of each article and fiction, the illustrations. Now that I think of it, even better than Hefner (Hugh M.) himself did. I have heard hours and hours of tapes of Hefner speaking to the first set of editors that came for the orientation, and spent a couple of days at his mansion in Chicago. Of course, who would know the magazine better than its creator? He was good and he was precise. But seemed a bit bashful when imparting the information. While Arthur was clearer and more emphatic, passionate even.

No one, not even the interview editor G. Barry Golson could define the tone of Playboy Interview  as clear as Arthur once did during a conference in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin in the early Eighties: over and above Playboy Interview tries to bring out the human face of the person being interviewed. If we were to interview Hitler, he would come out to be a sympathetic figure. You could hear the silent gasp from the editors.  Absolutely admirable, considering this coming out of the mouth of the born during the war time Jew. And he said of the anyone who still had any illusions about the magazine reflecting the current lifestyle of its publisher and therefore the young American males: No one aspires anymore to Hefner’s lifestyle. And I said to myself, right you’re, why would I want to live like Hefner in the self created gilded cage, if I could be sitting at a sidewalk café in Paris and sipping on my pastis, watching the world go by?

He was just brilliant when he spoke. He would be the star attraction of all of our conferences. And our personal relationships or lack thereof apart, I often said to myself that he never once hindered my ability to get closer to the people like Tom Staebler or Gary Cole, or any of his other top editors from devoting as much time as I needed of them. Why then not Arthur himself?

Well, one of those anomalies of life. Something you just accept. Things you accept about your dad or someone you respect, and resign to that’s just the way he is. And yet, I hated to be alone with him face to face. Because he would go without saying a word for the longest time. If not for the entire duration you are sitting across from him. Once I ran into him at my favorite fast food restaurant, Mama San, located in the Water Tower Place. Turned out to be his favorite as well. Seeing how crowded the place was and there was only one booth open, we end up parking ourselves across the table from each other.

‘The damn best fast food Japanese place in the city!’ Is the only thing I remember him saying during the whole twenty or so minutes it must have taken us to do justice to our food. We may have exchanged a couple of uncomfortable sentences at the very best. Realizing that he would not be the first one to blink, I somehow managed to live through those most uncomfortable moments.

The other time I found him towering over me on the other side of the partition in the bathroom of Playboy’s corporate offices. While we are both peeing, I sense his face turn over to mine and hear him utter:

‘You know, with the nose like that, you could be Jewish!’

‘I don’t think so, because my dad’s nose is much flatter. Perhaps I should check with the good old mom!’ I try to be humorous.

That’s as close as I ever got to Arthur.

On my last day at Playboy, Mary organized a going away party for me and invited everyone she could, especially from Chicago office. While everyone else had something to say; be it funny, sympathetic or just wishing me luck, I don’t remember Arthur having said anything that stuck with me. And yet, in the photos that Mary sent me afterwards, Arthur and I are posed together, he has his arm around me and both of us have on our faces the matching happy laughs. Uncharacteristically, Tom is standing next to us, looking a bit removed and looking sad and confused. I put the photo in my personal scrap book, the caption underneath reads: Is that a genuine smile Arthur?

That was the last I saw of Arthur up until three some years ago when Jan came to visit. We got together with some Playboy old-timers to reminisce the shared déjà vu. We meet up with Arthur at his favorite restaurant The Indian Garden on Chicago’s Devon Avenue. The best Indian restaurant on the strip! He proclaims. He is regular at the place and is made fuss over by the staff and the owner. He has now gone vegetarian and frowns at the sizzling Tandoori chicken being served. He has ordered Baingan Bharta which they specially prepare for him. Another proclamation comes: the best baingan bharta! I suppress the urge to say: have you tried the dish across the street at Udupi Palace? But I know better to keep my trap shut. With Arthur, it’s mostly him talking and you listening. And so it is during the lunch. Even so, if you pay attention to what he says, you are more likely than not to part with a feeling of having added something vital to your cache of knowledge. His very presence intimidated me, creating an atmosphere of speak only when spoken to. So it were Jan and Arthur conversing with me pushed in the background. But somewhere along the line, I got to interject and now having acquired distance of time, I confess, I was always intimidated by you.

‘You should have been.’ He answers and even though I would have liked to know precisely why, I leave it at that.

© Haresh Shah 2015

Illustration: Jordan Rutherford

Other Profiles

This post marks the 100th Playboy Story. When I began blogging them in the fall of 2012, I thought I had about twenty five stories to tell, at the most. And here we are… I still have a list of about a dozen more and can’t tell how many unlisted would pop up along the way. But the stories that don’t compel me to write, are the stories that are not yet ready to be told. Basically, stories tell themselves, an author is just a medium – the facilitator. For now seems they are going on to an indefinite hiatus. But I am sure one or more of them would pop up and compel me to return to the screen. Hope you all will still be there to receive them. In the meanwhile, I have some other writings that I want to do and the stories that I want to tell. Stay tuned.

Can’t thank each one of you enough for  your staying with me for almost three years and keeping me inspired and motivated to roll them out week after week. And you would agree with me that this blog wouldn’t have been as complete as I have tried to make it without my illustrative partners in crime, Celia and Jordan. I feel absolutely lucky to have stumbled upon them.

So long my friends until our wiedersehen.

And Forget Paris – Think Lyon

Haresh Shah

It’s five minutes before six, the closing time for Lyon’s Place Bellecour tourist office. I am standing across the counter from the friendly blonde – petite and pretty. And sweet. This is the third time since three that afternoon that I have returned to her in the remote hope that maybe, just maybe something would have opened up in the meanwhile and I still would be able to find one of the charming French B & B’s in or near the center of the old town. Based on my one and only overnight stay in Lyon years earlier, I stayed at one of its most charming boutique hotels, Hotel Cour des Loges.  I have a reason to believe that the city had to have similar but smaller and reasonably priced jewels tucked away in one of their obscure alleys.

I have arrived in Lyon by train from Avignon, with a back pack and a small carry on bag on wheels. I am doing south of France by train without any fixed timetable or an itinerary. Other than bit of a difficulty in Toulouse, I am lucky to have found nice places to crash at. Not cheap, neither expensive. My budget is between fifty and a hundred Euros a night. Seems like tonight I may have to settle for a four hundred Euro room at Sheraton. I am not looking forward to it. But what were my options? The closest the tourist office could offer me a room is 20 kilometers (about 13 miles) from the center. Certainly not what I want.

‘I am so sorry!’ The blonde says, so sweetly. Instead of being irritated, she is sympathetic. She really wants to help me. I give her my sad little boy look and get a friendly little giggle out of her.

‘I wish I could help you. But there is absolutely nothing available!’

‘Well, thanks so much for trying! I just will have to sleep on a Lyon’s sidewalk tonight!’ I make a poor me face to get another sweet smile out of her. Most reluctantly, I am about to turn around and slap down my credit card at Sheraton. The blonde is about to exit her computer screen. And then both of us hear a soft ping.

‘Wait a minute.’ She stops me in my track and busies herself tapping her keyboard.

‘An apartment has just become available, right across from Ponte Bonaparte. It’s on the sixth floor. No lift, but it has a panoramic view of old Lyon. € 95.- a night. No breakfast.’ She rattles off the screen. With my back pain, I am not too keen on having to climb six stories of stone stairs – but snap!

‘I’ll take it.’

It’s an easy walking distance. I walk across the bridge over Saône, turn right on rue Saint Jean and find # 70. Mrs. Breuihl – a woman in her early to mid-thirties escorts me to the apartment, she even helps me carry my bag. It’s a tri-level penthouse containing of a kitchen, a living room, a loft and a bedroom/bathroom suite. Soon as I enter it, I am in awe of it. I am in the heart of  vieux Lyon. I have managed to return to the city I had fallen in love with fifteen some years earlier, and had promised myself to someday come back to explore it at a leisurely pace.

Patrick Magaud and I had boarded France’s pride and joy, the high speed TGV in Paris that morning and I just had enough time to spare before I flew out to Munich that night. We meet with Bruno Bonnell of Europe Telematique for what I remember to be a simple but an exquisite meal at one of the city’s cozy bistros, Bonâme, now (La Bonâme de Bruno). What I remember the most of that lunch is their most delicious aperitif, a flute of champagne blended with a dash of peach liquor.

Patrick has brought me there to introduce me to Bruno and Christophe Sapet, his partner to talk the possibilities of creating Playboy service on the uniquely French phenomena called Minitel. This is 1989, and much as they try to explain to me the concept of creating a chat line under Playboy banner, goes over my head. From what I understood, Minitel was a crudely made boxy little computer like plastic device provided free of charge to its subscribers by the French Telecom. It wouldn’t be inconceivable to think that Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak copied or were inspired by the Minitel for the earlier look of their Apple computers. It contained a small blue screen with blinking text and incorporated in it was a telephone. It is connected to what we now call the contents providers via a telephone line, sort of like earlier dial up connections. Minitel, when it was introduced years earlier, featured electronic yellow pages and the country wide telephone directories.

Over a period of time it mushroomed into a full fledge web like platform. Dialing the number 3615 connected you to today’s equivalent of the browser – an exclusive of the French Telecom. Through which you could access merchants, institutions, French Railroad and the post office and their respective products and services. Soon the porno peddlers jumped on the bandwagon with  a slew of erotic chat lines on which you can flirt with buxom and horny ladies – made up mainly of men and paid by the minutes for the amount of time spent on carousing. Those sites were collectively called Minitel Rose and the most popular of the Roses was Ulla.

Europe Telematique supposedly streamed more respectable sites. The proposal was to create a forum such as Playboy Advisor, which they felt would do well. It would also support the fledgling French edition. Of the time billed, French Telecom got to keep 50% of the revenue. Telematique would staff and create the content and manage the traffic. Of the 50% they got, they would share half of it with us, for allowing them to use the name Playboy. The danger obviously was that it could easily turn into a porn service. NO. Bruno guarantees me. There were already enough of them around. Playboy would be as classy as the magazine.

Though officially launched in 1982, the Minitel screens had beginning to pop up back in the late Seventies, almost twenty years before the World Wide Web made its debut. Unfortunately, the service never made it out of France and Belgium, and a trial run in Ireland before the Internet as we know today came thumping down the road. While I am in Lyon, not even understanding exactly how it all worked, I couldn’t help but feel that something incredible was happening within those little boxes with blinking screens.

After discussing the project back in Chicago, I return to Lyon several months later and visit the physical facilities of Europe Telematique. What I saw was little computers lined up on long rows of desks, occupied by very young men and women staring at the blue screens, the text in progress popping up on the terminal and like in call centers of today, one of the young Turks would get busy responding to them.  Soon there was Playboy chat line.

Now that I sit here and think of it, I feel like sort of a pioneer. Not that I can take credit for the idea or even the intimate knowledge of the process, but for trusting my instinct and the people and taking a chance on what would in not too far of a future become more common than  household phones. It didn’t generate vast amount of revenue for any of us, but there was enough coming in to justify its existence. The site must have been phased out on its own with the advent of Internet in the mid-Nineties. I wonder if anyone else other than me even remembers that there was such a thing as Playboy chatline on the French Minitel.

Minitel lived for more than thirty years until it no longer could compete with or justify its existence against now omnipresent World Wide Web. Yet, just the nostalgia of it had all of France feeling mixed emotions, simultaneously celebrating and mourning of its demise on June 30th 2012 – the day French Telecom pulled the plug and the remaining 800,000 terminals still in service went dark.

For me personally, agreeing to take that Paris-Lyon TGV ride of 400 kilometers (292 miles) to south east of Paris means – if not for Minitel, I would never have thought of going to Lyon. To call Lyon mini-Paris is to take something precious away from this most charming and exuberant of the French cities.

On that evening of the fall of 2008, when I had long forgotten Minitel and Europe Telematique, what has brought me back to Lyon is that certain indescribably magnetic pull and the deep impression left on me by the place. The sun has set and as I step out of rue Saint Jean 70, I find myself in the middle of an incredible bubbling of energy. The old town bustling with the cluster of restaurants, charming Bouchons famous for their down home cuisine Lyonnais. Narrow alleys and the passages featuring small shops and boutiques in animated and lively pedestrian zones.

But before letting myself disappear in the crowd, I take a long walk and marvel at the two parallel rivers flowing through the middle of the city and the strings of the lit up bridges connecting the different districts, all lined up symmetrically, gleaming in the confluence of the calm waters of  Saône and Rhône.

Hungry and tired, I return to the crowded little alleys and small squares of vieux Lyon swarming with the people, the sights and the sounds and all those little bistros and bouchons wafting delicious aromas of their house specialties. The sidewalk tables unfolded and the people squeezed together shoulder to shoulder. There is no chance of me being able to get into one of those exquisite but small and cramped eating establishments. But I do. Thanks to Mrs. Breulih’s recommendation, the kindly maître d’ Dominique at, curiously named Happy Friends Family (now Jérémy Galvan), and yet as provincial French as can be, welcomes and escorts me to a cozy table by the open kitchen, overlooking rest of the crowd. He even speaks English and describes every item on the menu and recommends what I may like. Satiated, I walk around and watch the crowds thinning out – the hubbub silently simmering.

Feeling a bit weary, I slowly climb back six stairs and up to the third level of my apartment. I am about to turn on the light – but wait! What I see through the large window by my bed is breathtaking. I see a huge globe of the dome of the Basilica of Notre-Dame de Fourvière all lit up like suspended fireworks. I peer out of the window – take in the whole church exquisitely and artfully illuminated. Glowing with the warm hues of yellow and orange, I feel showered in the luminous gold. I know it’s some distance away up on the hill, and it still feels like I could touch it. I undress without moving my eyes from the dome and fling myself on the bed with my gaze fixed on the dome and fall asleep perhaps around the same time as the lights begin to flicker off.

© Haresh Shah 2015

Illustration: Jordan Rutherford

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On Friday July 31, 2015

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.

Lifting Of The Fig Leaf

Haresh Shah

Zahir takes me by the hand.

‘Let me introduce you to some of the people here.’ I am one of the hundred some invited guests at Zahir and Bernadette Kazmi’s annual pre-Ramadan shenanigan at their spacious home in Chicago suburb of Oakbrook. Outside it’s raining cats and dogs and yet it has not deterred any of their friends and the families from showing up in droves. Only damper it has put on the event is that all of his beautiful oriental rugs are covered with large bed sheets and installed outside the house is a tent sized awning, shrouding the open sky.

The first person he introduces me is a tall and lanky Pakistani friend, whose name I promptly forget as soon as it is said.

‘Haresh used to be an editor at Playboy.’ Zahir can’t help but throw in. I think he gets a kick out of watching the reaction on the people’s faces. If not exactly ignoring, I try to slough it off with a hollow laugh.

‘But that was long time ago. And don’t forget I also worked for Time and Life and a whole bunch of other magazines in Prague!’

‘Yes, but you were with Playboy for the longest time!’

Playboy?’ The tall and lanky man rolls his eyes with a knowing smile. ‘It must have been fun working for them?’

‘Yeah, it was wonderful!’ I concur.

‘Are you still with them?’

‘No, I left them some time ago and now I am retired!’

‘How can you ever leave Playboy?’

‘Just the way you do any other job!’

‘If I ever worked for them, I would never leave.’ He is alluding to the fun part of what he imagines I did. Like, young, beautiful and naked women prancing around.

‘But I did!’ My answer has him jerk his head and render him speechless.

The next person Zahir introduces me is a distinguish looking black gentleman – Joe. His reaction to my association with Playboy is muted but not without wonderment.

Towards the end of the evening when I am contemplating calling it a day, I sit down next to Joe at the table placed by the end of the awning – a stray raindrop thumping on us. ‘Thought I rest my butt and talk to you for a while before taking off.’ Sitting on the other side of him is his wife, Yvonne.’

Joe looks about my age, perhaps a couple of years younger. He too has similar back problems. Like two old geezers, we compare notes and get our mutual health problems out of the way.

‘So what was it like working for Playboy?’

‘No different than any other job. I loved it.’

‘How do  you feel about the contents of the magazine?’

‘You mean the nudes?’

‘Well, to start with, I have also worked for Time, Life and Sports Illustrated and Fortune, as well have done a bunch of women’s titles and have been editor-in-chief of Serial, a show business magazine in Prague. In my opinion, Playboy is one of the best magazines there is in the world!’

I notice a bit of apprehension cross his face as he asks:

‘What makes it one of the best?’

‘The sheer excellence of its editorial content, and the professionalism and the care with which the magazine is put together.’

‘What about the nudes?’

‘If  you are judging it for the nudes, have  you ever given a thought to the fact that of an average 200 page issue, the nudes occupy only 36 some pages?’

‘How can it be?’ I imagine him thinking, because all he remembers are the nudes. Joe seems intrigued. So I continue.

‘What do you think rest of the pages are filled with?’ I give him a pointed look. And then answer it myself.

‘For the rest of the pages, Playboy competes for the same writers and the contributors as does The New Yorker.’

‘But isn’t New Yorker a serious literary magazine?’

‘Yes it is. And so is Playboy.’ As I say that, I am thinking of what Hefner (Hugh M.) once said to a bevy of Playmates during one of their reunions at his Los Angeles mansion: if not for you, I would be a literary magazine! ‘As a matter of fact, both of them are excellent general interest magazines.’ I add.

‘You mean also likes of Harpers and Atlantic?’

‘Precisely! Albeit more lifestyle and sexually oriented. And geared mainly towards men.’

‘Are you Muslim?’ asks Joe out of the clear blue sky. Stands to reason, because the majority of guests are.

‘Than what are you? A Hindu?’

‘I am surprised because I have never met a Hindu so nice.’ And then he goes on to tell me how his experience with Hindus has been not so positive. Strange, because that is certainly not so. We have our quirks, but by and large the Indians, Hindus or Muslims have a very good reputation in the USA. I tell him about Maria – the 93 year old Polish lady who I often run into on Division Street, up the street from St. Mary’s medical building, always raving about her Indian doctor, who she tells me treats her free of charge and how nice he has always been. And how majority of Indian doctors in the country are well regarded and respected.

‘I guess I am prejudiced because of my own experience of them. I will pay more attention the next time’

He also has some misconceptions about the animosity between Hindus and Muslims – the petty wars between them he has watched on TV or has read about. He is surprised at me saying that in spite of bit of fireworks and the sectarian violence, a few border disputes, Hindus and Muslims in India live in harmony. That I for one, grew up right next to the pre-dominantly Muslim neighborhood of Bhindi Bazar in Mumbai. That Zahir, a Muslim and I are as good  friends as anyone else baffles him.

He is astonished when I tell him that after Indonesia, India has the second largest Muslim population in the world. As of 2014 census, to Indonesia’s 209 million, India has 176 million Muslims to Pakistan’s 167 million. That the Bollywood is dominated mainly by Muslims and majority of our idols like Shahrukh Khan are Muslims, and are most beloved on the sub-continent. That even though up until very recently Hindu Marriage Act prohibited Hindus from polygamy, India’s Muslims were allowed to have up to four wives, justified under the fundamental right for those who practice Islam. I totally forget to mention that during the short history of independence, of the total of thirteen, India had four Muslim presidents.

By now I have managed to totally confuse poor Joe. And I tell him how proud I was of the country of my birth when CNN sponsored debate between India and Pakistan that took place in Mumbai early in the 2000s, moderated by their star anchor Wolf Blitzer, that three of the five panelists on the Indian team were Muslims.

‘This is all new to me. Let me find my daughters, I want them to hear this. They are somewhere around her.’ With what I am saying, I am shattering Joe’s deeply rooted convictions.

And Joe disappears in the crowd. I strike up a conversation with his wife Yvonne, up until then the onlooker. I find out that they have been married for like 45 years, still happily together – albeit with the usual ups and downs of any coupledom.

Soon Joe reappears with his two stunningly beautiful gems of daughters. Appropriately named Amber and Crystal. Earlier I had noticed Amber around the buffet table. A beautifully sculpted angular face and shining cinnamon color skin, her dark hair pulled up, tall, she could have passed as an artist’s muse. I presumed her to be the older of the two. But the younger looking Crystal at 42 looks like she is in her early thirties. She is darker – the color and the texture of dark chocolate and has the shoulder length billowing hair framing her round face.

‘I want you girls to listen to this gentleman. He used to work for Playboy!’

Playboy?’ Exclaims Amber. She twists her nose in a disdainful gesture.

‘You obviously have never read the magazine?’ I ask pointedly.

‘What is there to read?’

I give them the same spiel as how only 36 some pages of the magazine are the nudes.’ And I tell her about the in-depth articles, fiction and the interviews. I mention Gabriel García Márquez, which draws a blank.

Pages: 1 2

The Pirates of The Intellectual Properties

Haresh Shah

Soon, Playboy was no longer just a magazine. There was Playboy Mansion and were Playboy Clubs and Playboy Bunnies and even Playboy theater and Playboy movies and television show Playboy After Dark, hosted by Mr. Playboy Hugh M. Hefner himself. And then there were Playboy products. The first noticeable were air fresheners dangling from the rear view mirrors, mostly of the cabs, auto decals donning black and white image of the by now ubiquitous rabbit head, key chains. Mostly cheap products. Most of them unauthorized and unlicensed. When you have a fertile swath of land, and the year is good and it rains and rains and rains, what happens? Suddenly, you have shrubbery and uncontrollable weeds. Nothing you can do. This was not in the plan. Literally, you see your rabbits multiplying at the pace you never in your wildest dream imagined. No way to stop them fornicating and swelling in population unless a natural disaster the scale of Malthusian theory of population were to strike. You can’t keep your act together to keep it all under control, let alone begin to reign them from growing greater.

Just the kind of situations trademark sharks around the globe are waiting for. While Hefner  decided not to put the month and the year on the cover of its first issue, sporting now the iconic black and white photo of Marilyn Monroe, for the fear that he may have to leave it on the stands for much longer, the copies of his pioneering publication flew off the stands like freshly baked soft pretzels at the Munich hauptbahnhof.

After the two mutually beneficial and highly successful back-to-back contract negotiations in São Paulo and Buenos Aires, my boss Bill (Stokkan) and I make a side trip to Córdoba to deal with the tricky business of trying to “buy back” our own trademarks. Something I have had only a limited knowledge of. This is our first trip together and being together 24/7 for several days has given us a unique opportunity to bond and to observe up close each other’s businesses. Now he has been our division’s head already for two years, but up until now he has left me alone with minimal of supervision and interference. Now he feels comfortable with the business of publishing and even so, he still leaves the details of making of the magazine to me, he has started to gingerly giving me his input into the business and the marketing side of what I do. Not only do I appreciate his invaluable input, but over the dozens of long drawn out meals we have shared, we have become more like partners in crime.

On our first outing together, he has brought his unique perspective and pragmatism to our two most delicate make it or break it negotiations his mantra. Let not the minimum guarantee become a minimum penalty. Both Roberto Civita in Brazil and Alberto Fontevecchia in Argentina are floored when Bill lays down the deals which screams WIN-WIN if successful and if not as much, Playboy would share in the risk. Sound fair?

After we’re done with the publishing business, we venture on to deal with the local problems of Bill’s core business – which is licensing and merchandizing of products bearing Playboy logo and other trademarks. That takes us to the second largest city of the country – Córdoba, 435 miles (700 kilometers) north west of Buenos Aires. It is the geographical center of Argentina and is proud of its colonial charms and the history. But from the little that we saw, I remember it to be dilapidated and dusty, almost a depressing town.

Before boarding the plane in Buenos Aires in the afternoon, we breakfast with Alfredo Vercelli of Editorial Atlántida, who has license to produce and market Playboy branded stationery in Argentina and the surrounding countries. We also touch basis with our local trademark attorney Julia Elena Tellechea over the lunch. Armed with her input, we land in Cordoba.

We are picked up by Carlos Rodriguez Pons – the holder and the king of Playboy trademarks in Argentina and its surrounding territories in the multiple categories, that exclude the magazine itself and other related publications and the paper products – but the list of other products he has registered is impressive. How well he is doing with them is questionable. But there are telltale signs in the car he picks us up in. It’s Mercedes Benz 350 SLC. Obviously, I barely manage to squeeze into the back seat of this what once must have been a fleshy sportswagen. Not any more. Soon as he puts the car in the gear, we hear the killer breaks – the metal grinding on the metal. The windshield has a major crack going across. For whatever reasons, he is unapologetic and oblivious to what we may observe. He takes us to his house. The furniture seems to have seen better days. The walls weather beaten and sun bleached. He shows us around his factory, the shopping mall he owns and a rental apartment complex. All of the entities are named PLAYBOY. He is the Mr. Playboy of the region.

‘I have never worked for a living,’ he muses.

Like multitudes of others around the globe, when he saw Playboy name and its logo rising, having become the second most recognized in the world after Coca Cola, Carlos Rodriguez promptly and smartly and swiftly registers the name with its logo and the rabbit head in as many categories as he can and then begins to license it to the regional merchandizers. Since he is the one who has legally registered and therefore the owner of the trademarks, Playboy would have no rights to do the same.

Once realizing the potential, Playboy began to file for registrations all around the world – but would be denied their application in the territories and products categories that were already registered by a third party. Most of the third party registrants are small time hustlers. They neither have a know how nor money or infrastructure to do anything with it. While some of them succeed licensing the trademarks they have registered to the legitimate and serious producers and merchandizers and collect royalties, however, they have no support system to nurture the licensees. Everyone knows that the products they are making or distributing are not legit – actually majority of them are of inferior quality. They might as well be the rip-offs from one of the third world countries or in those days maybe the contrabands from Hong Kong and China.

The best hope for the third party registrants is to be able to “sell back” those trademarks to the legitimate creators and the owners. And in the most cases, they succeed. The originators buy them back, if for nothing else, then to keep the inferior and illegitimate products off the shelves. And to preserve their reputation for the highest quality guaranteed by their superior standing within the industry.

We arrive in Córdoba late in the afternoon and allow our host to take us around and show us his empire. At the end of the day, Carlos Rodriguez takes us out for the traditional Argentine barbecue at Asado Don Polidoro. We talk and we listen. The great strategist that Bill is, he doesn’t utter a word about the business until it’s midnight. He is never the first one to blink. Every extra word is said, every expression shown on the face of the other, he studies and analyses them. From the day we spend with Carlos Rodriguez Pons, it’s clear to us that the man isn’t doing well with the Playboy trademarks he has registered. Then the question remains – what would those trademarks by now so abused and downgraded would be worth? How long would it take to legitimize them in the eyes of the producers and the customers? At what cost? Once lost, you can’t build back the reputation just like that – if ever.

As Asado Don Polidoro begins to roll up its doors, Bill strikes a deal with Mr. Playboy of Argentina – which is non-committal as can be and based on multiple “ifs”. Because Bill has already figured out by then that buying back of our trademark in Argentina at the very best would be a losing proposition. And so he lets it be. I am not sure if there was any follow up or not, other than the perfunctory pleasant thank you letter or two.

Long forgotten, just out of curiosity, I googled our friend Carlos Rodriguez Pons. He is still well and alive and still the “proud” owner of those Playboy trademarks. His company Playboy Internacional SA has three employees – which I presume are himself, his wife and their son. How well is he doing? I can’t tell from his web page. Like everything else featured on the internet the varnish shines brighter on the cover. Whether the inside pages are worth reading – I don’t feel like finding out. But one thing you’ve got to give Sr. Pons is the admiration for his perseverance and ability to survive – now for almost four decades.

© Haresh Shah 2015

Illustration: Jordan Rutherford

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On Friday, July 3, 2015

It never ceases to amaze me how people react to the fact that I worked for Playboy. They roll their eyes, wink and smile. Make a nervous comment, must be fun to work for Playboy. And then there are the ones who wrinkle their noses – Playboy!!! You can’t help but notice on their faces apparent disdain and/or disapproval. Though majority of them have never as much as flipped a single page of the magazine, they have a strong opinion of the publication.

Terrorized By The Righteous Rage

Haresh Shah

I am impressed by the opulent looks of the agency. They show me around beaming with  pride at the facilities they offered. I, as a senior executive would have my own office, they tell me. Each office is named after the wonders and the major landmarks of  the world. Whenever possible, I would be assigned the Taj Mahal, they promise. I would have my own direct phone line and my personal voice mail.  I would have access to the support staff.

Hanging on almost every wall are expensively framed inspirational quotations by Dale Carnegie, Orison Swett Marden, James Allan, Malcolm Forbes, Lee Iacocca,  Albert Einstein  and such. The tone of the quotations assumes that you are down and out and are in dire need of pick me ups. Unlike clients in other businesses, we are the fired lame duck executives.

I still am not clear about what exactly I am supposed to be doing sitting in one of those little larger than cubicle offices, and more importantly, what it is that they would do for me. So I sit down with the president of Benson and Associates, Bob Benson and his partner Herb Lester, face to face for an initial interview. The interview itself lasts for more than an hour, during which they ask me whether my “separation” from Playboy was voluntary, as if there were such a thing!

For someone who is just fired after having twenty one years of fun filled life at the magazine, I am in fairly cheerful disposition. I have left the company with no hard feelings and am looking at my departure as an opportunity to do something else.

During the meeting, I make it very clear that I did not need any of the physical facilities that are customarily provided to all their clients. That I have all of it available to me in the comfort of my home. They tell me it would be great, we could work through faxes and phone calls. I share with them that  instead of trying to find another job in the publishing industry, what I would ideally like to do was to take advantage of the natural break in my career and try at least to see if there was something else I could do. I mention my fascination with the airlines. I wouldn’t be opposed to exploring either advertising or even the entertainment industry.

During and after the interview, Bob and Herb, excited, tell me that with my international experience, the language skills and the cross-cultural background, they could do wonders for me. Bob drops a few names of the chairmen and CEOs of the companies with whom he could set up appointments. They could send out 500 mailings! 500? But what do I know about how outplacement works?

And so it begins. They want me to come back for another two hour meeting so that we can go over CAPS (career and personal summary). CAPS contained what they called “materials”, an extensive questionnaire which establishes your existence as a total person.

‘Is this something you can mail to me?’  I ask. I sense an astonishing reluctance on the other end of the line.

‘I guess we can do that’ comes the lukewarm answer.

The next morning, FedEx delivers a bulky envelope containing fifty pages of questionnaire and almost as many pages of explanations/instructions detailing the procedures. Half of the questionnaire concerns itself with the work history and other work related issues. The rest asks you about the most intimate details about yourself, and each one of your family members, your relationship with them, what would you change in the way you grew up if you had to do it all over again, whether or not you had a good relationship with your spouse, what caused the divorce and why. The questionnaire stops short of asking  about your sexual preferences.

They contain psychological tests divided into several segments such as personal motivation and satisfaction, building blocks for the future, whether you were a leader or a follower, aggressive or passive, were an early bird or a night owl. Who was the best manager you worked for and the worst? Why? It is filled to the brim with buzz words of business school, good sounding but as useless as discarded banana skins. It takes me major part of three weeks, several hours every day, to answer those damn questions. By the time I am done, they had more information on me than would the CIA on President Clinton and his flings.

The outplacement agencies, like  funeral parlors, must  justify  their existence. This they seem to be doing well by playing on your vulnerability when you are at your lowest ebb.  Most of the discarded executives are absolutely devastated and destroyed when they are pushed out of their jobs on account of the revolving door management monopoly game called “reorganization”. The companies fish out big bucks to give you outplacement as a part of their severance package, mainly to absolve themselves of the guilt they would otherwise feel at having pushed you out after years of what may have  been loyal and productive service. One of my editor friends calls it “calling the priest”. They must take comfort in the knowledge that come Monday morning, you wouldn’t be completely lost, you will have a place to go to and people to talk to. There would be a phone and a make believe office and the secretarial pool, and even a pseudo-boss. Sort of sending you on to a halfway house, instead of discarding you cold turkey and leaving you out in the open all by yourself.

But this is not what I am thinking when I receive the CAPS package. After the initial amazement, I actually get into it with vengeance. The questions make me think and they give me a chance to analyze things I otherwise would have no reason to. I even enjoy digging deeper into my subconscious. By the time I am done, I have raked up solid twenty-three single-spaced typewritten pages, containing in excess of 8500 words.  Pleased with my handiwork, I send out to them the whole ball of wax.

A few days later, we sit down in Bob’s spacious corner office. For the next four hours, we review the pile of materials containing of close to a hundred pages. Bob goes down the list,  making notes, writing down his comments, asking me further questions – mainly asking me to elaborate on the answers I have already given in elaborate detail. I see Bob drawing  squares similar to tic-tac-toe and filling them with the letters D or P to determine what percentage of me was Dictatorial and how much I let my staff Participate in the process.

Moving right along, stopping just to go to the bathroom and refill our respective coffee and coke receptacles, I feel two distinct emotions. One, I am plain enjoying their probes into my personal life in a perverse sense. And yet, what constantly nags at me is the emotion that what did all these intimate details of my personal and professional life have to do with finding another job?  Why should I be telling these two complete strangers what was so personal and confidential part of who I was? They never as much as said it to me, but I could just feel their amazement and apprehensions at my answers to why Carolyn and I never got married but had gone ahead and had a child, had raised her out of wedlock and lived together for longer than an average American couple is married. When in the answer to the question “what would you like to change about your early family life and why?”  I said, “nothing, because I wish everybody was lucky enough to have been born in a family such as mine,” Bob throws a pointed glance at me with the curt, “nothing?”  As if it were some sort of crime to have had a happy childhood.

‘There is so much meat to this,’ concludes Bob.

‘Most everyone who comes to us wanting more of the same – but this is different!’ adds Herb.

I too feel a bit euphoric, like a kid who has just passed his orals with flying colors.

I see them again a little over a week later to partake in the Christmas party. It is interesting to meet with their other clients, curiously, majority of them are ex- CFOs. Though, the atmosphere of the party is cheery, I couldn’t help but feel a certain amount of sadness and desperation beyond those seemingly smiling faces. Not too long ago, they all must have been like roaring lions, mighty and powerful. And now, they must all feel like little lambs herded around by Bob and his sidekick Herb.

Soon after the holidays, I am invited to the agency’s the first fourteenth of the month luncheon. We talk for a while about our respective holidays and about the book I am working on and then he informs me that in order for them to proceed, he needed for me to “pull together” a country-by-country outline of my experience, knowledge, economic and political climate etc., of the parts of the world I had been in charge. I am not too happy about his request, but reluctantly, agree to do it.

While the pungent smell of the take out Chinese food still lingers in the air, he asks each one of us to share with the rest something about ourselves. One by one, everyone  bares his desperation to the group. Though there are some who aren’t quite as desperate and display sense of humor about the whole thing, all in all, here were the guys who had made it to the top of whatever their professional world was, and now suddenly they are left out in the open, with families to support, kids to send to college and mortgages to pay. Most of them, all dressed up in their crisp shirts and ties, coming in there day after day as if they still held regular jobs, answered phones, sent out resumes or whatever. It was sad. After  lunch, as we sit around to the chatter of our own voices, Bob complacently, if a bit self-consciously fishes out from his breast pocket what looks like Mao’s little red book.  He reads a bunch of “uplifting” quotes from it, as we all look on  apprehensively. Though I couldn’t quite put my finger on it and remember where, when and what it was that I had experienced – the whole scenario is reminiscent of something very similar and not very pleasant.

Soon as I have recovered from the holiday hangover, I pull together fourteen single spaced pages of my country-by-country  involvement.

‘The time has now come for you to work on your resume.’ Bob tells me.

I am not prepared for yet another “homework” thrown at me. If all they wanted was a plain and simple resume, prepared by myself, then I was missing the point.

Over the follow-up telephone conversations with Bob, it becomes apparent to me that they weren’t happy at all at having to do the resume for me. Some two months later they fax me  what they have put together for my perusal. As I discuss the contents of it with him, Bob couldn’t contain his frustration anymore and let it be known that “it is you who should be doing the resume and us editing it. Instead, you are having us do it and you editing it.”

This confirms to me what has been nagging at me for some time, if I did everything, then what did they do for me? After all, I was their client, wasn’t I?  My company was paying big bucks for their services, and all they said they would do for me was to “coach” me how to go about “marketing” myself. I choose to ignore him. The resume goes back and forth  several times. There is nothing in it that I couldn’t have done myself, or if I wasn’t up to it, the Alpha Word service across the street would have done a better job for a mere $25.00 and would have even printed it for me. It had more typos than I could count, some of it was plain redundant, and most of the resume swung between the present tense and the past.

Towards the end of the day on a Friday, once again we sit across from each other in his office to “fine tune” the resume. He takes the edited version of the resume to his secretary for her to make the necessary changes. As he once again takes his place across from me, he is fidgety, or more accurately, not happy. Finally, he lets it out.

‘You know, I am frustrated with you.’

‘Why is that?’

‘Because I am at a loss as how to position you. We have all this information on you, and I don’t know how and what to present to someone like Phil Schmidt while I myself  am not comfortable with it.’

‘Who is Phil Schmidt?’

‘He is the chairman of Brandt, Schmidt and Kohl. He is one of the best there is in the advertising business. He is very open minded and the kind of person who would be willing to try new things.’

‘If you are frustrated Bob, it is obvious that I am as frustrated, if not more. When I first came to see you and  met with you and Herb, I had made it very clear that with all the international exposure and experience I have, I would like to explore communications fields other than publishing. At that time, you and Herb seemed excited.  I don’t see where there can be a misunderstanding, but it seems to me that we have misunderstood what you are supposed to do for me.’

‘Yes, we have.’

‘The way I see it, this isn’t quite working, is it?’

‘No it isn’t.’

‘Where do we go from here?’

‘We need to boil down the list to the top ten places to send out resumes to.’

‘Okay, so let’s look at the possibilities. United Airlines is based in Chicago, so are Foote, Cone & Belding and Leo Burnett. Maybe they could be the beginning.”

By this time he has moved to the other side of his desk. His face tenses as he eases his hand over his hair.

‘Only that I don’t know anyone at United, FCB or at Leo Burnett.’

I look back at him with bewilderment, remembering all those names he had dropped during our first interview.

‘We have a whole bunch of reference material in our library. I encourage you to spend four or five days and pour through the material.’

I am still looking at him with bewilderment, now mixed with a bit of confusion. What he is asking me to do I could do sitting at the Evanston Public Library.

His secretary interrupts us with a couple of hard copies of the resume. He holds those in one hand while retrieving another bunch of paper from his desk drawer. He lamely puts those on the desk.

‘Here are some sample cover letters that you should look at.’ I briefly flip through the bunch.

‘You know Bob, cover letters are not a problem. First we need to agree to the list of ten people to whom we should send the resume, and I can easily make up individual cover letter for each one of them. You know, I can do them without much of a problem.’

‘Then do it!’ He slaps down my resume and the diskette on his desk.

‘Fine. But I don’t see a reason for an outburst.’

‘Take that and get out of here.’

‘Come on Bob, let’s just agree that this isn’t working out, let’s just shake hands and forget about it.’ I extend my hand in a conciliatory gesture.

‘I said get out of here!’ He has raised his voice and now the contorted expressions of his face show flames of anger bordering on violence.

‘Fine, this is your office and you can throw me out or anybody else for that matter. Let’s just  shake hands and I will be out of here.’ And once again I extend my hand towards him. By now he has moved to the edge of the desk, diagonally opposite to where I am standing. Perhaps to acquire enough distance from my extended hand. He pulls his hands closer to his chest.

‘No! Get out of here, right now and never come back. I never want to see you again.  All the years that I have been in this business, I have never been as frustrated as you frustrate me.’

‘Just give me your hand once Bob and I will leave.’ The more I try to calm him, the angrier he gets. Now there are definite traces of violence on his face and if I had any sense, I should have gotten the hell out of there in a hurry.

‘Okay, fine.’ I say and pick up my files. His huge two hundred and fifty plus pounds body looms over me. He is breathing heavily and saying to me, as if in a chant – out, out, this very minute, pushing me out of there with his shadow. He follows me to the door, and it occurs to me that my leather jacket is in his closet. He charges back to the office, retrieves the jacket and throws it at me. By now, I should have been scared for my life. But as if possessed by a devil, I catch my jacket, looking straight into his eyes.

‘Give me your hand once, and you will never have to see me again.’

‘Get out!’ He roars.

‘I have been in this business since 1975, and I have never met anybody as lazy and frustrating as you.’ He delivers the coup de grâce before slamming the door on me.

As I wait for the elevator, suddenly I feel all shook up. He had not as much as touched me, but I could feel that he was on the verge of doing me physical harm. When I get in to my car and drive out of there, my entire body is shaking and suddenly I am terrified.

And then I remembered.

It was almost thirty years earlier that I had sat around a dining table in a suburb of London, talking, in a similar manner as we did during that first fourteenth of the month luncheon. Our hosts were Mr. & Mrs. McLain, who had invited a bunch of us foreign students for dinner. In what I had thought to be out of the goodness of their hearts, turned out to be an attempt by Mr. McLain to shove Christianity down my throat. It was obvious to me from the grace Mr. McLain had said earlier that the bunch had gotten together to talk about Jesus. And talk they did. I sat there listening and not saying a word for about an hour.  I respected what they all believed in and there was nothing to argue. That is, until Mr. McLain began to knock down all of the world religions in general and  Hinduism and  Buddhism in particular. When I no longer could stand his barrage, I stepped in, however unwillingly.

‘Excuse me, Mr. McLain, but you are lucky that it’s me and not my father sitting here at the table.’

‘How do you mean it Mr. Shah?’

‘Your berating other religions of the world doesn’t make Christianity any better.’

Friendly Mr. McLain’s face suddenly turned tense. In the next few minutes he became a different man, hysterical and furious.

‘We will pray to the Lord, Mr. Shah, that he forgives you your ignorance….’

‘Please don’t Mr. McLain, I can take care of myself.’

‘Mr. Shah!’ he screamed in desolation.

Realizing there was no sense in me belaboring the point, I excused myself and made a quick exit. Mr. McLain followed me out in the front yard, screaming like a maniac. Christ will never forgive you Mr. Shah, you will pay for your deeds, you will go to hell, your soul will never find salvation. I pretended he didn’t even exist. This made him even more violent, he even attempted to hit me.  Fortunately, his wife had followed us, and was able to hold him back.

I had walked to the station on that cold January night. As I waited for the train, I began suddenly to shake and break out in a cold sweat. Echoing in my ears were Mr. McLain’s Christ will never forgive you Mr. Shah, you will pay for your deeds, you will go to  hell, you will never find salvation. And now, Bob Benson’s outburst, out, out, this very minute. As I stand in the garage, all shook up and sweaty, it is a déjà vu with both their screams and anger super-imposed on each other — beating on my brains like the African drums.

● Shorter version of this was originally published in The Wall Street Journal.

© Haresh Shah 2015

Illustration: Celia Rose Marks

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On Friday, June 8, 2015

Whichever iron in the fire lights up first. 🙂

Flying Free Like A Hawk

Haresh Shah

“You’re doing a good job if you manage to piss us off fifty percent of the time, and piss our partners off another fifty.” Our boss Bill Stokkan would often tell his managers, usually during one of his pontification sessions. More true of his international divisional heads who had not only to deal with the products but also with the cultural nuances of the people from several countries. In my case, it also worked to my advantage that I was not an American born American. Especially the people I worked with from the non-European and Asian countries felt that I understood them better just because I was born and grew up in India. That I brought a different sensitivity to our working together. Equally so with my American management, because by then I had spent as many years in the West. As difficult as it could be sometimes, I had developed a close rapport with the people on both ends and had earned their confidence and the respect.

Even more so for our Yastaka Sasaki, who handled Playboy account for our Tokyo rep Ray Falk. Not only was his job to interpret the language portion of our communications with the editors and executives at our Japanese partners Shueisha, but also of making sure that what one of us said or wanted didn’t upset the sensitive cultural differences. Sasaki, as everyone called him, spoke fluent English. Almost instantly, he had earned my respect and if not exactly having become close friends, us two had established a certain honesty and trust into each other that went beyond simply working together. Those five days we spent together crisscrossing Japan sealed our bond which never weakened till the very end.

The last I saw of Sasaki was at my home in Evanston, October of 1993. Officially, I had already departed Playboy, but had invited for one last hurrah the group that had come to Chicago to partake in that year’s International Publishing conference. Turned out to be so much fun that it had to be repeated at the tail end of the conference. No more cigars, bemoaned Jeremy Gordin, the editor-in-chief of about to be launched South African edition. I had cooked Indian food and had caterers supply the rest. Everyone was spread out across several rooms of my house. I remember Sasaki and I, along with the Japanese editor-in-chief, the suave Suzuhito Imai sitting around the glass topped breakfast table in the corner, Jan (Heemskerk) standing by the kitchen counter and looking on. As Jan remembers it, placed in the middle of the table is a bowl full of fire red and deep green ultra dynamite Thai chili peppers. Sasaki picks up the red one and is about to take a bite.

‘Be careful, it will kill you!’ I warn.

‘I don’t think so. I am used to eating hot food.’

‘Yeah, but this is not hot food. This is the killer Thai pepper.’

‘Don’t worry, I can handle it.’

Our hands on our chests and our breathing momentarily suspended, we watch him bite off a chunk bigger than even I ever would dare. As if pierced by a sharp arrow, suddenly his face turns red and then contorted shriveled up fig. Tears begin to roll down his eyes. He runs to the sink, but it’s too late. Like three sadists, Jan and Imai and I laugh our butts off. I told you so. I want to say, but I spare him that bit of insult to his injury.

Beyond that, we may have stayed in touch for a while, but nothing in particular that I remember. Six years later I am living in Prague and am now editor-in-chief of successful Serial magazine, which as the name suggests, is focused on the popular television series. Suddenly, not the prime time, but the Sunday morning cartoon series Pokémon is all the rage on the Czech television. We decide to do cover story on the show. But as with other shows, the information and the images available through the local television network is limited to the press material, which everyone else too has. But I want to do an in-depth, but entertaining and informative feature on the show. I am specifically interested in the character’s creator, the elusive, Satoshi Tajiri. There is not much known about him and there isn’t a single photo of him available to accompany the text. Sasaki somehow manages to send me an old black and white shot of the man. We have a local artist do a color illustration of him.

Sasaki is pleased and amused at us re-connecting: and I thought you had faded away in the sunset after Playboy! And here you are, well and alive and no less than are editor-in-chief of a successful magazine in beautiful Prague! I can’t help but sense a certain amount of pride he must have felt at my well being post-Playboy. I obviously feel flattered and pleased at the fact that how pleased he sounds at his Shah-san not having disappeared behind the clouds of the past.

Barely little over a year has passed when I receive a mail from Mary (Nastos) in Chicago. It brings the sad news of Sasaki’s passing on March 20th, 2002. A shock to say the least. I immediately write to his wife Miki and to Ray Falk. Even though I remembered having briefly met Miki once, her husbands’ death prompts long email correspondence between us two. In the correspondence, she describes in poignant details the last days and the last moments of his life and death. In-between the lines I could see how much love there must have been between the two. And yet, their relationship could not have been without ups and downs, in which unbeknown to me, they must have been divorced. The response that came from Ray Falk reporting on the funeral service for the man who had joined him right out of college and worked for him practically till the end, ends with: Mr. Sasaki’s wife who used to work in our office remarried her former husband before his death—-to ease his days—-a wonderful gesture.

As I re-read Miki’s e-mails sent to me soon following his death, there is more than just a wonderful gesture. There is genuine love and an enviable closeness.

In January of 2001, Sasaki is diagnosed with the cancer of esophagus. He is subjected to six weeks long chemo and radio therapies, which helps kill the bad cells along his esophagus. He goes on camping and fishing trips over the Golden Week in April-May holidays. Miki and him take another trip to the mountain lake in June. He suffers a relapse in July. The cancer has metastasized to his liver in multiple areas.

The real battle begins. He submits himself to a new drug in its first phase of the clinical trial. He continues to work and manages his day-to-day life. Going out to eat, going to the movies. And most importantly continues indulging in his passion of fly fishing. With some hopeful moments here and there, on February 28th, 2002, he is told he only has a month left to live. The decision is made to admit him to St. Luka’s International Hospital to receive palliative care to ease his pain instead of seeking a cure. He is moved to the hospice ward on March 7th. The last days of his life ticking off. And yet he fights tooth and nail. When not sedated, he is able to eat soft food, drink juices and water, suck on the ice cubes and go to the bathroom on his own. No needles or tubes sticking in or out of his body.

Flanking his bed are Miki and his childhood friend Ted Teshima, with whom he went to the elementary school in his hometown of Kobe. Only thirty minutes to go, he asks Ted to give him a back rub. Sensing that the end is very near, Ted calls Sasaki’s younger brother Yasuhiro in Kobe. And also calls a close colleague Mike Dauer, while Miki and Ted hold his hands on the either side of the bed and thank him for all he has given them and to wishing him the peaceful journey, his brother and Mike fill his ears with their soothing voices. Tears are rolling down Sasaki’s eyes as he slowly and peacefully retreats in the beyond. It’s Wednesday, March 20th, 2002, the time 19:15. His earthly journey has lasted for 45 years, 3 months and 1 day.

The funeral follows. He is cremated and he came back home in a small box in my arms, writes Miki. Months later in August, Miki along with her uncle and Yastaka’s friend Mike travel to  lake Nikko, where Yastaka and Miki used to go fishing. They scatter some of his ashes around one of his favorite spots in the river. At other time, Miki and Mike spend hours fishing at a smaller lake nearby, and sprinkle more of his ashes. They don’t catch any fish. They begin to raw back to the shore. There is a hawk hovering up above their heads. Just as they are about to reach the shore, they watch the bird dive down to the surface of the water very close to them and snatch up a big fish in its claw and fly away. Stunned, Mike and Miki decide the hawk is a better fisherman.

On a different stretch the next day when Miki is fishing alone, she notices another hawk lingering up above and then suddenly diving into the river in front of her, passing just above her head, the bird catches a brook trout and off flies up, up and away. It must have been Yastaka. Thinks Miki. The thought of him turning into a hawk and flying freely in the skies of Nikko from the mountain to mountain and to the lake to the river is really soothing and nice to me.

Fittingly, Ray Falk wrote to his friends in his brief report about Sasaki’s funeral. The picture of Sasaki at the funeral featured a big fish—-Lake fish were his favorite. There was a fishing rod near the coffin and a guitar at the other end.

Shah-san, I remember my husband talked about you sometimes. Very recently (like early February). The episode that I remember well that he told me was the trip that you and my husband went to Kanazawa city in northern Japan many years ago. You two had no interest what-so-ever to the touristic spots like the very famous historic Japanese garden which most tourists usually visit when they go to Kanazawa, but you two headed straight to the local market where they sell all the fish and vegies and interesting stuff. Shah-san loves market hopping anywhere he goes, that’s what he said, if I remember correctly, reminisces Miki.

In response to my mail to Ray Falk, he writes back:

Dear Haresh,

Thanks for your interest in Y. Sasaki!

If you had not left PLAYBOY, this might not have happened. He was a great Haresh Shah fan and would have listened to your advice on life and living.

That’s a heavy cross to bear, but flattering nevertheless.

© Haresh Shah 2015

Illustration: Celia Rose Marks

Other Profiles

On Friday, May 22, 2015

When I was fired for the second and the last time from Playboy, included in my severance package was a stint with one of the most expensive outplacement firms. Not knowing exactly what the hell they did for you, I plunged into it head first, to the extent that I must have been the only executive to have a unique distinction of being fired by an outplacement firm. And the rage that erupted. Thinking of it still gives me shivers 🙂

My Pied À Terre In Mexico City

Haresh Shah

You would think, who in his right mind would get tired of living in Mexico City’s most luxurious and yet most making you feel at home hotel, Camino Real? Especially when the company is paying for it? During the first few months of my back-to-back trips and long sojourns in the city, Camino Real, or as my friends began to call it tu casa amarilla, because of its predominantly yellow façade, has become my permanent home. What’s more, I have fallen in love with the place. As big as it is, it has that warm homey feeling. By now, I know every nook and corner of this huge labyrinth of 720 rooms hotel, have been to each one of the restaurants and bars. The rooms are spacious and I am always welcomed by being placed in a poolside room with balcony. In a few short months, I have spent more romantic days and evenings at Camino Real than all other hotels of the world put together. I am regular at their French restaurant Le Fouquet and their private Le Club. Have splurged into frequent poolside buffets outside Los Azulejos, sat at La Cantina drinking beer and watching the traffic of the beautiful people of the city walking to and from the most-in Lobby Bar – the place where the locals and the hotel guests come together to see and be seen. And have danced the nights away at Cero Cero and then stumbled in for late breakfast at Las Huertas and nursed my hangovers with freshly squeezed tropical juices and very strong Mexican café con leche. Practically every service personnel knows and makes fuss over me. The place I feel at home in the true Mexican spirit of mi casa es su casa. What else can one ask for?

Well, like the Linda Ronstadt song, silver threads and golden needle, at some point that kind of  indulgence too saturates you. What I suddenly want is a place of my own, a pied-à-terre, in the city that is becoming as much my home as is Santa Barbara. I want my own kitchen and make my own ham and cheese sandwich and my famous soon to be baptized Shamolette by Mick Boskamp of Holland. Pop a bottle of beer, instead of having it delivered to my room. I want to cook elaborate Indian food and invite friends, play my own music. Be able to go from one room to another. I want to have a place where my friends from north of the border can come and visit and be able to stay with me.

We find a place, not too far from Camino Real at the corner of Calle Guadalquivir and Paseo de la Reforma. It’s unpresumptuous two bedroom apartment, owned by a woman called Señora Maldonado. It is furnished and comes equipped with kitchen appliances including pots and pans, a set of dishes, silverware and all. Adequate for my trips to Mexico. Just that there is something very ordinary, very boring about the place. The starkness of the place and the lack of imagination makes it look and feel like a drab, but I still take it. It’s at the intersection of two busy streets with incessant  auto traffic. This is Mexico and this is 1977. There are no rules about the air pollution and the noise. I spend night after sleepless night, tossing and turning, tortured by the shrill screeching of the metal over metal of the worn out breaks and grinding of the grease deprived gearshifts. Just within a couple of days, I know that I’ve got to get out of there. But I have signed a  year long lease and Señora Maldonado is not in the least inclined to allow me to wiggle out of it. Finally with the intervention of my friends at the office, she very reluctantly lets me off the hook with me agreeing to pay her two month’s rent for having lived there barely for a week.

Hearing my woeful tale, our publisher Ricardo (Ampudia) picks up the phone.

‘Let me see what I can do!’

‘Hola Antonio….’ And I hear lots of laughs and bantering of the two old school buddies.

‘I think I have just the place for you.’

The very next day, I am climbing the elevator of Berna 14, in the heart of Mexico City’s famed Zona Rosa. The small L shaped street you can enter or exit from Paseo de la Reforma at the Angel and Florencia. Number 14 is snugly nestled in the sharp corner of the inverted L. The building so narrow that you may mistake the sliver of the visible façade to be a dividing line between the two edifices tightly hugging it. It has three floors and three apartments. Mine is on the top floor. Each apartment is accessible only through the elevator, and there are no buttons to push. You need a key for your floor. Like starting a car.

On the third floor, the elevator doors open into the total darkness. When the lights are switched on, you find yourself standing in the middle of a long tube of a submarine like abode. You are in the kitchen/dining room. On the right is the bedroom – the only room to face the street and is exposed to the natural light. It is tastefully furnished with a custom-made bigger than the California King size mattress, which is probably 20” high, placed directly on the floor. It’s covered with shiny white satin sheets and strewn around are several large pillows, also draped in  satin. There are no windows, but floor to ceiling and wall-to-wall clear glass wall with the view of the street. When you draw the heavy drapes over the wall, you get a feeling of being in a submarine moored all the way down below the surface of  the water.

Every inch of the apartment is covered with amply padded and a very high quality tightly woven  off white wall-to-wall shag rug. The kitchen is well equipped and is efficiently placed along the wall and there is just enough room for maximum two people to squeeze in to cook. Rest of the space is covered with an enormous custom made round dining table with the diameter of 6 feet or more, which rests on heavy cast iron stainless steel pedestal. Around the table are very comfy  white dining chairs. Next to the kitchen is the living room. Lushly furnished with soft cushioned couches and arm chairs, also in white. Appropriately placed is the cocktail table and state of the art sound system.

You get a feeling of being placed in a deep cave. The entire place is about 60 feet long and twelve feet wide (approx. 18.3 meters x 3.7 meters). In between there are no walls and/or doors. The rooms are visually divided by the passages designed in the image of the most curvaceous female torso. Recessed lighting illuminates the place.

It is created to play. Every nook and cranny of it screams of now & here. The dining table, the couches, the rugs are all as inviting as the playground size bed, which at some point must feel like too far of a walk when you’re in the mood.

The apartment belongs to Ricardo’s childhood friend, Antonio – a very rich industrialist, whose main residence is outside Mexico City. Probably a hacienda. He has built this man cave in the heart of Mexico City as his pied-à-terre for his extracurricular activities. From what I understand from Ricardo is, at the time, Antonio is going through a particularly dry phase in his life and therefore the apartment remains more or less unused. Not something you can advertise and rent to just anybody. Now to rent it to someone like me, a Playboy executive and a business partner of his childhood friend is another story. I agree to the monthly rent of US$ 500.- as suggested by Ricardo. Lot of money in Mexico and at that time also in the States. I pay less than half that much for my much bigger place in Santa Barbara, California. But then, mere four nights at the Camino Real would cost me more than that.

I couldn’t be happier. Patricia loves it. My young friend Ignacio (Barrientos) adores it. Even Manuel (Peñafiel) with his own super bachelor pad nods his approval. Several months later when things have changed in my life, Carolyn comes to Mexico to spend a few days and thanks to the cozy and intimate Berna 14, she barely gets to see much of the city! It is indeed the most unique place I have ever lived in and is undeniably forms an important part of my Mexico memories.

During my extensive travels and absences, I would let my friends use my apartments, be it in Chicago, Munich or Santa Barbara. I like the idea of someone being there enjoying the place, while also taking care of it, watering the plants, picking up the mail. But I would always be careful who I give my keys to. A couple of colleagues at Editorial Caballero alluded of their interest, but one lesson I had learned from my Lake Shore apartment in Chicago, never to give keys to your married friends for their rendezvous, especially when you also know their wives. A friend’s wife at Time Inc. is still pissed at me because of his clandestine frolicking in my apartment. But the young editor Ignacio is single and we are becoming to be close friends. He probably has as many or more memories of Berna than I do. And I was happy that someone would water my houseplants that I had put in the bedroom to make the place more mine and  homier.

And to water them he did. Like my younger brothers in India, Ignacio too is still living at home, and being a boy, also like my brothers doesn’t have a clue of how these little household things work. So while watering plants, isn’t it better to water more and submerge the soil than leave it not quite saturated? I must have been gone two weeks and when I return, both of my plants in Mexico are promptly drowned and are drooping limply over the edges of their pots. Oh well! At least I don’t have his ex-wife to deal with and have not earned a permanent place on her shit list!

Other than that first meeting, I never have had a reason to see Antonio in flesh and blood until one evening when I am home early and am lying on the couch reading, I hear the elevator door open and someone getting off. Only other persons who had the keys was Ignacio, and Antonio’s manager Sergio, who would stop by every month to collect the rent. But neither of them would ever show up without first having called. A jolt of fear runs through my system, I jump up from the couch and run to the kitchen.

‘I am sorry for barging in on you. I was in the neighborhood and thought come and say hello to you.’ It’s Antonio. Still dressed in his impeccable business suite with an expensive looking leather briefcase in his hand. But other than the perfunctory apology, what I see on his face is the  entitlement he must feel, and okay to barge in on me just because he owns the joint. I don’t really like it, but welcome him nevertheless. Offer him a glass of wine. I sense he already have had a couple of drinks before he decided to wander in. Whatever! We talk about inconsequential things and somewhere along the line he mentions that perhaps we should talk about raising the rent a little bit.

I am not exactly against it, but I think what I was paying to be a fair rent, and I tell him how I paid only $230.- for my Santa Barbara apartment. But he seems to be in a funky mood.

‘You don’t think it makes any difference to me at the end of the day how much rent you pay, do you?’

And then we trail off talking about something else. Somewhere along the line, he picks up his  briefcase, opens it and slides out of it – a gun. He holds it his hands, looks at it endearingly and almost caresses it. Swirls it around his fingers the way John Wayne and Clint Eastwood do in their westerns. The metal of the gun shines like a newly minted penny and its wooden handle is polished to the T.

‘I just bought this. Isn’t she a beauty? You want to hold it?’

‘No it’s alright. I don’t think I have ever held a real gun in my hands.’

He once again fondly looks at it and puts it gently down on the cocktail table in the middle. We continue to talk, but I am no longer as comfortable. What I am thinking is; what the fuck? What does this man have on his mind? I feel a jolt of fear scurry through my spine.

We’re sitting in his time capsule of an apartment, completely sealed off from the outside world. Other than the elevator, there is a door at the very end of the living room that opens at the back of the building, which is double bolted. I know, there are keys in the kitchen, in case of emergency. And what could Antonio have against me? I try to think of the women I have been out with in Mexico City and wish that none of them had anything to do with the man sitting across from me. You know, sort of honor killing. If her were to pull the trigger for whatever reason, no one would hear the bullets popping. His lackeys would get rid of me in a classic Mexican maneuver as if I disappeared in the thin air walking down Paseo de la Reforma. Adios Amigo! My thoughts sound absurd. But they occur to me nevertheless. Outwardly, I stay cool and carry on.

‘Well, I think I better get going so I can be home in time for dinner. By now, the traffic should have eased somewhat.’ He picks up his gun, slides it back into his briefcase, and is gone as abruptly as he had shown up.

© Haresh Shah 2015

Illustration: Celia Rose Marks

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On Friday, May 7, 2015

How do you manage to remain the nail that manages not to be pounded down and still make everyone feel that your head is as sunk in as theirs, and that you’re one of them and trust you despite the fact that you’re employed by the other side? Indeed a difficult task, but not impossible. Yastaka Sasaki was that man, who knew how to maintain such a delicate balance and yet not be seen as someone who sold out to one or the other. My fond homage to this incredible man who is no longer with us.

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

More Japanese Stories

On Friday, April 24, 2015

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

It’s Not Enough To Dream

Haresh Shah

There are only two tragedies in life: one is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it. Oscar Wilde

It’s not unusual for small but ambitious publishers to be bitten by the idea of adding Playboy to their stable of publications. Bitten even harder are the ones who have had no familiarity with the publishing business. But they have dreams and the desire and some money to spare that drive them to near obsession, do everything in their power to buy the Playboy license. Because in their dreams and the desires what they are thinking is: If only I can get to publish Playboy! At this point they are not thinking what it really takes to undertake such a project. Their psychological business plans have no provision for what if it doesn’t quite work out?

The letter came forwarded from Andreas Odenwald – our editor-in-chief in Germany. Guess, this is for you amigo, said his scribble. It’s an inquiry letter from Poland from the company called Elgaz. Attached to it is a recommendation letter from their German partners, a PVC window manufacturers, vouching for the serious intent and the solid financial standing of this Polish company involved in various businesses, among them the international video distribution.

What is this with video distributors wanting to be magazine publishers? Accompanying the inquiry is a video cassette giving you a virtual tour of Elgaz businesses and facilities in Gdańsk. Quite impressive, considering that this is 1991 – years and years ahead of the virtual tour ever came into existence. I reflect upon the fact that I have also had a similar inquiry from Video Vision from South Africa. The owner, Anant Singh had actually stopped by my office one evening. After I explained what was actually involved and once he understood, he let it pass. Quite the contrary with Janusz Lekztoń – the young entrepreneur of Elgaz. For him, wanting to publish Playboy is not just a business proposition, it is his lifelong dream.

Following my meeting with Beata (Milewska) that January morning, I meet with Lekztoń’s designate, the journalist Jerzy Mazur (Jurek) for coffee and agree to have lunch with his boss  Lekztoń and his associates the next day.

Boyish and pudgy, Lekztoń doesn’t speak any English. Neither do the ones accompanying him, except Jurek, who also spoke Spanish. From what I understood, Elgaz, as the name suggests was once a company that supplied household and industrial natural gas in Poland, the company Lekztoń had come to inherit during the shuffle at the fall of the communist era. No longer in gas business, his main income stream currently is international video distribution. That is, to acquire territorial rights, have the foreign movies dubbed in Polish and distribute them to the households through retail outlets.

Of the five of us sitting around the table, the interchange takes place only between Jurek and I. He is the communicator for Lekztoń, and if we were to reach an agreement, it would be him who would become the editor and the publisher. Though he would later tell me that he too had in mind Tomasz Raczek as his editor. I spend a pleasant lunch with Lekztoń and his associates. We stroll around the old town square with his photographer trailing us. They are gracious hosts and want to show me the past and fortunately undestroyed glory of one of the Europe’s most beautiful town squares.

The square is garlanded by the rows of three to five stories buildings butted together, each painted individually in vibrant colors that wear the sunny glow of the warm fall leaves – yellows, oranges, reds and pinks and the cooler but equally a s vibrant aqua marine and green. Those fairy tale houses remind me of the canal front row houses in Amsterdam and also the houses on  Prague’s Old town Square. To see them within a day of having saddened by those dour panaleks as the Czechs call their pre-fabed clapped together wall panels communist housing complexes and juxtapose them with the Old Town houses make for a quick history lesson in the country’s recent past. Paved cobblestones, the square takes me to what must have been the glorious past of Poland.

We eat at one of the traditional Polish restaurants, table bedecked with crisp white table clothes under the bright yellow ones, propped on which are turquoise napkins. Antique wall hangings and all. They are trying to show me the best that their country has to offer, which makes for a very pleasant and laid back afternoon.

Even though it’s clear to me that other than his dream and the intense desire to be Playboy publisher, Lekztoń and his people don’t have a clue about how magazines are made. And yet, Lekztoń has already produced a “test issue” in the form of a complete prototype dummy which they present to me. It contains basic Playboy layout with lot of crudely photographed “original” nudes, assigned and produced by Lekztoń himself. His personal vision of Playboy. In his book Jurek reports Lekztoń saying, he spent several hundred million zlotys to create the “sample issue”. Even though Jurek warns him that Playboy rarely allows it’s international editions to publish domestic photos. The majority of the Playmates are born in U.S.A.. Only a few are models from other countries and they usually apply for American citizenship.

When I met him, I thought Jurek was quite knowledgeable and an earnest journalist. Where he got the above notion and the information is a mystery to me. Perhaps his own perception of how things worked at Playboy. But what I do believe to be true is him saying that Lekztoń’s mind the text in the magazine existed just to fill the pages and therefore not worth his while to pursue. He thought that Jurek could write most of it, if not all. At least he didn’t even pretend to have his readers buying his version of the magazine for the interviews. Lekztoń had enough financial backing – he had everything that Polish Playboy could buy for money, continues Jurek. But I am getting ahead of myself. I thank Lekztoń for his hospitality and tell him that we weren’t yet quite ready to launch in Poland, but would certainly meet with him once again when the time comes.

Ten months later I return to Poland and hop a plane from Warsaw to Gdańsk and visit the offices of Elgaz. I no longer remember the offices as such, but what I remember very distinctly is their warehouse size space furnished with large industrial bare metal shelves. Piled onto them are hundreds and hundreds of VCR machines. Masters and slaves. Rolf (Dolina) defines them for me. He has accompanied me to Gdańsk. Seeing question mark on my face, he explains: the ones on the top contained the master tapes and the bottom ones – the slaves were there to copy them, one at a time. All those machines, hissing and blinking in chorus!

As we stroll down the wide aisles of the masters and slaves operation and hear Lekztoń talk and explain and watch the expressions on his face, no longer sure of being considered for the license, I notice a certain sadness color his face. His lifelong dream of publishing Playboy in Poland fading, he seems lost. That’s how much smitten he is. I wonder if he ever realizes that he would be far from being qualified to publish any magazine, let alone Playboy. Had he by a fluke of nature ever gotten to do Playboy, what a tragedy would that be?

Months later we would sign with Rolf – form a joint venture company with additional participation of Beata (Milewska) and Tomasz (Zięba).  It takes another year before we’re ready to launch in Poland with the first issue coming out in November of 1992, with the December cover date.

It’s a big success. While Hungary and Czechoslovakia bring in minimum to fair revenues, Poland being the much larger market, turns out to be quite profitable business venture. The magazine becomes talk of the town. Lekztoń and Jurek are obviously distraught and disappointed, but Jurek certainly understands why we would choose Beata over Lekztoń as our publisher. Still, I give Lekztoń the credit for being the first one from Poland not only to envision Playboy in the Polish market,, but also pursue it till the end.

A year later, I receive a press clipping of an excerpt from the book Jurek is writing about his experience working with Lekztoń. The excerpted chapter is titled: How the Gdynia Playboy Was Not Created. Enclosed also is a cover letter from Jurek. He is kind enough to have translated the contents of the clipping for me. Mentioned in it is something Tomasz Raczek supposedly said in an interview: Beata Milewska won the editorial contest organized by the American editors. Interesting. I wonder how and from where Jurek got such a notion? Plain old gossip machine? Sour grapes?

I guess even before Jurek started working with Lekztoń, he too was as bitten and smitten by the idea of brining Playboy to his country, as he narrates in the opening paragraph of the excerpt: In 1986 I was standing at the Playboy building in Chicago and I thought that the socialist system will fall some day and Playboy will enter East Europe. But I knew that only a man with big financial background may talk about the license with Christie Hefner. For him Lekztoń turned out to be that man with big financial background – and therefore a perfect man to team up with to make his dream come true. But fortunately for him and for us, the flamboyant Lekztoń would run through his fortune. Now on his own, Jurek returns back to journalism and ends his letter with telling me: It (the book) will be published at the end of this year – probably at the same time as when Lekztoń will face a trial for financial abuse.

© Haresh Shah 2015

Illustration: Celia Rose Marks

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No, it’s not the title of the next post. But I feel I need bit of a break to mull over the next several posts that I hope to write. I don’t want to promise the exact date of the return, but hope to make it a short break to last between two to four weeks. By then, the spring will be just around the corner. Stay tuned.

I Went Home And Cried

Haresh Shah

Sitting across from me in a small windowless meeting room of the Holiday Inn in Warsaw is stunningly beautiful Beata Milewska. She is dressed in a conservative grey dress with the sharp U shaped neckline, trimmed with black satin ribbon. Underneath the geometric U are black brass buttons that run down to and below her breasts. Blonde, she wears fashionably shorter hair, reaching down just a little above her neck. Her eyes are sparking blue and smiles are amused but slight and measured. I guess her to be in her late twenties or the very early thirties.

Sitting next to her is Tomasz Raczek – supposedly to translate from English, but Beata herself is quite proficient in the language, so other than some whispered consulting, Tomasz is there more as an observer who would eventually be the editor-in-chief of the Polish edition. On my left is our Hungarian Publisher Deszo Futasz and on my right is Rolf Dolina, the man who has gotten us together in hopes that I would be positively impressed by Beata and her ability to gather a qualified team of professionals to create the Polish edition of Playboy.

After landing in still the old and the dilapidated Warsaw-Okecie Airport, as we drive into the city, I witness the remnants still of the city heavily bombed first by the German Luftwaffe in 1939, and then by the Russians in 1944 to quell the Warsaw Uprising. Both sides of the road are lined with the communist era’s drab and dark harsh apartment blocks. Making them further sinister is the shroud of the cold and the cloudy month of January. I cringe at the thought of the lives lived and of deaths and destruction and the dismay that still must permeate the day-to-day lives of its citizens. After all, it’s just little over a year since the fall of the Berlin wall.

Up until then, this is what I know about Beata. She is from Danzig – once the autonomous city state on the Baltic Sea, Gdańsk, nearby to the port of Gdynia . She is currently publishing a woman’s fashion magazine, Bea, in the image of Germany’s Burda Moden, named after its editor and publisher Aenne Burda – likewise she has named the magazine after herself. It speaks of her definite self confidence. Beata is publishing her magazine with very limited or no resources at all. Rolf has come to know of her through his regional manager Wlodzimierz Trzcinski. Beata had approached Wlodzimierz in hopes of selling ad pages to Fuji in her magazine. Instead, Fuji offers to supply all the films Bea needs in exchange of the byline that would say: shot on Fuji films. Not exactly what she is looking for, but the money she would save on films is still substantial – a sort of win-win situation. Rolf is impressed by this young, tenacious and hard working “businesswoman,” – as much as he is with her looks, smarts and sophistication.

The meeting proceeds well. With exception of the others present making their small contributions here and there – it’s basically Beata and me interacting while the rest look on. As we go through issues of Playboy page by page, me explaining and defining them, then throwing questions at Beata. She answers them with earnestness and precision. She seems not only to understand and know the nuts and bolts aspects of building a magazine from cover-to-cover, but also has a genuine feel for the product and its target audience. She has studied various editions of the magazine and has given serious thought to what kind of Playboy she would help create for her country.

As relaxed as the meeting seems, with Tomasz and I drinking beer and everyone else sipping on their coffees, the general air in the room is somewhat tense. Like that in an examination room. Me playing the part of a serious academician conducting orals to Beata’s doctoral candidate. While I am being my natural professional self as I a try to make important points, I am equally as aware of the fact how attractive the woman sitting across the table from me is. She exerts a certain aura that blends in well with her professionalism and very serious business woman demeanor. Her total attention to the every word I utter and her precise responses to my questions and the comments are refreshing. She has certainly done her homework. I can’t help but admire this young woman.

As much as we try to be discreet, frequent eye contacts are inevitable. Every time it happens, I see in her eyes a certain spark and a purple burst of light rays flashing across the table like from the old fashioned revolving flash cubes of the Kodak Instamatic camera. And yet, I know, and Beata is well aware that whether or not we would do Playboy with her hinges upon if I am impressed by her and her answers and have positively gauged her ability to pull it all together.

At the end of our meeting, that lasted a little over two hours, I feel drained. But I still have a long day ahead of me – a quick visit to Rolf’s Fuji operation in Warsaw. Have initial chat with the rep of another Polish prospect, Jerzy Mazur, who has flown in from Gdańsk. Rest of the day, I spend with Deszo and Rolf, have dinner with the Fuji crowd and by the time I return to my room late in the night, I am totally and positively wiped out.

As I hit the sack and think of the busy busy day and the people I have met, is when I realize how impressed I am with Beata. And how I am also taken by her overall beauty and the intelligence – what keeps flashing in my mind is the sparkles of her eyes and their penetrating gaze piercing through mine. As if we two were alone in that room shrouded in the darkness like that of the double apertured camera obscura with twin cones of lights rushing towards each other and colliding mid stream in a fusion. I suddenly feel spent by the undercurrent of the intensity of those two hours.

In Rolf’s opinion, Poland has the potential of being the bigger and the better market than already existing Hungary and soon to be launched Czechoslovakia. But we are in no hurry to move yet. This is January of 1991 and we have ahead of us the launch in Czechoslovakia. And Rolf’s focus is still to first strike an accord with the Czech license holder Vladimir Tichý. We have actually snuck out of Prague for a day just to get a feeling.

Now months later, smitten and encouraged by the success in Czechoslovakia, Rolf and I once again begin to talk Poland. In the meanwhile, on a quick visit to Gdynia in October with Rolf, I have a chance to see Beata again and meet her  partner Tomasz Zięba, whom she would eventually marry. I feel quite comfortable with them. Once again, should we go with it, through his Autraco Holdings, Rolf would bankroll the edition. This time around, now I no longer remember, but believe at Rolf’s suggestion we discuss and for the first time Playboy agrees to go into a joint-venture with Autraco Holdings as one of the two major share holders – Beata and Tomasz would manage the company and would also become its minor shareholders. All the logistics in the place, we begin to work on creating the Polish edition.

Of all the editions I have been a part of launching, the early days are the fun most. There are no pretentions, no pressure. No real deadlines. Something I always insist upon  – it’s a NO GO until we are well and ready. I want us to work simultaneously on three issues. Agree on the details and the definitions of the contents, assign the contributors, make dummies and then revise everything. Plan promotions and advertising campaigns, work on the launch details. This is the time when I excel in my role as the teacher and this is when the team is its most enthusiastic. This is when the adrenaline flows and the creativity takes place. This is when I am hardest on them. The suggestions turn into heavy discussions and the discussions into serious arguments. All work for the good of the magazine, because when we’re ready to launch, almost everyone is in sync. Nothing is more satisfying than the feeling that we have done the best that we could. We have created something we all could be equally as proud of.

This is when we all spend most of the time together, we bond or not, crowd the restaurants and taverns. Brain storm all the while. Still in the formative stage, we barely have proper offices. The publisher finds a space, a few desks and a couple of phone lines, a fax machine and we begin to buzz.

What they have found as our offices is a quaint single family row house on a quiet curved street away from the hubbub of the city center. The two story house is renovated with wood paneled sky lighted loft and exposed beams and the brick walls. The roof is red tiles. The admin offices are on the main floor and up above is editor-in-chief Tomasz Raczek’s office, which is where I am usually parked. Frequently joined by the celebrated artist and the art director Andrzej Pągowski. I love the cozy homey ambience. Once in a while I would climb downstairs and talk with Beata and Tomasz Zięba and their associates about the details of the launch.

Intense, and yet, they would be nice and easy days. The afternoon I still clearly remember as if it were only yesterday is when Beata and I are sitting at the edge of her desk, oblivious to the hurried steps crossing the hallway outside her office door, we are talking in whispers. Not exactly the business. And somewhere along the line we are holding hands, not unlike lovers. We have developed a special kind of rapport in which I wrote in my journal during one of those early days – we are becoming to be good friends – buddies if you may. Now she has longer hair that billow over and caress her shoulders. She is dressed in casual slacks and a loose fitting top. Her face wears her usual friendly and seductive smiles. Things are moving along fine and we’re relaxed – sitting side by side on the edge of her desk. We are reminiscing about that first time when we had sat across the table from each other at the Holiday Inn conference room, now a year and a half in the past.

‘Do you remember still?’ Beata asks.

‘How can I forget? I had immediately fallen in love with you, you know? I was so taken by how beautiful you were! And the blinding sparkle of your blue eyes! But I had to maintain my professional demeanor and concentrate on doing my job.’

‘While I was a nervous wreck.’

‘I know, it was tense. But nervous?’

‘And then your intense gaze! As if you were looking right through me. Your deep dark brown eyes, penetrating like two sharp arrows. It was difficult controlling myself.’

‘Yes.’ She responds. And then there is sudden silence between us.

‘I came home and cried!’ I hear her whisper.

© Haresh Shah 2015

Illustration: Celia Rose Marks

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TABLE OF CONTENTSThe list and the synopsis of all 90 published blog posts.

Next Friday, February 27, 2015

Yup! That’s the power of cuddly Bunny for you. A story of the young man’s falling in love with the idea of publishing Playboy in Poland, while having no clue what it really takes to create a magazine. But when you’re in love?

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

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.

The Reverse Migration To El Sur

Haresh Shah

Had she submitted today, a polaroid wearing only a tan and mascara, just to see if I could make the cut, she certainly would have been considered seriously and most probably made it as Playmate of the Month in the U.S. Playboy. In the year 2015, with the dramatically altered demographics and with the both political parties wooing the ever growing Latino population, what could be better than to have a born in Glendale, California of Mexican parents, a natural beauty, raven haired, five feet tall with voluptuous hourglass figure, the dark brown eyes, seductively and invitingly looking back at you? At 24, she is in her prime and has already been a part of a study program at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark and has earned her B.A. in Theatre Arts from Whittier College. A perfect fusion of beauty and the brain – an ideal girl next door.

But thirty five years ago her chances of being approved were slim to none. Even to the casual observer it would be obvious that the basic attributes of the majority of the published Playmates up until then could be summed up with Blonde, Blue Eyes, Big Boobs. Not that there were no exceptions. Once in a while an ethnic Playmate would sneak in, by and large, Playboy’s Eliza Doolittles shared the above three attributes. The girl next door, turned into My Fair Lady in the image of Henry Higgins of Playboy empire’s Hugh M. Hefner himself. And yet, when an exotic beauty showed up at one of the magazine’s studios, the photo editors couldn’t resist the urge to try her – just in case. She could turn out to be the one of those few and far in-between. Often times, after the initial internal voting, she wouldn’t even be presented to the MAN! Most of them would end up in their slush files, never to be looked at again.

Editors felt not so good about having to reject someone outright – someone who could have been a promising candidate. By then they would have also known the girl and may even have liked her at personal level. But not much they could do. There were other limitations: a sign tacked on the cork wall of Chicago based Playmate editor Janice Moses said: BUT WE ONLY NEED TWELVE A YEAR! Alluding to the fact that hundreds of girls presented themselves at Playboy’s door steps in hopes of maybe, just maybe being picked to become the next month’s Playmate. Perhaps even Playmate of the Year. But now with the Foreign Editions having firmly established themselves, they had an option for such an exotic beauty, especially the  ones with foreign ethnic backgrounds.

One of the first such candidates to land on my desktop was a pile of 35 mm slides of Elda Mareea Lopez, sent to me from our Los Angeles studio chief, Marilyn Grabowski. The brief hand written  note on the inter-office pink memo paper said: perhaps you can use her. I think she is gorgeous and is absolutely delightful in person. Judging from those hundred or so frames, she certainly is gorgeous. And when I first meet her, she is beyond being delightful. She is down home muy simpatica!

What strikes me oddly intriguing about her even before I put the Lupe to her slides is the way she has spelt her middle name in the Playmate Data Sheet. She has spelt it Mareea instead of usual Maria. I guess, she is looking for her very own identity, distinguishing herself from practically every female of the Latin origin with virgin Mary squeezed in somewhere in to their names.

To Marilyn’s perhaps you can use her, I immediately think, she could be our first Mexican Playmate! Now they won’t have any excuse not to have one. It’s been almost three years that we have been on the tails of our Mexican publishers about the need for us to have some authentic Mexican Playmates, which would allow us to promote the edition in a way we couldn’t by inviting American Playmates to the south of the border. Finally we are able to convince Ricardo Ampudia, how important it is to have a local girl next door Playmate to grace the pages of our Mexican edition.

Over a weekend while both Al Debat – our Chicago based departmental manager and also a professional photographer and I were in Mexico City, Ricardo tells us that he has just the right  Playmate candidate. Al and I agree to a quick test shoot and take it from there. Ricardo invites us to his house for breakfast on a Saturday morning and we are to do the shoot in his garden. Al and I together shoot eight rolls of films.

Ricardo’s backyard is fairly private with tall and dense bushes. It is a well tended garden with gleaming tropical plants and colorful flowers. The grass is lush and well manicured. The sun is shining bright and it’s warm, but being February not too warm to be hot and humid. The name of the girl he introduces us is Blanca. She is probably in her early twenties with the body that’s fresh and well proportioned and vibrant. She is pretty and she is naturally blonde of the original Spanish stock. And she is far from being shy. Especially considering that she is surrounded by not just the two of us – as it usually would be, but by several people milling around.

The whole tabloid looks like a scene set for a comedy waiting for the curtain to rise. There are two maids constantly walking in and out crossing the grounds, bringing us fresh juices and refreshments. There is the gardener pretending to tend and trim the floras. His teenage son is trying his best not to look at the naked Blanca prancing around, and yet he can’t help but steal a glance whenever he thinks nobody is watching. Fortunately, Blanca seems comfortable in her bare skin. As adorable and beautiful as she is as a young girl, both Al and I think she would one day turn into drop dead gorgeous. She is natural, almost animal like in the way she moves so unconsciously and happily humming to herself. Her smiles are contagious and seductive. She is more like a cuddly pet who you want to hold close and hug. And she is game for anything you ask her to do and pose so naturally without any inhibitions. She is the kind who would do anything to please you and be pleased by it herself. Neither Al nor I spoke any Spanish at the time, so we couldn’t communicate one on one – but we do. Our non-verbal or interpreted communication works just fine. At some point, you can’t help but feel parental and protective of her. That night I write in my journal: Wish you always could stay as happy. Keep singing and smiling.

As unprofessional and as unplanned as the shooting, it is fun. We spend a very pleasant weekend day. Now I am trying to think whatever happened to that shoot and Blanca? I am just  imagining. She probably changed her mind. Or ran into the trouble with her parents. Or Ricardo decided against it. But most likely because not too long after, the magazine changed hands. She just got lost in the shuffle. With the new publishers, I would start all over again, pushing for local Playmates. They would always agree with me, but give me the same excuse: but we can’t find anyone qualified enough willing to pose in the nude, you know how conservative our society is?. By then I knew Mexico well and also spoke Spanish, and knew better how it would be easier to take to bed one of the society girls, but almost impossible to convince them to pose in the nude.

But now we had an option in Elda. Not that she didn’t have any family concerns. But as she herself tells it: I had already been very independent. My mother I’m sure was surprised and being a good Catholic woman had her doubts, and was perhaps privately fervently saying prayers for my soul, yet she accepted it without protest. My father at one point said, “Mija, it’s not a bad magazine”. He seemed calm about it, but again, privately not so sure.

Excited, I pick up the phone and call Eduardo Gongorra – our new publisher in Mexico City.

‘I’ve found ourselves a Mexican Playmate!’

And other than the obvious, I go on to tell him how I envision it happening. We can build a story around her Mexican heritage and have her reverse migrate through her photos and the presence in flesh and blood in Mexico. We could stage a promotional event for the invited VIPs and the media. Present her as our first Mexican Playmate. That Playboy’s  test shoot was good enough for us to use and would cost us nothing. All we needed was to shoot the cover and the centerfold, which I could produce in Chicago, have her photographed by our star photographer Pompeo Posar.

Soon as I hang up, I call Los Angeles. I introduce myself and tell Elda what I was thinking. She sounds so sweet and absolutely delighted. During the conversation, I find out that she doesn’t speak much Spanish. That creates bit of a problem. But I am too far gone with the idea and in the meanwhile, so is Eduardo. We agree, we would build her story around her being the USA born full blooded Mexican. After several phone calls between Mexico City and Los Angeles, I invite her to Chicago, and schedule the cover and the centerfold shoots.

Everything goes according to the plan. With big fanfare the first Mexican Playmate travels from Los Angeles to Mexico City. She is received warmly and enthusiastically. She is presented to the invited guests at Hotel Camino Real, standing in the front of the bigger than life size image of her in the backdrop is the April 1981 cover of CABALLERO con lo mejor de Playboy – as the magazine was then called. As it turns out, our fears were unfounded. If not fluent, Elda did have some command of the language – that mixed with English, she does just fine.

She feels pampered and loved in the Mother Land. They host a dinner  in her honor, it was a good feeling. And Elda joins the ranks of a very few Playmates, she gets to write her own text to accompany her layout. Even though she didn’t make it in to the pages of the mother edition in el Norte, she got a real taste of the world of Playboy. Thanks to her appearance in the Mexican edition: I met Hef, silk pajamas and all. He was gracious, kind and hospitable. The home and grounds were lovely. I had many a fun time at the mansion! Happy ending!

But this is a Mexican story, so it doesn’t end there. Soon, perhaps also because of all the press coverage generated brouhaha, the authorities decree that name of a magazine cannot be a  common noun. Never mind that Caballero has been around and officially registered for a dozen some years even before joining forces with Playboy – the name long been officially banned in the country.

Panicked, Eduardo calls. But in a country like Mexico, you don’t just walk away from the table just because the rules of the game have arbitrarily changed mid stream by the powers that be. You try to beat them at their own game. Eduardo needs an immediate approval from Chicago to change the name of the magazine from Caballero to Signore, which also means gentleman, but in Italian – not to confuse with Spanish Señor. So Signore it becomes overnight and so it remains up until June 1984, when the authorities finally relent and allow the magazine to be called Playboy.  We re-re-launch, this time with the Mexican born and grown starlet/singer Elizabeth Aguilar as the Playmate.

In the meanwhile, to lend the magazine authentic continuity, Elda makes an encore appearance in May 1982 on the cover of Signore. Now at 58, she looks stunning as ever, not a girl any more but a very attractive grown woman. Over a telephone conversation, I compliment her on her well preserved looks: you still could drive some honest man to cheat on his wife. To which, I got a chuckle out of her with funny! Because it’s the subject very close to her heart in that she has written an entire book titled The (In) Fidelity Factor – Points to Ponder Before You Cheat. But like the good old German saying goes, spass muss sein – fun must  exist. The most important is: We have remained close friends over the decades and have become shoulders for each other to cry on.

© Haresh Shah 2015

Illustration: Celia Rose Marks

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Next Friday, February 13, 2015

Not only because what I did for a living required extensive amount of flying around the world, but even otherwise I love to fly. The excitement and the adventure of it, the feeling of being totally disconnected from the world, being able to kick back and relax. And being pampered – not only in the First and the Business Classes, but all across the cabins. And airports were the civilized places from where to leave and arrive at. Sadly, no more. And I can’t help but feel soooo nostalgic about those truly good old days!

A Lesson In The Linguistic Sexism

Haresh Shah

My first encounter with ová came in early 1991, when we were putting together the first issue of the Czech edition of Playboy. I noticed on the proposed cover, Pamela Anderson having become Pamela Andersonová. First I thought it was a typo, so I brought it up to the attention of then editor-in-chief Jaroslav Matejka. No, apparently it wasn’t an error. That’s how the Czechs called their women and Anderson in its Czech version had to be Andersonová. Even after Jaroslav gave me an elaborate explanation on the Czech language and its grammar, it didn’t quite fit my logic. At that time I didn’t know any Czech at all, even so, I was not swayed. I did not want them to Czechify a person’s name. It would be like calling Paul Pavel and Michelle Michaela. I am particularly sensitive about this – perhaps all my life living in the West, I have had often to fend off people’s attempts at turning Haresh into Harry. The first issue came out with hers and dozens of other featured foreign females with their original names.

Fast forward several years. When in 1998, I arrived in Prague to live and work, I began to learn the language almost immediately. Now we are close to the year 2000. After having been consultant to the stable of Mona magazines for two years, when I came up with the concept for Serial and was appointed its editor-in-chief, one of the first things I began to do was to write the style for the magazine that would set down basic guidelines about what should be italicized, what must appear in bold, how we would credit the contributors, the tone of our articles and above all, that no foreign female names will be ovaized. We would never call them Leticia Calderónová or Natalia Oreirová. The management and my managing editor Alice (Mackeová ne Sedliská) were cool. They had no problem with that. But the first and the subsequent editors we hired, did. The first one argued with me to no end, citing the sacredness of the grammar, the tradition and such.  One of my young graphics, Štepan Urban even went as far as telling me, without ová how could you tell the difference between whether it was a male or a female we were talking about?

Whether or not I convinced anybody, I do not know. But after having given a serious thought to the subject, this is something I had set down as a rule, and once again I prevailed and was very comfortable with my decision. Especially, now also because I knew the basics of the language and was convinced more than ever that this was the right thing to do. The editors were somewhat pacified at the fact that our part time proof reader was a professor of languages at Charles University and once having discussed the matter with him, he too didn’t have any problem with it. What is more, a few months later when Mona came out with our sister publication Beau Monde, they too chose to drop ová. And a bit by bit, even the press releases from the network television began to arrive with the original foreign names. Now Alice heads four magazines and from their very beginning, they too have remained with the foreign names unaltered.

In the meantime, I began to learn Czech in earnest and as difficult as I found it to be, something about the language seemed quite familiar to me. The real problem was not the vocabulary or even the pronunciations with their ě-č-š-ř-ž-ý-á-í-é, the words devoid of vowels and the long compound words like in German. Did I say German? Bingo! Of course because the Czech being one of the Indo-Germanic languages, it stems from the ancient Sanskrit – also the root of the most modern Indian languages. In Czech, I ran across huge amount of similar sounding vocabulary with identical meanings. Then why was I having such a hard time with the Czech? Those damn seven cases and their declensions. That’s why. Sanskrit even has eight cases! And still. Because the modern Indian languages have done away with those complicated cases and long never-ending compound words as in Sanskrit have simplified the entire structure of the grammar. The Czechs have managed to and still cling to the ancient rules of Sanskrit. Perhaps subconsciously to keep the foreigners out? As would make sense in a xenophobic culture that often characterizes them? Or more likely, in the tradition of the converts who tend to adhere to the rigid covenants than do the ones born into it?

Ironically, I would run into Playboy’s Jaroslav Matejka at Mona. Now working for one of their magazines, Květy. When I casually mentioned our original tussle over ová, and how he now felt about not only Playboy, but other in-house titles such as my Serial, Beau Monde and Story also having dropped the suffix, he shrugged his shoulders and gave me his impish smile. Still not conceding.

Whatever! The real problem came two years later when Serial was discontinued by Mona and we went across the city to Prima Televize and re-launched the magazine which we called Tv Tip Serial, under the umbrella of their publishing division, Good Harvest spol. s.r.o.. Petr Kořinek had become the general director of the of three magazines that also contained Mlady svět, and Recepty na prima napadu. In order to streamline the operation and maximize the human resources, Petr asked us if we could share proof readers from Mlady svět. I had no problems with that.

When the Mlady svět ladies Jana and Andrea saw the elimination of ová in our pages, they were absolutely horrified.  They barged into our offices at a time when I wasn’t around and created an uproar about the desecration of the Czech language. Editors Alice and Gabriela Koulová tried to explain to them that this was our magazine’s style as set by me and that was that. This wasn’t enough for them. They persisted and insisted that their job was to see to it that the usage of the language was proper and correct and what we were doing was absolutely against the rules, and thus compromising their professionalism. At some point editors said these rules were set by the editor-in-chief Haresh Shah, and if they felt so strongly about it then they had to speak with me.

Huffing and puffing, they returned to our office that afternoon soon after I had arrived. Having already briefed-in, I was prepared for the showdown. Even so, I first listened to what they had to say and then told them, I understood their sentiments and appreciated their professionalism and their concern for the language, however, not adding on ová to the foreign names was well thought out and established style in Tv Tip Serial, and that was that. I was not open to any further discussion on the subject. They threatened they would not do it. My answer was, in that case they should talk with the Pan Ředitel and we would have to find someone else or go back to our regular proof reader. Petr obviously sided with us, but he respected editors of the other two magazines for keeping the tradition.

When nothing worked, Jana and Andrea went on a campaign to sabotage TVTS by adding ovás to the foreign names that were never there because all our contributors knew what our style was. Took us hours to remove them all before continuing with corrections. It became their personal mission to protect the purity of the language. When sabotaging didn’t work, they decided they did not want to appear in our masthead as the proof readers. With which we complied and eventually found someone else to work with us. Ironically, one of them was a student of the professor who did proof reading for us prior to them. When I mentioned this to them, their retort was: “he must be doing it for the money!” As if they were doing it for anything else!

A year and half after my brush with the two purists, when I came to my office and opened the most recent issue that had landed on my desk that morning, the ová had magically reappeared in many of the articles. Must be a contributor who just out of sheer habit had turned in the piece that way. But that shouldn’t have made a difference, because first the editor in charge should have caught it, and if she missed, it was our new proof reader’s job to eliminate them. I called the editor in charge, and instead of explaining, she went into the patriotic mode and began to argue with me about the Czech language. It was such a déjà vu. I didn’t know whether to scream and shout or just break down and cry. How would you like it if they changed your name from Novaková  to Novak when you arrive at a Western airport because it isn’t their tradition to add ová to a female name? I tried to put it into perspective. Obviously to no avail. But in my magazine, foreign female names were to remain sans ová, and that was that.

Other than young Štepan and Jaroslav, the most everyone who argued with me were women of all ages. The argument I often thought about and failed to make was the question that constantly nagged me. Why would any woman in the 21st century – Czech or otherwise, want to be “owned” by males of the species? The suffix ová means that you belong or are owned by the whoever’s name it’s added to. As a girl, she would belong and be owned by her father. As a grown up married woman, her ownership would be transferred to her husband. Shouldn’t they be instead marching down Václavské náměstí demanding for the yoke of ová to be removed from around their necks?  Or better yet, unilaterally tear it off with their bare hands!

One of my teachers, Olga Nádvorníková even jokes about the extent of sexism in the Czech language: If there were a group of a hundred women walking down the street and walking along with them were a single male dog, describing the crowd in plural would assume masculine form! Wow! The expression she has picked up and uses frequently from her short visit to the States, and then lets out a big laugh. So the Czech women seem to have not only accepted their fate, but also desperately cling to the status quo, with rare exceptions. One of them I recently came across on the web in an article published in LA Times dated June 26, 2009, by Henry Chu about Lucie Kundera, the Czech woman who though took her husband’s name but refused to add suffix ová: because [it means] you are owned by your husband.  Bravo! There maybe some more, but up until now, I haven’t heard even a small movement or a concern about it.

Some years ago when I was no longer living in Prague and am visiting the city, I meet with Jaroslav one evening at the riverfront pizzeria Fresco Vento. Now he is an editor at Mlada fronta’s weekly supplement E15. Actually I am doing for him Poznamká Hareshe Shaha, an opinion column and am also contributing an occasional travel piece. This is like almost twenty years later. As a part of our nostalgic conversation, ová comes up.

‘What do you think about it now?’

‘Well, I think then I was a bit rigid and naïve.’ He concedes as much. The same impish smile crosses his face.

© Haresh Shah

Illustration: Celia Rose Marks

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Next Friday, February 6, 2015

The beauty is universal and to give it a geographical designation is futile. And yet, the very phrase, the girl next door does just that. But the beauty of it is: the girl next door can also come from far away. An intimate profile of the Playmate who migrated South of the border.

Crushed Under The Brutal Boots Of The Fascist

Haresh Shah

Having launched in Germany, Italy and France, the next natural Western European country for us to explore should have been Spain. But as long as Generalissimo Francisco Franco was alive and ruled the land, there was no way in the hell anyone could even dream of publishing the local edition of Playboy. But almighty Franco had to die sooner or later. After all, he was already eighty years old when we launched in Germany. All we could do was to wait it out. Soon as Franco died in 1975, the wheels began to turn and we were approached by several interested Spanish publishers. Among them Editorial Zeta and Editorial Planeta. We launched the Spanish edition of Playboy with Planeta in November of 1978. Me ending up spending fair amount of time in the most charming city of Barcelona, which almost immediately usurped Munich and Amsterdam as being my two most loved cities on the European continent.

The fact that there were even interested and established publishers to partner with in itself was a big leap forward. You could almost feel the euphoria and can’t help but be carried away by the sudden snapping free of the tightly wound cords. But what you don’t see is the underlying fear and apprehension of the recent past, the anarchy of the fascism and that certain uncertain feeling that the beautiful dream could easily collapse like a house of cards. As I walked the streets of Barcelona, I could feel the big bald and angry face of Franco peering through every window, standing at every street corner. Fortunately, other than Franco’s ghost hovering over, King Juan Carlos I put the country on to the steady path of democracy.

A scant a year later, when Lee (Hall) first asked me to take a trip to Santiago, Chile, just having seen the stern faced images of then the absolute dictator of the country, Augusto Pinochet  was enough to put the fear of God in you. The House of Spirit by Jose Donoso and Pablo Neruda’s Memoires helped ease the fear, but not the assassination of Orlando Letelier, his car blown up in the broad daylight under Pinochet’s Operation Condor, while he was in exile in Washington, DC. And the ruthless coup d’état that overthrew and assassinated the first democratically elected Marxist President Salvador Allende.

I had not yet been to the Latin American countries that formed the tail of the continent referred to as the southern cone or cono sur. Of those, Argentina and Chile. The best way to get there is via Los Angeles. I think Braniff still flies there non-stop from LA to Santiago, Lee informs me. Which seemed odd, considering that in theory, from Chicago you should be able to fly directly down south. Now they do, but then that’s how it was.

It’s an overnight flight so I don’t have much time to think about my arrival and what may await at the airport. During the flight, I can’t help but notice the stark inequality between the have and the have not’s. I am traveling in the first and seated in the eighth  row, and believe there are a couple of rows still behind me. That’s almost twice as many first class seats as on most other routes. And each one of those seats are taken. This normally is not the case. While now almost all airlines offer the seats that stretch out into flat beds in their business and the first classes, at that time the seats offered were wider and tilted farther with a foot rest. Better than in back of the plane but not as comfortable and as good as being able to stretch out across an entire row of five seats with their arm rests flipped back, in the economy. The first class is packed solid not with the businessmen, but with the families including kaccha-baccha – kids and caboodle, making big ruckus. How am I supposed to even attempt to fall asleep?

So after dinner, I peek through the curtain in the back of the plane. The larger economy cabin is practically empty with many unoccupied rows. So I downgrade myself and claim one of the rows. I happily skip the breakfast for an extra hour of sleep.

Soon we’re landing in Santiago. I am fully prepared for the poker faced passport and immigration officers. What I am worried about the most are the issues of Playboy I am carrying in my baggage.

‘Don’t worry. Things have eased. Plus we’ll have “arranged” everything.’ They tell me.

It’s just a small airport – our large aircraft purring on the tarmac dwarfs the smattering of small regional and private flying machines. We step down the rolled-in stairs from the airplane’s open door. It’s summer in the southern hemisphere and outside it’s warm and sunny. It’s after one in the afternoon. Standing by the plane is Herman Valerius the General Manager for Empresa Editora Gabriela Mistral’s small publishing division. They are the contrary’s largest  printing company. I am welcomed like a visiting dignitary. Herman grabs my passport and the ticket and hands them over to the man standing next to him. Within minutes, he comes back with my passport duly stamped. My bags picked up and tucked into the back of the VW mini-bus waiting for us on the tarmac. And I am whisked away.

I am staying at the Sheraton. That night I am the guest of honor on the prime time variety entertainment TV show being broadcast live from the hotel’s poolside. I am not aware that the camera is focused on me until the host announces in Spanish and English: Ladies and gentlemen, tonight we have a very special guest in the audience, who has flown in this afternoon from Chicago. Please welcome Mr. Haresh Shah of one and the only Playboy magazine. Applause applause.

While I stand up and take a bow bathed in the glow of the flood light, I am not feeling that glow inside. Instead, what crosses my mind is that I am being beamed live and perhaps the mighty Augusto Pinochet himself is watching me standing there – and a sudden jolt of fear scurries through my nerve system. I imagine myself being put away in one of the torture chambers of the Pinochet machine for attempting to peddle pornography in his exclusive domain, never to be seen again, like thousands of desaparecidos – the disappeared ones. I have left behind at home, the woman who loves me and ten months old daughter.

But my fear is groundless. I spend very pleasant and productive eight days with the Chileans. We work on the first issue. I am treated to some of the best restaurants, bars and discotheques of the city. We would invariably end the evening at Red Pub, a cozy European style sidewalk café  owned and run by Herman and his wife Veronika.  I have a sumptuous dinner at La Estancia the second night of my stay with GM’s three owners: Juan Fernandez, Guillermo Tolosa and Rodolfo Letelier, and of course Herman. On the Saturday afternoon, we even take a quick ride to Viña del Mar for a bird’s eye view of their seaside wine region. It is during those few days that I get to know and begin to like and appreciate the Chilean wines.

By the time I leave Santiago, we have pretty much agreed on the contents and the layouts of the entire first issue – which is actually going to be just one shot test issue. Coffee table perfect bound book, printed on glossy heavier paper, containing the Playmates of the Years from 1969 through 1979, and it’s designed to be a Latin American product which would have an interview with Argentina’s star football coach Luis Menotti and include the works of the Chilean sculptor Juan Egenau Moore, Peruvian author Mario Vargas Llosa, Bolivia’s Botero. The publication is scheduled for March 1980 to wait out the summer vacation in Chile and to give ourselves enough time to gather the material. I board the plane, feeling content and good about my trip. But the issue would be further delayed and  would not come out until more than a year later, in June 1981.

Whatever the reason, I guess they mainly wanted to wait out  the confirmation of the modest political liberation taking place which had helped boost Chile’s economy between 1976 to 1979. When the new constitution was announced in March 1981, did they feel more comfortable bringing out the magazine. Even so, Pinochet would remain in power until 1989 and therefore the ultimate law of the land. What finally nudged him out was the national referendum with 55% of population voting resounding NO to the 43% saying YES to his run for an extended term.

The first issue hand delivered to us by Herman Valerius and Rodolfo Letelier at Playboy International Publishing’s 1981 annual conference taking place at Playboy Club in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. Proud as can be and glowing in their success of having sold out the first print run of 100,000 + copies within days. The second printing already ordered, they are there to justly join the expanding family of the world wide editions of Playboy.

Halfway through the conference, I have just introduced one of the editors to do his audio-visual presentation and have sat down, when I see my secretary Teresa (Velazquez) hurriedly coming down the aisle and scoot right next to me. I follow her out of the meeting room and into the lobby of the club. Standing there are Herman and Rodolfo, looking like as if they have been hit by a boulder.

‘Didn’t want to leave without saying goodbye to you, but I am sorry, we have to return to Santiago immediately. There is an emergency regarding the reprint of Playboy. We will call  you as soon as we have dealt with the crisis.’ Says Herman while Rodolfo looks on nervously. Teresa has helped them re-book and the limo is waiting outside to take them to the O’Hare International Airport.

Two days later, I am told that while the plant awaited the distribution truck to pick up the second print run, instead a military truck shows up and hauls away the pallets of the freshly printed second run of the magazine. All 50,000 or so copies confiscated by the thugs of the regime. Playboy magazine’s Chilean edition, like its people disappears as suddenly as it had appeared and before it had a chance to grow. Nipped right in the bud.

But that wasn’t the end of it. Some years later when I saw Herman and Veronika on a visit to Chicago, he told me rest of the story. Not only did they confiscate the magazine, but also arrested and imprisoned the principal owner Juan Fernandez.

Following the referendum, Pinochet would step down as the President on March 11, 1990 when the democratically elected Patricio Aylwin took the office. Even so, Pinochet remained as the commander of the country’s armed forces until 1998 and beyond that become a senator-for-life. Later that year, while traveling in England, he was detained by the British authorities at the request of Spain and charged with the torture of Spanish citizens in Chile during his reign. When the British court ruled in 2000 that he was physically unfit to stand trial, he was allowed to go back to Chile just to be investigated by the Chilean authorities. He was stripped of his immunity from prosecution and was brought to trial for the human rights abuses in Chile. In 2002, Chilean Supreme Court upheld the British ruling that he was mentally incapable of defending himself. Disgraced, he died in 2006.

However, no one has since then dared bring out the Chilean edition of Playboy.

© Haresh Shah 2015

Illustration: Celia Rose Marks

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Next Friday, January 30, 2015

There are times when you run into little problems with big implications that you would have never even imagined in your wildest dreams. And so it was while putting together the first issue of Playboy in the Czech, I realized that they had Czehified the names of all the foreign females by adding the suffix – ová to their last names. The linguistic battle I had to fight more than once.

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?’

‘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

Other Profiles

Next Friday, January 23, 2015

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.

As Long As There Is Hope

Haresh Shah

Up until then it was the coldest winter I had ever experienced. In January 1984, the temperatures in Chicago area dipped as low as -40 to -50 degrees and chilling wind went through your bones like a sharp spear of an arrow. Nasim (Yar Khan) had come to visit from Germany. I had brought for him some extra warm clothes to the airport, because even from the arrival hall to the garage would have him frozen if not wrapped up in some additional layers over his heavy winter clothes from Europe. Even though the furnace was running twenty four hours a day, the heat generated just wasn’t enough to keep our rickety old house comfortably warm.  The windows were all frozen and from the inside looking out, what you saw was your mirror image.  Carolyn and I took turns waking up every few hours through the night and brave the elements – heavily bundled up and ran across the 50 feet (15.2 meters) backyard to the garage and start both of our cars and run them for fifteen to twenty minutes to make sure none of the mechanism cracked and that they would run the next morning.  Even so, there was always a danger of one of them breaking down in the middle of nowhere, in which case, it would have been absolutely devastating trying to escape anywhere.

They constantly told us all day and all night long, please don’t drive unless you must. Stay home, and try to keep as warm as possible.  It was not beyond reason that our good old antique furnace could just give up at any moment. But it marched on. Except the water in the radiator in my study froze and a hairline crack appeared through the thick metal casing.

And yet, you can’t stop living.  We bunched up in the newer of the two cars, Rosy Renault and drove some thirty miles to South Holland from Evanston to have dinner with Denise and the Abbott clan. It was hairy on the way back. The car was making all sorts of clanging noises  that we had never heard before.  The gear shift was behaving a bit funny, but we had already reached the cruising speed and inside the car was relatively warm. We all held our breaths, probably each one of us praying in our own way that the car would stand up to the brutal cold and the wind chill, and would get us all home safe.  It did.

All huddled together in the living room in front of the roaring fire place, I broke out a bottle of Rémy  Martin  and we somehow managed to keep ourselves warm. That was also the winter I remember sitting in an elegant restaurant in Paris with my camel hair top coat on and the warm leather gloves, because it was so fucking cold. And that was the winter when during the weekend, my favorite, so lovingly planted by Carolyn inside a beautiful maroon ceramic pot for which she had hand macraméd the plant hanger in the matching color – the  Wandering Jew or the plant name of Zebrina Pendula, hanging by the window in my office had over the weekend frozen to death. It made me sad, but looking at it, nothing I could do. I took it off the hook on the ceiling and discarded it by the garbage can.

Unbeknown to me, my secretary Teresa Velazquez had somehow salvaged a few twigs that too were frozen, but must not have looked all that dead to her. She put them in a jar filled with water by her desk and nurtured them with the tender loving care. Miraculously, in a few months those twigs had healed and grown and sprouted. She transplanted them back into its original pot, and I had my plant back hanging by the window, healthier and of the fuller head than ever. I took it home when I left the company, and was still around fourteen years later, up until I left to live in Prague.  Now I’m trying to think who did I give it to?  It’s probably still prospering somewhere.

I would think of it a dozen years later sitting in my apartment in Prague. The very first week that I had moved into my well furnished and amply lit attic apartment with the high ceilings and slanted skylights on Přícná 7, I had bought four potted plants to give the place some homey feeling. Over the six years, the big palm tree had grown into the greenest and the tallest, almost touching the ceiling. I gave it to my friend Jana (Dvořáčková) when I moved back to Chicago in 2006. When I talked to her earlier this week, she told me that it’s still well and alive and towering over everything in her apartment.

There were also two smaller variety of the palm. One I had placed by the window in the living room and the other in my bedroom. One in the living room too has grown by leaps and bounds – not so the one in the bedroom. It looked sick. I moved it also to the living room by the window. It got even sicker. Every so often when I looked at it and its fading luster and the falling leaves, it seemed less and less likely to survive much longer. I even had the owner of the nearby plant and flower shop from whom I had originally bought them come and look at it and followed his suggestions. I  changed the location, given it plant vitamin and watered it religiously. Nothing was working. I said to myself, no use keeping it around anymore, the time has come to get rid of it. When Anjuli was visiting some months earlier, we together looked at it and she too agreed that sometimes you have to let go. The only reason it remained in the house was procrastination. It remained in the living room, in the clear view in the broad daylight, and yet, I didn’t “see” it.  Almost forgotten about it.

And then suddenly, a couple of months later my eyes fell upon it. The plant as I knew was dead.  It had shed all the leaves over the period of those months. The branches looked dry and brittle and old.  And yet, as if by a miracle, I noticed at the bottom near the soil, the new leaves were sprouting like starbursts from the same old branches. There was one spurt first, then there were two, and now there were seven, some sprouting even from underneath the soil. And they look healthy, light translucent green with thin delicate red trim to every leaf. Incredible!

Why was I thinking of it that morning?

Because I had been feeling quite lonely. By then I had been living in Prague for almost eight years. Professionally speaking, my post – Playboy years of living and working in the Czech Republic had been good. Socially, not so. It didn’t help that I had now chosen not to continue to work nine to five. Because as much as I enjoyed being alone, I was and am a people person. I need interaction. Without a regular job, there was practically none. Unfortunately, I did not have a single friend with whom I could do things or hang out with on a regular basis. I saw people sporadically, mainly when they would have time and not necessarily when I needed them. Also, I was sort of lost as to what should be my next step and where should I go from there. This all got  me down, especially the loneliness. There were times when I didn’t see anyone for several days – except for waiters and waitresses and shop keepers. This depressed me to no end.

I’m basically a positive person, quite optimistic. My theme song is the recently deceased Austrian singer Udo Jürgen’s Immer immer wieder geht die Sonne auf – always, always again rises the sun. And the Fleetwood Mac hit, Don’t stop thinking about tomorrow, yesterday’s gone, yesterday’s gone.  I’m good at giving people and also to myself pep talk. Whenever I feel down and out, I prop myself up. Pat myself on the back.  Tell myself, it will be better.  Something positive will happen.  Soon! Soon when?  Wasn’t eight years more than enough time?

Perhaps time had come for me to move on and away. I would never have friends and the people close to me the way I did in other countries I had lived in. This of course was quite depressing. It was getting harder and harder to pump myself up, to refuel and crank up the motor.

That morning, like many others, I woke up feeling somewhat to quite depressed.  And when it got me down too far, I thought of the dead Wandering Jew in my office and then looked at the sprouting leaves of the baby palm in my apartment. I knew, you never give up, because ironically, as the Czech saying goes: naděje umírá poslední – hope dies last.

© Haresh Shah 2015

Illustration: Celia Rose Marks

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Next Friday, January 16, 2015

I wonder if anyone even remembers or has a concept of what a traveling agent is? That how easier it was to book a ticket and take care of all your traveling needs just by picking up the phone and calling your agent? A profile of Satya Dev – the one who walked the extra mile so that you can put your feet up on the desk top and read the newspaper.

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 20th 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 Quranwhitish 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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Playboy Stories to return on Friday, January 09, 2015

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.

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

As announced last week

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

Haresh Shah

My Not So Intimate Encounters With Italy And France

The first time I landed in the land of Ciao Bella and O sole mio, they dumped our baggage on the tarmac next to the aircraft, barely said sorry and told us we would have to carry it to the terminal ourselves – that the ground personnel had just decided to go on a strike. A bit different story when I first arrived at Charles de Gaulle in Paris. I am met at the airport by Gerrit Huig and the editorial assistant Ann Scharffenberger. They talk me into and I unwittingly agree to drive us through the city in our rented little Citroën. Though I had taken lessons in driving a car with manual transmission, this is my first time trying it out without an instructor sitting next to me. I haven’t yet gotten the knack of synchronizing the gears with the accelerator and the breaks. The car would shudder, stall and come to an abrupt stop in the middle of swirling rush hour traffic. Happens several times on the Arc de Triumph round-about. I get furious faces, obscene yelling  that I don’t understand, French version of the finger and then silly mocking giggles from my two passengers. But I somehow manage to survive both welcomes. Not exactly j’taime.

Now years later, I wonder whether my first flights into Milan and Paris were symbolic of my not so close relationships with the romance lands. I can’t even remember how I was welcomed when I first flew into Rome years later. Quite in contrast to the recent Lufthansa ad proclaiming: Seduced by Paris. Inspired by Rome. And I can see why. What is there not to love about the countries with the history so rich, the languages so sweet and sexy, so languid and full of l’amore and l’amour. And yet, no matter how many trips I would end up taking to the either over the next two decades, they never warmed up to me. Likewise, as natural as I am with learning languages, as hard and long as I have tried to learn the Italian and the French, they both have eluded me.

And so have the people. Beyond the business, people just went home. Of course there were some  dinners and a bit of socializing now and then, but by and far when I think of the huge amount of time I spent in Milan, Paris and Rome, what I remember the most are the evenings when I often found myself sitting in elegant restaurants all by myself, slowly savoring their delicious Euro-Mediterranean cuisine, sipping on their exquisite wines and contemplating life. In Paris, when I finally managed to get Annick Geile, the editor-in-chief of the French edition out to lunch, while we have hardly set down at our outdoor table, she turns her wrist to look at her watch, and as if talking to herself, whispers: my days are divided in segments of twenty minutes. The message was as clear as can be. Though I wondered how many segments I was allotted, I totally ignored her utterance as if I didn’t even hear it.

While I still lived in Munich, I couldn’t wait to return back to my home town every weekend, catching that around eight o’clock flight back. How could you be in one of the three most alluring cities in the world and not want to spend weekends there? Especially if you have to be back first thing Monday morning, and you’re staying in some of the most exclusive hotels and every penny you spend is paid for?

Because, after you have seen all of the historical monuments; passed through Duomo umpteen times, admired the glamour of the Scala, climbed up and down the Spanish Steps, sprawled St. Peter’s Square in Vatican, have been in awe of the Coliseum and have crossed the river Tiber in Rome and paid your tribute to the Notre-Dame, smirked back at Mona Lisa in Louvre, looked down at the breathtaking view of the city of light from the top of the Eiffel Tower and gawked and wished at the shop windows along Champs Elysees and have sat in enough cafes and restaurants all by yourself, you are done with them. For who I am, I can barely begin to relate to the places without meaningful connection to their people.

Not that I didn’t try to connect, but then you learn that like love and friendship, people either click or they don’t. And the sad truth remains, we just didn’t.

Ironically, my most memorable weekend in Italy remains to be the rain drenched and bone cold long Easter weekend I spend with Rainer and Renate (Wörtmann)in their newly acquired Mill House in Tuscany’s Pontremoli. Not Rome, nor Milan.

My memories of Paris are not that dismal. Walking around by yourself in Paris is a different kind of experience. Even with no other human being walking next to you, the city itself accompanies you wherever you choose to walk, especially the left banks of Seine and along the cafes of Boulevard Saint Germain, conjuring up the lives of some of my favorite authors. Françoise Sagan, Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus and Simone de Beauvoir. And then Earnest Hemingway, Zelda and Scott Fitzgerald and Henry Miller.  Just thinking of them you could while away a snifter or two of excellent French Cognac or the cooling tall glasses of Pastis. They all come alive at every step in Paris. But in Rome and Milan? Nah! The only one I could think of is Alberto Moravia and his The Woman of Rome. Probably also because I have had a pleasure of shaking hands with him after a speech by him in the courthouse gardens of the University of Bombay.

In the backdrop of my non-relational acquaintance with Milan and Rome, the two cities I least looked forward returning to, it was then quite amazing for me to hear the following story almost twenty years after my last trip to Italy.

It was two years ago when Jan (Heemskerk) came on a visit to Chicago, we got together with some Playboy old-timers to reminisce the shared déjà vu.  Among them, Arthur Kretchmer, the recently retired editorial director of the US Playboy. As much as I respected the man the super editor, Arthur and I at the very best had mostly perfunctory professional relationship. But Jan and him got along really well and so we meet Arthur at his favorite restaurant The Indian Garden on Chicago’s Devon Avenue – a stretch of which is also named Gandhi Marg. With Arthur, it’s mostly him talking and you listening. And so it was during the lunch. Just his very presence intimidated me, creating an atmosphere of speak only when spoken to. So it were Jan and Arthur conversing with me pushed in the background. But somewhere along the line, I got to interject and now having acquired distance of time, I confessed, I was always intimidated by you.

‘You should have been.’ He answered and even though I would have liked to know precisely why, I left it at that. But then Arthur decides to smooth things over and asks me: Do you remember Mario in Rome?

Of course I do. In Italy, Playboy’s  trajectory included three different publishers. We started out with Rizzoli in Milano. Some years later, the magazine was moved to another legendary Italian publishing family, Mondadori. Or more precisely, to the independent Georgio Mondadori, who had split from his family to go solo. When that relationship didn’t quite work out, the magazine was licensed to Edizioni Lancio SPA, in Rome. Also family owned – albeit much smaller. Lancio specialized in photo novellas that were and probably still are extremely popular all over the world. Curiously, in India, those novellas were distributed by my uncle Jaisukh’s Wilco Publishing Company, which is where I had first started learning the ropes of the publishing, when a teenager.

Lancio proclaimed the re-launch to be Nuova Edizione Italiana. The new Playboy in Italy had a semblance of small editorial team under the mild mannered aging journalist, Alvaro Zerboni, but it was the company’s president Michele Mercurio who wielded the total control over the pages of the magazine. From the very first meeting it became clear to me that Lancio was not the right kind of publishers for our beloved bambino. The years that I was subjected to work with them, we constantly collided over what direction the edition should take. As diplomatic as I would try to be, we never came around to see eye to eye, thus creating a constant tension between Rome and Chicago. Being able to develop any sort of personal rapport never even came into the play.

Even so, I was accorded a certain protocol like status. Always being picked up from the airport and brought back in the company Mercedes Benz sedan by Mario. Picked up from the hotel and whenever needed brought back also in the Benz. Mario barely spoke any English, but I was trying hard to learn the Italian. So other than the editor in chief Alvaro Zerboni, my real human face of Rome was Mario, a very pleasant, ever smiling of the angular round face, very white of the skin and of a stocky built, he played the role that of the executive chauffer, a messenger and a sort of unofficial PR person for his employers. Mario for one, had high curiosity level and the fact that he spoke no English and I spoke only rudimentary Italian never inhibited him from asking me questions and manage somehow to wrangle out answers from me in my odd mélange of Italian, Spanish and English. He was interested in me. He was interested in the mystic of India. He was charming and sweet in the way Italians can be and somehow felt close to me. I liked him and he liked me. But that was the extent of it. The rule was that his schedule was determined by Michele’s executive secretary Christina Schlogel and had to have her command for him to ferry me around, he often took it upon himself to pick me up or bring me to the airport even over the weekends. For which he did get into the trouble with Christina for a couple of times. But he sloughed it off with a hearty laugh.

‘Of course I know Mario,’ I answered Arthur.

‘You know, he really liked you?’

‘Yah, probably he was the only one, other than of course poor Alvaro.’

To that Arthur begins to tell the following story. Which he would repeat a year and a half later in an email before answering my queries for the blog entry Perfectly Unbound.

But even before that, I have a little ‘playboy story’ for you. The 2nd or 3rd time that Patricia and I were in Italy in the early ’90’s — so ’93 (probably 1994) would be my guess — I met Don and Louisa Stuart as well as the Mercurio’s. For a reason I no longer remember, I ended up being driven somewhere in the Lancio Mercedes 300E by their driver.

I spoke a small amount of Italian. He spoke no English. As we rode along, he asked me some questions that I stumbled through. When he figured out that I was with Playboy, the next question he asked was if I knew Haresh Shah.

I said yes. He rattled off a bunch of Italian that I didn’t get, but ended on a partial sentence that I understood to the effect that Haresh Shah was a wonderful man.

I did my best to acknowledge your wonderfulness in Italian when he said, in hesitant English, “When Haresh come… the best food, the best wine, the best girls.” He waved his hand in the air, and didn’t say another word.

Good old Mario. He really did like me:). Who am I to argue with his perception of me? Thanks Mario. True or false, it even impressed Arthur and he remembered to tell it to me almost twenty years later.

© Haresh Shah 2014

Illustration: Celia Rose Marks

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Net Friday, November 21, 2014

Deru kui wa utareru, literally means: The nail that sticks out, gets hammered down! This aptly defines the psychology of the group in the Japanese society. To be different is to be hammered down. In the society where individuality has no place, I knowingly decided to commit the ultimate social faux pas, at the risk of alienating my Japanese hosts.

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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Next Friday, November 14, 2014

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!!!

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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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

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As you already know, this is my 75th 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.

The Beginning Of The Longest Cocktail Party

Haresh Shah

Dieter (Stark) is tickled pink. He s standing behind the kitchen island, swinging the stainless steel cocktail shaker back and forth in his hands. Equally as handsome, he looks like Tom Cruise would behind the bar years later in his movie Cocktail. Surveying the scene and the mood of the night. He is feeling absolutely no pain. His face wears a glow of amazement at the mission accomplished as he looks down at all those bottles of booze lined up in front of him like miniature Chicago skyline. Most of them are half gallon bottles of just arrived Kentucky Bourbon, Scotch Whiskeys, Bombay Gin, Bacardi Rum, Absolut Vodka. There are smaller ones of the mixers containing of red and white Martinis, Crème de Menthe, Grenadine, Tonic water. Open cartons of orange juice, some Coke and 7-up bottles stand ready to be poured in whatever cocktail he would end up concocting. He must feel like a kid let loose in the liquid candy store. Innumerable possibilities, the night not long enough!

Dieter and I worked together as repro photographers for Burda Verlag in Offenburg, Germany. My early days living and working in the town of Offenburg in southern Germany were some of the loneliest. It didn’t help that I spoke no German yet and the little bit that I did, I misunderstood more than did I understand. I must give credit to the people I worked with in doing their best to communicate with me. But by and large, I was lost like a babe in the woods in that provincial south western German town that boasts of being the gateway to the picturesque Black Forest.

More than me, Dieter, who came from the town of Bad Dürkheim along the German Weinstrasse, some 87 miles (140 kilometers) north west of Offenburg, was like a fish out of water. The job was good. Burda was an excellent company to work for, but what would a young single man away from home do there after work? He hated Offenburg and called the town Apfenburg – the monkey town and often made fun of their dialect and accent. He hated the simple mindedness of the people whose lifelong ambitions he would sum up in three short sentences – auto kaufen, haus bauen und lotto gewinnen – buy a car, build a house and win lottery. I wouldn’t have known the difference and didn’t have any pre-conceived ideas about the place or the people. I was happy just to be out of London living and working on the continent. For practical purposes, both of us were outsiders and that’s what must have attracted him to me.

In the department full of camaraderie, lots of laughs and beer drinking, Dieter remained aloof and removed from such activities. Tall, his curly blonde hair cut short, easy going, soft spoken, Dieter believed in working hard, but not too hard. There was something very child like the way he spoke with his perpetually pouted lips. He could talk without really opening his mouth. Until you got used to his manner of speaking, you would think he was talking to you like one would to a toddler. In my case, it must have also been something to do with my lack of fluency in German and he wanted to make sure I understood what he said and punctuated his speech with the local gel? more often than did others.

Though he never learned to speak English, my German was getting better every day and we would somehow manage to communicate. He must have also taken liking for me, in that we would meet outside of work and he would regularly give me ride home in his flashy metallic gold Opel Record Sports Coupe to the village of Schutterwald, a six kilometer stretch. He maintained a small room in Offenburg, but come Friday afternoon or Saturday morning, depending on the shift we worked, he would be gone and spend the weekend with his girlfriend Uschi and allow his mother to pamper her only child. This left me to my own devices over the weekends – in other words an extended loneliness which I spent solo walking the streets of Offenburg or the forest, even the local cemetery – which was quite peaceful.

One of my fondest memories of our early friendship is his taking me along to Bad Dürkheim’s traditional Weinfest, known as Wurstmarkt – literally the sausage market. I got to meet with his widowed mother Annemarie and his girlfriend Uschi. His father apparently never returned from the war and was listed as missing up until they closed the books on December 31,1945, informing the family that he had died.

Around the same time as I left to come to the States, he got himself transferred to Munich. We stayed in touch on and off which had trickled down to once a year Christmas cards. Who knew that within short five years I would be knocking at his door? Not only we would end up living and working in the same city but that he worked for the repro house Weissenberger, who did lots of reproduction for Playboy and other Munich based magazines of our partners Bauer Verlag. And within the matter of months, his company moved from their original Leopoldstrasse location several block away to Augustenstrasse 10, right across the courtyard from Playboy offices in the front. Small world?

It took me a while, but when I finally located Dieter a couple of months after I had already been living in Munich, he realized how lonely I must have felt during the Christmas holidays. Suddenly he was there for me. Dieter took me along with him, his girlfriend Monika (Kunfalvi) and his Indian friend Kamal (Chanana) to everywhere they went over the weekends. Sometimes I found myself being picked up for breakfast and came home just to sleep.

My Buick arrived separately a couple of days earlier. When Dieter sets his eyes on it for the first time, he goes in his typical wry humor pout: Jetzt Du hast von zwei autos Park Platz we genommen. Now you have taken away two parking spots. In consideration of living in a big city, Dieter had gotten rid of his Opel Sports and bought himself a Volkswagen Bug. And when my stuff from Chicago arrived and he was helping me unpack, his eyes lit up like fireflies when he saw coming out of a couple of boxes half gallon bottles of the premium booze only partially consumed. All left overs from the going away party I had thrown for my Chicago friends just two days before the movers showed up.

In theory, the movers weren’t even supposed to pack them, it is illegal to transport alcohol across the ocean as a part of your household stuff. I had no time to give it all away to my Chicago friends, so I offered the four of them to take those bottles home with them. They politely declined. Considering that there was so much of it, they took pity on me. If someone asks, we don’t know about it. And let’s hope that the German customs isn’t as witless. Lo and behold, they didn’t even attempt to open the container, let alone any of the boxes inside. Seeing that I could practically open a small bar with all that liquor that was piling up on the counter, his face lights up.

‘I got an idea. Let’s throw a party. Moni, Kamal and I will invite all our good friends. You can invite some people from your work. We will have some beer and wine just in case, but I am sure they would all want to drink American cocktails – because they are “in” right now, but they are so very expensive here and you can order them only in exclusive places like Harry’s Bar. It will be a big hit.’

But the problem is, cocktails need ice. In Germany, not something you can run down to a nearby gas station or convenience store and pick up a bag or two. Dieter scratches his head and then snaps his fingers: “Jim”. His friend who once worked for the restaurant chain Mövenpick. Jim comes with a big bag of ice acquired from his bartender buddies.

Voila! It costs me ire of my landlady and the dirty looks from my ehrenwertes – honorable neighbors. Thus hastening my looking for another apartment, which landed me at Johanclanzestrasse 49. And suddenly I acquired all the friends I possibly could.

Some boxes still unopened, we set up my state of the art Fisher Quadrophonic sound system, spread out all the booze and my TWA set of cocktail glasses on the kitchen island – I pull out my Time Life book of Wines and Liquors which came with a small spiral bound booklet containing recipes for all the American cocktails – starting with basic Dry Martini to Manhattan to Whiskey Sour and Rob Roy. Dieter takes over the job of the bartender. Follows the recipes for a while, but for not too long. Now the Chicago skylined counter top looks more like a chemical lab than an in-house bar. He starts mixing them ad-lib, tastes them and then holds the mixing glass against the light to watch the kaleidoscope of colors they would create. Absolutely infatuated, he would try his concoction with different quantities of liquor the colors and the ice cubes.

The guests must have loved whatever concoction he is creating for them. The party is now in full swing and everybody is having good time. Every now and then when I am in the vicinity of Dieter, he would go guck mal Haresh, ist es nicht super? Probier mal doch! – look Haresh, isn’t that super? Here, try it! And then he would let out a hilarious laugh. And then stare at the swirling glass like an alchemist would at a test tube in awe of the clouds and colors and the taste he he has just created. I have never seen Dieter this giddy. He is having time of his life. And so am I.

The night is still young. It’s inching towards eleven and the party has just began to swing with the music and the dancing in the living room. There are people swarming every room and every corner of the apartment, experiencing various stages of happiness. Surrounded by all those people, mostly the friends of Dieter-Kamal-Monika trio and soon to be mine – suddenly I don’t feel lonely. From Playboy, I have invited Rainer and Renate (Wörtmann), and the photographer Jan Parik, who comes with his wife and some of his cool friends. Rainer is amazed at the fact that I have barely arrived in Munich and how quickly I have made so many friends?

As the night begins to wind down, there are still quite a few people scattered around the apartment while some of us are dancing in the living room. Jerry Butler is singing, Never gonna give you up. And I am dancing intimately with Hella, Dieter’s friends’ friends’ friend. We’re swaying ever so slowly in the middle of the floor and kissing, The lighting in the living room is already subdued, but Dieter decides to facilitate even more Hella and me getting into each other. He announces to the crowd: the host wants lights dimmed. Now we are left with only the light pouring in from the street and from the foyer. Dieter is thinking: What can be better for Haresh than for him to have a home town honey? Thanks Dieter! As it turns out, I never see Hella again, but in the real existential sense, that night we lived for the moment – the moment I still remember. As if in the spirit of the Munich fasching – and the carnival of Köln, both of which I would experience soon enough, during which one of the most oft played songs goes like:

Du darfst mich lieben für drei tolle tage

Du muss mich küssen das ist deine pflicht

Du kannst mir alles alles schöne sagen

Nur nach dem name frag mich bitte bitte nicht

(You may love me for three mad days

You must kiss me – it’s your obligation!

You can say all sorts of beautiful things to me

But please, please don’t ask my name!)

In fact I soon forgot what she looked like or what her last name was, and would certainly not recognize her if I were to run into her today. But Dieter had succeeded far beyond his expectations in throwing the party so I could make some friends in what would be my home for some time to come.

Thus began what I would term to be The Longest Cocktail Party. When it finally and abruptly ended two and a half years later, one afternoon when we sat in a beer garden with his visiting mother, feeling sorry for me, she exclaimed! Poor Haresh! He no longer has a job!

Mach dir keine sorgen Mutti. Haresh will soon land back on his feet!’ I couldn’t have said it better.

I am still touched by Dieter’s confidence and faith in me. I linger in Munich for five more months that ended with another big bash at my place. The movers once again packed me up – the remaining bottles of good German wines and all and took the container full of my personal belongings to the local storage until I finally figured out where I would end up living. I fill up my Buick with all that I would need until such a time and drive away to Paris and on to the French port of Cherbourg and drive up the ramp of the QE II. The Queen would bring me back to New York and to the United States.

As during my first departure, and my hiatus of three years in Santa Barbara, Dieter and I would stay in touch. True to his prediction, in not too far of a future I would land back on my feet. And before long, come back to Munich a couple of times a year to work with the Playboy people and of course meet up with Dieter and Kamal and his latest squeeze Irmi (Irmengard Rüttinger), whom he would eventually marry.

The evening I still remember very fondly is the time we went to the Oktoberfest, and how happy drunk we all were. I remember having dinner with him and Irmi at their home. Not too long after that, I got a letter from Irmi that my friend Dieter, after having struggled with the abdominal cancer, chemotherapy and surgery, had passed away on September 21, 1984 – at the age of 40. It all happened quick within two short months.

© Haresh Shah 2014

Illustration: Celia Rose Marks

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Next Friday, May 30, 2014

Once the initial shock and the feeling of insecurity wore off, it dawned on me, why was I in such a hurry to return to the States and begin looking for a job without giving myself a little break and regroup before I found something worth while to commit to? Why not first enjoy all that the beautiful city of Munich had to offer and then instead of rushing back on a nine hour flight, why not take my time and sail across the Atlantic?

Falling Like Dominos

Haresh Shah

The plan is for just the two of us to go out for dinner. Leave the business behind and talk men talk without women tugging at our arms. For me, whenever I am in Munich, it would be Susi as my forever companion. Normally Günter would have brought along his wife Hilda. Our usual double date every visit. For tonight, I am thinking of maybe us two having dinner at my early favorite neighborhood kneipe, Georgen Stuben on Prinz Regentenstrasse and afterwards maybe hit a couple of Schwabing locals like Tangente, Giesela’s and Domicil. Go down the memory lane, re-live the nostalgic days of my not so distant life in Munich.

But first, we’ve got to talk some business. Günter is one of the senior editors at the German Playboy. He has spent time in America as well, so we have got that too in common. We have spent lot of time together and have shared hundreds of silly laughs.

The first McDonald’s in Germany opened in Munich scant ten months before my arrival there in October of 1972. Just in time for Munich’s 1972 Summer Olympics. It must have taken a while for the national Life like illustrated Stern magazine to notice this American invasion, prompting them to run a cover story with the blurb screamingly calling Big Mac der Schmackloss Hackfleish – the tasteless minced meat. Günter and I couldn’t agree more, especially considering the humble German fricadel, a tasty meat ball the shape of a hamburger patty, made of the minced meat, eaten lukewarm with a hard shell brötchen – a bread roll and blob of yellow mustard on side. Lekker.
But that didn’t stop Günter and me to frequent the local MacDonald’s, conveniently located on my way home on Lindwurmstrasse. Often we would feel nostalgic about America and go grab a Big Mac or McChicken menus with some beer. Yup, you could actually have beer at McD’s in Europe. In Prague you also have a choice of white or red wine. And we would talk about the Stern story and how horrified the editors must have been along with a large amount of German population vis-à-vis the arrival of the Yankee Golden Arch. We would agree that fricadel was great, but once in a while, nothing would do but a juicy Big Mac. We would come to the conclusion that it must be Ronald McDonald’s secret sauce. We would often get carried away with our wild imagination of the Big Mac’s sex appeal, calling it a furburger instead, and acting out asking for them to be easy on onions – the silly childish stuff. I really am looking forward to spending this evening alone with Günter.

‘How if we first go to my hotel, have a couple of drinks in the lobby bar, then have dinner at Georgen Stuben and then following that hit a couple of joints in Schwabing, just like god old days?’ I suggest.

‘Sounds like a plan.’ He responds, but lacking in his voice is his usual exuberance and enthusiasm.

We drift away talking something else while I notice a certain amount of uneasiness on his face as he switches his butt back and forth in his chair.

‘The thing is, something else has come up since we made the plans!’ Looking nervous, he finally spills it out.

‘Like what?’

‘I got two press passes to tonight’s Paul McCartney concert.’

‘Wow! Paul McCartney live?’

‘I thought we would have a quick drink. Go to the concert and then get a late night bite at some place.’

‘That sounds super!’

‘It does, doesn’t it? I was very much looking forward to it.’

First I see a bit of shrinkage with some wrinkles suddenly appearing on Günter’s face and then watch him take a deep breath and let go. That irons out his wrinkles and the smoothness of his face returns.’

‘The thing is, there is this woman!’

‘What woman?’

‘Her name is Ursula. Uschi.’ I wait for him to elaborate. ‘We see each other on and off.’

‘You mean…?’

‘Yup. Seitensprung!’ And we both break out laughing, remembering the fun we’ve had years earlier defining and re-defining the expression. Literally, it means a sideway leap. Simply put; straying or cheating in a relationship. Have a fleeting affair on side. Hoping no one notices it and then leap right back in the line. No harm done!

I am not happy about it, but I understand. An opportunity of a quick clandestine bums always trumps an evening out with a friend. But why tonight of all nights? The crossing in my mind of the expression bums makes me want to burst out laughing. Because it’s one of those other German words – literally it means, to bump! bounce! bang! Or normally used to run into something or someone. But it also means…

And I remembered another one of the editors during the early days: Carmen Jung using it and then telling me what it really meant in answer to my simple question.

‘Do you have a boyfriend?’

‘A steady one? No. But I do have someone I have bumsverhältnis with…recently it was perfectly defined in Justin Timberlake and Mila Kunis movie, Friends with Benefits. And then she goes on to elaborate, how perfectly it works for her. That they have each other, and yet they are free.

‘I wouldn’t do this to a good buddy like you. But she called me a while ago whether we could have a rendezvous tonight that her husband had to take a sudden trip to Hamburg.’

‘I still don’t say anything. The expression on my face has a question mark.

‘And Hilda knows I am having dinner with you. You see?’ I certainly do. What could be more convenient?

But I still don’t want to see it. I notice a certain dismay on his face and then watch him slide open his desk drawer and pull out the two strips of the tickets and hand them to me. Printed on them is Paul McCartney & Wings. Not a bad trade off.

‘I guess.’ I say. Since I am busy for the next two evenings of my stay in Munich, I won’t be able to re-schedule another dinner with Günter this trip. But the next time around? After all, how often you get all access press passes to Paul McCartney concert?

‘I am sure, you and Susi will have fun at the concert.’

I am sure that Susi would be ecstatic. But wouldn’t it be great also if Barbara were free that evening? A thought crosses my mind. But out of sheer protocol and the guilt I would otherwise feel, I call Susi from Günter’s phone, wishing that she wouldn’t be around to answer it. And she isn’t.

‘I’ll try to call her again from the hotel.’ I say.

It’s half past five when I leave Playboy offices in New Perlach, wishing Günter nice evening with his seitensprung with his squeeze, Uschi.

I catch the S-Bahn back to the hotel and immediately call Barbara. She’s already home from work and answers her phone on the first ring.

‘I would love to!’ I can hear the excitement in her voice. Takes me back to the days when we both lived in California.

‘Let me hang up. We don’t have much time. I just got home and need to change and freshen up. Where are you staying? I’ll pick you up at 7:30.’

Her little BMW pulls up in Grand Hotel Continental’s driveway. The concert is at the Olympia Halle. Normally I don’t really care for such large venues packed with thousands of people. But though our press passes have no reserved seats, they allow us an easy access to everywhere except the back stage. We spend the entire evening in the arena – which is the open area right in the front of the stage and dance the night away as if in a small and cramped smoke filled venue of Schwabing or on Ripperbahn in Hamburg where the Beatles first began. Instead, on the stage are Paul & Linda McCartney and Denny Lane and rest of the Wings belting out their Band on the Run repertoire interspersed with some Beatles classics.

© Haresh Shah

Illustration: Celia Rose Marks

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Next Friday, May 23, 2014

One of the fringe benefits of me working for Playboy in the job that I did, was an opportunity to meet the most interesting and creative people from around the world, many of them have become lifelong friends. More importantly, it allowed me to maintain those friendships by not fading into out of sight, out of mind state. Because I had no geographical barriers. It also allowed me to re-kindle non-Playboy relationships. Among them Dieter (Stark), whom I had originally met and worked with at Burda in Offenburg.

Beautiful..Ye High..Ye Wide..

Haresh Shah

Bonnie and David are a cool couple. They are naturally mellow, but often made mellower by the pot induced blissfulness beaming on their faces. I run into them about a year after I arrived in Goleta at one of those shrouded-in-the-cloud-of-smoke filled parties which seemed to be a norm than an exception.

This is southern California in the mid-1970s. A typical tabloid would be, when you entered the hosts’ home, you would be greeted not only with their warm and welcoming smiles and exuberance, but also a large table overflowing with salad bowl full of fresh marijuana, surrounded by the rolling paper, matches and other pot related paraphernalia. Just like Mark and Ann, Bonnie and David too have adopted me and I often hang out with them. Bonnie is a seamstress and makes most of her own clothes. She also designs funky outfits for other people and is quite in demand with young and pretty surfer chicks. David works in incense filled book shop downtown Santa Barbara, that specializes in the counter-culture, psychedelic, transcendental and alternative pseudo spiritual literature by the East and the Western authors such as Krishnamurthy, Carlos Castaneda, J.J.R. Tolkien, Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac and Herman Hess. Kahlil Gibran’s Prophet, Robert Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and Autobiography of a Yogi by Paramahansa Yogananda are standard fares. The store also sells Indian necklaces and bracelets, silk scarves, patuli and other fragrant oils, beads and a variety of knickknacks that give the subculture its identity.

They live in a small house tucked away in the thick of an orange grove. Quite secluded, a long driveway carved out of the shrubbery lead you to the house. It’s like an oasis. A serene little island on land. I have spent many afternoons and breezy evenings sitting out on their front porch drinking beer with David. Often Bonnie would cook one of her what I called a mishmash cuisine kind of dinners. No matter what she throws in together, those meals are always delicious, deserving of a bottle or two of California wines and then David and I would follow them up with equally as good cigars.

Behind their cottage is a green house, almost as large as the cottage, where Bonnie grows seasonal vegetables. But most of the green house is used to grow some unadulterated organic weed. Mostly for their own consumption, but they also generously spread the wealth and share some with close friends, and the rest would be for sale. For Bonnie and David, growing and smoking the pot is not as much an addiction as it’s a spiritual ritual. To get into a certain state of consciousness that is more meditative than merely getting high. They are reverential of their beautiful shiny green marijuana leaves, like most Hindus are of their household Tulsi plants, to which they humbly bow and worship first thing in the morning. The reason they want their good friend Haresh to experience that level of consciousness and would often try to seduce me into joining them in their smoking ritual, which I would politely decline.

Not that I am against it in principal or otherwise, just that it’s one of those things that never turned me on. Having come from India, I am not ignorant of bhang, charas and ganja. In fact once a year, every Janmaashtami – on Lord Krishna’s birthday, my father would have one of our domestic helps put the fresh green leaves of marijuana to a grinding stone, turn it into a little green ball looking like wasabi and drop it into the boiling milk already mixed with sliced pistachios and almonds, saffron and sugar and brew it into a potent potions of bhang – cooled down and served chilled, tasting like a refreshing glass of pistachio almond milkshake. I may have tried it once or twice, but mainly it was meant to be consumed by his grown up male friends, while us kids and women drank thandai, equally as tasty, albeit sans spiked with the little green ball.

I arrived in the US in 1968, at the height of the pot culture, and if not everywhere, it was still around at some of the parties I went to in Pittsburg and Chicago – my first two homes in America. Especially during the years I hung out with Karen (Abbott) watching passively her and others getting high earned me the reputation of being a square. Smoking it put me in a kind of depressive pensive haze, which I didn’t care for. Once I went to a party in Santa Barbara with Bonnie and David and gave it a real go and puffed on the specially prepared chillum by the host, containing little brown crystals of dynamic hash. I left the party with my head feeling light and fogy. While driving my date home that night, what should have been a five minutes’ ride, felt as if I were driving for an hour. Ditto, getting back home after I dropped her off. It scared me to think how one can lose the sense of time so completely. But for everyone else, that was the point, wasn’t it?

Bonnie sounds upset and disconcerted. Devastated even. And above all she sounds angry. She’s not her bubbly self, shamelessly flirting with me and me flirting back with I love you this much to my I love you thiiiis much and her coming back with I love you thiiiiiiiis much. Something we used to do with our arms stretching littler bit farther with I love yous while David would sit there shaking his head.

‘When you kids gonna grow up?’

‘Never!’ We would answer in unison.

But tonight she doesn’t sound like herself at all. I am now living in Chicago and talking to her over the phone.

‘You sound like you’re in a funky mood! Something’s the matter?’

‘Don’t ask me. Ask your friend!’ She snaps, sounding angry.

So I ask to talk with David.

‘He’s not here.’

‘Where is he?’

‘He’s in jail!’

‘Yeah. You heard it right. But you can still talk to him.’

Apparently David has indeed ended up behind the bars. Albeit in a minimum security prison from where he is allowed to check out in the morning and go to his job at the bookstore, and check back in every evening.

I call the Santa Barbara county jail at the number Bonnie has just given me.

‘What the fuck!’ I begin and pause. ‘What are you doing in the slammer?’

‘I got caught.’

‘They can’t put you away for selling bit of a pot in California.’

‘I happened to have a lot! I’m afraid.’

‘Yup. What can I say? I guess I just got greedy and lost my bearings. The bastards just don’t have sense of humor, like they used to.’

I hear a slight snicker in the background and know exactly what he is alluding to. The whole scenario of some years ago rushes through my mind in a fast running video clip.

One beautiful afternoon, having finished my chapter for the day, I climb on my Azuki and at the tail end of my bike ride, I decide to stop by for a beer at Bonnie and David. Soon as I turn the corner and their cottage zooms into the line of my vision, my bike stops in its track. Shocked, I pause to focus on what looks like two fuzzy images, like the ones in a 3D photograph looked at without the special glasses. I see the porch, and artificially imposed upon it an image of David – stretched out helplessly on an outdoor lounge chair.

Closer I get, clearer I see. His face is all bruised and patched up. His lips have turned into squashed raspberries, his eyes sunken inside their sockets and the rim around them all swollen. His arms are bandaged.

‘What the fuck!’ I don’t say it out loud, but David knows what I am thinking.

‘Those fucking mother fucking sons of bitches!!’ I don’t believe the string of expletives coming out of the gentle mouth of David. He is normally not prone to utter such profanities.

‘What happened?’

‘What happened? Just look at what they have done to our little paradise!’

The doors of the greenhouse behind their cottage are ajar, almost yanked off their hinges. Inside, it looks helter-skelter as if hit by a wild tornado. The clay pots are turned upside down, shattered into pieces, the soil pulled out of the ground, fragments of the leaves, the branches and the roots are strewn all over. I get the picture.

‘What kind of fucking brutes you have to be to do that?’ David asks. As livid as he is, he is on the verge of breaking down and cry. All that hard work and the tender loving care both of them had given to nurture their beloved garden of paradise.

‘There were four of them. They rode in on their bikes.’ That answers those wide single tire tracks I had noticed and wondered about on my way in.

One of the neighbors down the main road had seen them leaving with loud roars and the loot they carried away with them. From the descriptions of their bikes, David knew immediately who they could be. Boiling with raging fury, he calls up his brother Randy. They get into Randy’s pick up and catch up with the “fuckers”. Fortunately, Bonnie is still at work.

Their truck coming from the opposite direction blocks the bikers. The four riders jump off their bikes. David and Randy jump out of the cabin of the truck. They go at each other like wild horses let loose. Soon they hear sirens. Cops line them all up.

‘What the fuck’s going on here? You kids gone crazy or something?’

‘They ripped off my pot man!’ David is jumping up and down in his fury.

‘What pot?’

‘From our green house. My wife and I spent so much time in lovingly growing and taking care of them, and these fuckers just yanked them off. Our beautiful, beautiful plants.’

The cops look at the mangled and hastily thrown together bundles on the backs of their bikes.

‘That ain’t nothing. They have no respect for marijuana. What you see is all yanked, pulled and butchered.’

‘Looks like those babies must have been beautiful!’

‘Beautiful? You have no idea.’

‘Yeah? How?’ The cops seem to get into it.

‘Yeah. Green as can be.’ David’s hand gestures seem to be painting a large splash of bright green on a canvas and with his arms wide open and then raised, he goes, ‘ye high and ye wide, man!!’ Momentarily he has even forgotten that how beat up him and Randy and all the four kids are. Badly bruised and dripping blood and in need of some quick first aid.

As interesting and amazing the cops find the situation, one of them goes: ‘You don’t want to report this kids, do you?’ At the question, everyone realizes that irrespective of who’s in the right and who’s not, they all stand to be justifiably arrested and locked up.

But this is southern California.

‘Let’s just get you all to the emergency room and get patched up.’

No such luck this time around.

But ever optimistic, I hear David continue. He tells me how it’s not all that bad, considering they found a shit load of pot in the trunk of his Volvo. Caught red handed just before he was about to unload it. Taking into account his squeaky clean record and the fact that he held a regular job, was respectably married and otherwise was a nice guy, the judge handed out a sentence that was kind and considerate. My call had caught him mopping floors. He still had a few chores left to do. His duties also included cleaning toilets and bathrooms.

David is taking it in his strides. He knows that Bonnie is mighty pissed.

‘What can I say? I guess I fucked up really good time time around!’

© Haresh Shah

Illustration: Celia Rose Marks

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Next Friday, May 16, 2014

However in love or committed you’re to someone special, there are moments when your heart wants to be with someone else. A light hearted look at what the Germans so cleverly call seitensprung – a sideway leap.

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

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!

The Impossibility Of Being Christie Hefner

Haresh Shah

‘What do these conferences mean to us?’

It’s a legitimate question. I have gotten to the meeting room earlier as usual to make sure things are set before everyone else begins to stumble-in in another half an hour. Only other person fussing around is Mary (Nastos), and then there is Christie Hefner. The two of us standing in the middle of the conference room on the lower floor of The Pontchartrain Hotel, New Orleans’ old European charm. I have been organizing Playboy International Publishing’s conferences now for years and no one has ever asked me the question. It was something that was handed down to me when I was re-hired by Lee Hall ten years earlier in 1978. I hadn’t given any serious thought to the question Christie posed – now the president of Playboy Enterprises.

‘Well, it’s mainly for all our editions to come together with their counterparts from around the world and discuss the year since they met last and establish some understanding of what lay in the future. From these meetings some international projects of common interest have been born and accomplished. The Soccer World Cup pictorial in 1986, which we produced in the host country Mexico and the Miss Playboy International Beauty Pageant, broadcast live in Hong Kong.

‘More important is they offer a venue for everyone to come together and bond. Even though we do have a formal agenda, what is more important in my mind are the informal dinners and other social activities. For four nights and three days, they are all together 24/7, and the relationships formed and enthusiasm generated are priceless. They go home with a feeling of belonging to a close-knit global family with us at head of the table. But most of all, for me, this is our Thanksgiving, having them all under the same roof gives them a feeling of belonging. Something only parents can provide.’

Not exactly in the same words, but that was the gist of what I felt and said in answer to her question. It seemed to me that she was skeptical about reasons other than the ones I mentioned, but I could sense a trace of agreement and understanding about us being parents and the concept of Thanksgiving. My answer must have satisfied her, because I never heard anything more about the conferences as I continued doing them year after year I was with the company, and as I write this in 2014, twenty one years since I left, another conference was concluded in London last summer. And soon they would begin planning one for this year. Now completely organized by Mary.

But this simple question did put me on guard. She as the president of the company must have been thinking in terms of the cost-benefit ratio of +/- $60,000.- an average cost to us to host the event every year.

I first met Christie in February of 1977. She was then twenty four years old. Fresh out of school and in the process of learning the ropes of the business her father had built. Lee had set up luncheon for us during my short stop-over in Chicago, en-route to Mexico City.

Strange, I don’t remember where we had lunch, but must not have been that close by. Because what I remember is a spark of static cracking when she touched the back of my hand in a gesture of parting before getting off the cab. I don’t remember what we talked about or what we ate. What I remember is: I was quite taken by her. I saw her as a charming young woman. Attractive, still in process of shedding her baby fat. I perceived her to be simple, friendly, unpretentious and congenial. Warm and a likeable.

Five years later, at the age of 29, she was named president of PEI. In the meanwhile, I had re-joined the international publishing division as its Production Director. Depending on how the company was organized and re-organized over the next years, I was at least two, if not three rungs below Christie – leaving me not having to interact directly with her. Playboy was still headquartered at 919 N. Michigan Avenue in Playboy Building with its bold white PLAYBOY letters lighting up the Chicago sky up above the Drake Hotel’s outlined in red neon sign. Our offices there were spread out over several floors, our paths hardly ever crossed. Except at some company functions and at the international conferences, at which she would be our star attraction.

By then I had become the department head with the corporate title of Vice President. Even so, I never reported directly to her, it became inevitable that I attend many of the management meetings and be the voice of the International Publishing. Something I didn’t cherish, but it came with the territory. Up until then, I successfully operated under the radar, did my job happily and never had to worry about the politics of the corporate life. But no longer.

But that’s not why I am writing this. The thing is: how could anyone ever begin to write Playboy Stories sans Christie Hefner?

I got to know Christie bit-by-bit. Her corporate side was always on guard. Always watching her P’s and Q’s and jumping over every hurdle of tricky questions asked of her. Having graduated summa cum laude from the prestigious Brandeis University, she was equally as bright in her day-to-day dealings. Her answers were brilliant. Her spellbinding ability of public speaking would have even the most averse listener in the audience in awe, or like Bill (Stokkan) used to say, he would get goose bumps whenever he heard her speak. How can you not marvel at her saying something like my asset goes home in the elevator every night at five?

She would do it without notes and without any prompting. How else would you claim to be a feminist and get away with running Hugh M. Hefner’s empire with Playboy magazine as its flagship? How do you even begin to stand up and defend your father frolicking with women so young as to be his grand daughters? But she did, and did it with aplomb. Her well articulated answers un-armed the person asking those questions – if not to their satisfaction, to realize that to stay on the same track was futile. They saw something intimidating in her friendly but firm demeanor. So they would let it be for she commanded enough respect to have earned that.

I am not easily intimidated. But I must admit that I often felt uncomfortable in Christie’s presence for no apparent reason and whenever possible avoided any un-necessary encounter with her. So much so that it never even crossed my mind to invite her to the opening night dinner for the mini-conference of the selected editions I held at my home in Evanston. Soon as Gary (Cole) mentioned that Christie was quite miffed at not being invited, did I immediately realize what a faux pas I had committed, remembering that one of her most favorite Indian dishes was chickpeas curry? Not much I could do about it. Something I have always lamented.

Christie was an asset so invaluable to be ignored. It’s been said that if there were no Christie Hefner, Playboy Enterprises would have to invent her. For she was the public face of the PEI. Easily accessible and unpretentious. For what she signified, Christie lived just like anyone of us. She traveled by herself like the rest of us would, hail a cab off the street, dined in the neighborhood restaurants where you could run into her or have informal meeting over a lunch. She drove her own car in stark contrast to once being picked up by a limo from her school to bring her to the rendezvous with her dad. Every summer she would throw a party at her rooftop apartment in the heart of Chicago’s Gold Coast and invite her top managers and their companions. Let her hair down and be the most gracious hostess.

She was our secret weapon, the flesh and blood persona. To Hugh M. Hefner’s illusion, she was our reality. Often perceived of as an all business and no fun, she would let her hair down during my international conferences, be it at Playboy Club in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, or Corfu, Greece to New Orleans and Rio de Janeiro. She would get up early and not unlikely to be found in the meeting room while I’m testing the sound system in Lake Geneva and everyone still remembers fondly how she blended-in in New Orleans and swung to the crazy Laissez Faire Cajun Band – lifted up in the air by our German advertising director, late Wolfgang Robert and charm the skeptic Dutch during the sight-seeing boat ride in Amsterdam. The Dutch hosted a wonderful meal in her honor at… you guessed it: de Hoefslag.

When we launched the Chinese language edition in the spring of 1986 to come out of Hong Kong, our local publisher Albert Cheng, came up with the idea of beaming Christie Hefner live from Chicago to his press conference in Hong Kong. What’s today a child’s play, back in 1986 was an elaborate and expensive undertaking. Just the technicality of the multiple satellite uplinking and downlinking between downtown Chicago and the center of Hong Kong in itself was awe inspiring. And because of thirteen hours time difference she would have to be in the studio a little after three in the morning and be ready to greet the citizens of Hong Kong at seven in the evening their time. Fully aware of the possibility of hundreds of things going wrong. Fortunately, the transmission at both ends and in-between went well without a hitch. And the Chinese loved it. Probably even more so than had she been there personally. And Christie must have felt a pioneer of the sort for being able to demonstrate the dawn of the new technology. The first time I ever heard of the concept of pay per view, was from her. I must admit, I was quite skeptical about it. But she was our new generation.

I got to know her really up close when she so gracefully agreed to take a long trip to Taiwan to help us boost Playboy’s image. Even though I personally wasn’t totally convinced of the merits of dragging her along on a day long journey, each way; when I hesitatingly asked her, she said yes with I know how difficult it must have been for you to ask. And it was. But my Taiwanese partners felt strongly that her sheer presence would make all the difference.

At the personal level this gave us an opportunity to be together practically 24/7 for six days. During which she graced several meetings, held a press conference, partook in the celebration of the first anniversary of the edition, sat through twelve course Chinese meals, played tourist visiting Chaing Kai-shek Memorial, Taipei Concert Hall, National Palace Museum and even Taipei’s Huaxi Street Night Market popularly known as the Snake Alley. And one night after dinner, joined a group of us hit a Karaoke and let our talents shine. We posed together in the front of Madame Chaing Kai-shek Soong May-ling’s shiny black Cadillac. And she even photographed me in front of a Taiwanese Barber Shop.

The day we were to return to Chicago, the city of Taipei was a big mess. It’s the beginning of Qingming Festival – a long holiday weekend and the traffic arteries of the city are clogged to its limit and beyond. We’re on our way to the airport for our flight back home. Inbound, she had to travel by herself because I was flying in from Brazil. This is our first trip together and with the change of planes in San Francisco it would take us almost a whole day and a night.

With all the traffic to the airport moving at snail’s pace or not moving at all, it wasn’t starting out too well. While I’m not that easy to succumb to anxiety, especially over something that I have no control over, I could sense Christie getting a bit anxious as we were getting closer to the checking-in time. But with intermittent moving forward we make it to the airport and have checked in more or less on time. We’re standing in the very slow moving immigration line. Irritated, she is visibly nervous.

‘Don’t worry. They won’t leave without us.’ I tell her, but it’s not enough for her to stop looking at the ticking clock. As much as I have traveled, I know that once checked in, they just won’t leave without everyone on board – certainly not leaving behind two of their first class passengers. Even though flight is not yet listed as being delayed, with the mob scene as the Taipei International Airport is that afternoon, not many planes are likely to leave on time. Delayed by an hour or so wouldn’t make much difference, if any to our long haul flight.

To make matters worst, now that we’re in front of the line, I realize that missing from my passport is the departure slip that immigration had handed me upon my arrival. No departure slip, no departing. This makes her even more nervous watching me fumbling into all of my pockets and inside my briefcase and not finding it. I watch her waiting impatiently and irritatingly.

‘Why don’t you go ahead and I’ll catch up with you.’ I tell her. It’s already a few minutes past the departure time.

‘Are you sure?’ She doesn’t want to leave me stranded.

‘Positive. Please go ahead. I promise, the flight wouldn’t leave without me.’ Suddenly I am relaxed and in a playful mood. After all, an international airport is my ultimate stomping ground.

‘Well, okay. I’ll just do that.’ And she is gone.

Now with no one making me nervous, I dig into my pockets some more and out comes the departure slip. I know there are still many passengers booked on our flight waiting for the immigration clearance. I even pop into the duty free shop and take a leisurely walk to the departure gate. When I walk into the cabin, I see Christie well settled at the window seat. I arrange my carry on in the overhead bin and as I am about to sit down, the captain has picked up the microphone.

Ladies and gentlemen, captain speaking. We’re still waiting for many of our passengers in process of clearing the immigration. It may be another half an hour before we push back from the gate. But we should still arrive in San Francisco on time.

Now settled, I give Christie a sideway look. Didn’t I tell you? She is not amazed at my smugness. Soon the stewardess brings us flutes of champagne.

‘No thanks. I’ll have some sparkling water.’ She tries to hide her frown. But still!

‘Come on Christie. Please have champagne. We’ve got a long journey ahead of us.’ I must have looked pitiful as I plead. It pleases me that she picks up a glass of champagne from the tray.

We have a very pleasant journey together and some very good talks. Our different visions for the future of my division, disagreements and all.

© Haresh Shah 2014

Illustration: Celia Rose Marks

FACE TO FACE WITH JAN CREMER

FACE TO FACE WITH HUGH M. HEFNER

Next Friday, May 2, 2014

Because I am not sure which one of the two posts I am working on right now will be ready to go next week. Or as it often happens, something else will strike my fancy and a sudden inspiration would make it jump the line. Just wait and see.

Prowling The Streets Of Beverly Hills

Haresh Shah

The media had field days following Four Weddings and a Funeral and Notting Hill star, Hugh Grant’s tryst with Divine Brown, on the night of June 27, 1995. And it wasn’t only the tabloid press but also mainstream media and the network talk shows like Late Night With Jay Leno and Larry King Live couldn’t well ignore their LAPD mug shots splattered all over the printed pages and on the television screens. On his Late Night Show, Jay Leno came right out and asked: what the hell were you thinking?Grant’s answer: I think, you know, in life what’s a good thing to do and what’s a bad thing, and I did a bad thing…and there you have it. His whole body twisting and turning this way and that, the boyish Grant squirmed in his hot seat as if run over by an eighteen wheeler. But he kept his sense of humor and got the roaring applause of approval from Leno’s enthusiastic audience.

On Larry King Live, he elaborated: I could accept some of the things that people have explained, ‘stress,’ ‘pressure,’ ‘loneliness’ — that that was the reason. But that would be false. Psychoanalysis is more of an American syndrome. In the end you have to come clean and say ‘I did something dishonorable, shabby and goatish.

Fair enough. I couldn’t help but admire his candidness instead of hiding behind some psychological mumbo jumbo. Especially also because he had so much to lose. His budding career. His stunningly beautiful model/actress girlfriend Elizabeth Hurley. He faced up to the fact that he had picked up a prostitute off the street in Beverly Hills and was caught by a Los Angeles police receiving oral sex in his BMW. And I couldn’t help but think that nineteen years earlier, it could have been me in my Buick also in Beverly Hills. Uncaught.

After an animated dinner with Levi (Raimund le Viseur) and the two photographers accompanying him – Steve and Ron and drinks before and after the dinner at Beverly Wilshire’s Blvd Lounge, feeling mellow, we decide to call it a day. Levi offers to walk me back to my car and see again my Buick Skylark – what they all called my lastwagen – a truck, in Munich. I still have a hundred mile long drive back home to Santa Barbara. Leaving him with Steve and Ron in the passage between the two wings of the hotel, I run over to men’s room before starting my journey. When I return, I see them surrounding a good looking young woman.

‘Well, would you like me to call up a couple of my girlfriends and we have a party?’ I heard the girl saying. The guys hustle for a while and then chickened out, decided to return to their rooms. It still hasn’t occurred to me that she could be anything else but a hooker. Attractive with a petite figure she looks just like an ordinary girl. Sweet and somewhat confused at Steve and Ron disappearing. I would have liked to talk to her some more, but Levi still lingers little distance away, waiting to walk me to my car.

‘I will be right back.’ I don’t know what makes me say to her as I walk toward Levi to bid him good night. Instead I let him walk me to my car, making a smart comment about the girl being eine nutte – a hooker.

Klarafall‘ of course, he hastens. I am parked close by on a side street. We talk some more before I get into the car. Levi waits until I turn around and then starts walking back to the hotel. I see the girl still waiting on the steps of the back plaza and then begin walking towards my car. Levi and her cross paths half way. I stop and pull up closer to the curb. Levi sees me getting out of the car, breaks his stride a bit and then slowly returns to the hotel.

‘What’s your name?’ I ask.

‘Sharon, and yours?’

‘Harish? That’s a neat name.’

‘Thanks.’ She has mispronounced it like everybody else, but has come pretty close the first time.

‘Whatever happened to your friends. I thought they wanted to party?’

‘Well, I thought so too. But all of us are sort of tired, I guess!’

‘Would you like to have one all by yourself?’

‘How do you mean?’

‘You know?’

She doesn’t quite finish the sentence. In spite of my comment to Levi about her being a whore, this is the first time it occurs to me that she really was one, and I didn’t know for a moment what to say or do.

‘I’ll buy a drink.’

‘Alright.’ She slips her hand into the loop of my right arm and we start walking back to the hotel. She hesitates a bit in front of the revolving door and turns sideway to look at me.

‘Don’t you just want to go home and party instead?’

‘I don’t know. I don’t think I can afford you.’

‘Yes, you can!’

‘Not everyone coming out of Beverly Wilshire is rich. I am just a student.’

‘So am I.’

‘Where do you go to school?’

‘UCLA, and you?’

‘I go to UCSB in Santa Barbara.’ I bluff. And I can tell she did too.

‘How much can you afford?’ She changes the subject abruptly.

‘Not much.’

‘Do you have a girlfriend?’

‘No, I don’t.’ I would have liked to say ‘yes,’ but lies don’t come easy to me.

After a stretch of beautiful relationships, I am going through a very dry period in my life. It’s almost been a year since Debbie broke up with me, and since then I haven’t had a woman in my life I could hold close to. I am deep in my novel and it doesn’t bother me quite as much. Writing a chapter a day usually exhausts me by the time the sun goes down beyond the Devreaux Point in the western horizon. And the few good friends that I have, keep me afloat during this period of me having been de-womanized.

But standing in front of Sharon has thrown off my inner chemical balance. I have never in my life been with a whore, and neither do I aspire to be with one now. I am basically a romantic type, needing gentle intimacy and closeness. Time to look into each other’s eyes, lean over her face and experience tender touching and caressing, create that mellow span – and above all have a feeling of the two people’s mutual need to be together – even if it’s for one single night.

I look back at Sharon. I still can’t see anything about her that comes even in the slightest close to her being a whore. She practically has no makeup on her face, not even bit of mascara over her eye lids. Her skin is baby smooth, devoid of any blemishes. Her hair looks clean and smells freshly washed. Her blouse is modest and covers her breasts. She isn’t even wearing the customary knee high boots that is synonymous with ladies of the night around the world. The kind they would make Julia Roberts wear fifteen years later in her role in Pretty Woman. If not for her miniskirt, she doesn’t look any different than a beautiful girl next door that us men fantasize about.

As I am taking her in, I am transposed back to Chicago. My friend Sandra and I are sitting at the bar of Ricardo’s. We haven’t seen each other for a while and we have a lot to catch up. As usual, she tells me about her amorous encounters – which she has many. Sandy is such an incredible magnet to men all over – and she loves them like no other woman I know. She is always heart broken or is the breaker of the heart. I am glad, we’re just friends. During the course of the evening, out of nowhere she comes out and says:

‘You won’t believe this, but from this very spot on the bar, I picked up a john last night and let him take me home.’

‘You mean?’

‘Yeah. I had always wondered what it would feel like to turn a trick!’

Now I have known about Sandy’s many impulsive adventures and her having brought home all sorts of males of the species, but never before she had ever mentioned a john.

‘He was good looking,’ she says with an impish smile on her face, ‘and I needed the money.’ Then she goes on philosophizing about how every woman at one time or another in her life thinks of an option of doing just that. Most of my girlfriends have fantasized about it. I guess, it confirms something deeper inside us.

‘Don’t worry. I don’t think I would ever make a habit of it.’ She concludes as an after thought.

Could be that Sharon is telling the truth and she is really a student and in need of money? The thought crosses my mind.

‘Let’s walk.’ She says and takes me by the arm. She obviously doesn’t care to stand in front of the revolving door and looking conspicuous. Neither do I. I obediently follow her to the steps, and suddenly stop.

‘Listen, you tell me how much you cost and I’ll tell you if I can afford you.’ She ignores my question and gently pulls me behind her.

‘Let’s sit in your car and talk.’ So we do.

‘That’s a nice jacket.’ She compliments. ‘And a nice car too.’ I thank her for the compliments and wonder whether she believes me being a student wearing a $200.- velvet jacket and owning a shiny, almost new Buick Skylark.

‘I don’t think I can afford more than twenty dollars.’ I divulge. Thinking she would probably push me away and exit the car in a hurry.

‘Okay, let’s go and make beautiful love.’

I turn on the ignition.

‘Where do you live?’

‘In Santa Barbara.’

‘Oh yes, you said that earlier, didn’t you? In that case, go straight ahead and turn right at the light.’

Pages: 1 2

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?

© Haresh Shah

Illustration: Celia Rose Marks

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Next Friday, April 18, 2014

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.

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.

© Haresh Shah

Illustration: Celia Rose Marks

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Next Friday, April 12, 2014

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.

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.’

© Haresh Shah

Illustration: Celia Rose Marks

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Next Friday, April 4, 2014

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.

Still A Damn Indian? Call Me At The Bank

Haresh Shah

Even though there is an alternative theory about how and why the native Americans came to be called Indians – which is: Christopher Columbus  having observed how ritualistic and religious the natives were of the new land he had stumbled upon, he defined them as the people of In Dios – In God, smoothly transitioned into Indians. But I still like the popular theory of Columbus believing that they had landed in India and therefore… Whatever! Can’t help but feel a certain amount of affinity, precisely because both of us being called Indians.

The night Jan (Heemskerk) and I spent at Fetzer Valley Oaks Food and Wine Guesthouse, we walk across the street to check out  Pomo Indian owned and operated  – Shodakai Coyote Valley Casino. It looked like an old shack. It wasn’t all that big and it mainly offered slot machines and some black jack tables. The hall was dimly lit and the trolleys serving free  soft drinks passed by the customers every so often.  No alcohol served on the premises.  The on site guard-PR-spokesperson Philip told us that alcoholism was  rampant among the Indians on the reservations. Philip talked to us about their Pomo tribe and the future plans for the  expansion.  The glow and the wonderment on his face was undeniable, probably at the thought of what good fortune their lot had been bestowed upon. Jan immediately assigns me to do a story for the Dutch edition of Playboy of what was then the recent phenomena of popping up of the casinos large and small across the American continent on what used to be the Indian reservations.

‘You know, this used to be a one horse town in the middle of nowhere.’  Talking to me is Terri, a Pai Gow Poker dealer at Foxwood Resorts and Casino, perched atop  Mashantucket, the “much-wooded land” in Ledyard, Connecticut.  From the looks of  Terri’s face, she seems to have traveled back in time, perhaps picturing how desolate the landscape looked just a few years earlier.  Even though Terri’s table is temporarily abandoned for it having become too “hot,” as I look around, rest of the place is bustling. Hundreds of gaming tables across the huge expanse are all occupied.  I feel the din of the noise and the hush of the silence and suspense, all at the same time.  I observe the stern faces of the dealers and the flurry of activities of the pit supervisors in the background. I watch  the gamblers pondering, getting excited, and plain concentrating on their next moves so much so that most of them don’t even seem to notice the coming and going of the provocatively dressed cocktail waitresses in their buckskin short dresses bunched together at their waists by wide belts, and looking like wild treats with their Indian headbands and feathers in their hair.

When you approach the sign RESERVATION, on Rural route 2, what suddenly materializes in front of your eyes are the shining pagoda-like bottle-green rooftops dotted like centuries old castles along the European highways.  In not too distant a past, Mashantucket was deserted  of all human habitat and if not for two elderly half-sisters, Elizabeth George Plouffe and Martha Langevin Ellal having stayed put,  the state would have seized the land to build a park.

The same fate would have been awaited the bucolic corn fields of Wisconsin and Minnesota instead of the now imposing presence of their Mille Lacs, Hinckley and Ho-Chunk casinos. Once desolate country roads surrounding the Indian reservations, now bring to their huge parking lots of the glittery casinos, a constant stream of cars and busses unloading from just a few to hundreds of people in front of the Hole in the Wall Casino Hotel in Danbury, Wisconsin and Shodakai Coyote Valley Casino in Mendocino County in California, to forty five-thousand people per day in front of Foxwood Resort Casino in Connecticut.

They all come to try their hands at the loud clattering of the slot machines, whisper at the black jack tables, experience suspense of the roulette wheels, feel the exhilaration of the rolling dice on the Craps Tables and watch the unfolding of the numbers on the bingo boards.  Many come just to rest and relax, eat some of the best food and be a spectator of the grand shows featuring great names such as Frank Sinatra, Luciano Pavarotti, Tom Jones, Crystal Gayle, Loretta Lynn and Willy Nelson.

Though the nighttime brings out some men dressed in their evening best and women in their shiniest, tight fitting, low-cut sequined dresses showing off their perfumed cleavages, the most everyone is dressed in his or her street clothes.  While one may still notice intrigue and suspense on the faces of the gamblers occupying the game tables, the real excitement reigns supreme in the slot machines parlor.  It is in one of them that I witness a curly white haired grandma hitting a jackpot and suddenly the bells going off with the loud piercing wails, the crown light begin to twirl its rainbow and with the thunderous sound, the quarters gushing out of the mouth of the machine like torrential rain.  The grandma dressed in her bright red double-knit pantsuit, getting up from her stool, with her mouth wide open in astonishment, her granddaughter clinging to her and both of them jumping up and down in exhilaration is the sight to behold.  For a few precious moments, the entire parlor freezes to a standstill. The grandma has just proven that winning a jackpot is not just a dream.

What has changed the landscape of the American rural country life is the 1988 passage of the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act, commonly  referred to as IGRA.  It allows the native American tribes to offer versions of gambling that are not specifically prohibited in other parts of the state. Through IGRA, the United States Supreme Court recognizes Indian reservations as sovereign nations in that the Indian tribes have the right to make their own laws and be governed by them.

The astounding success of the Indian casinos has not only benefitted the native Americans, but the community at large. For a little over 300 Pequot tribe members that collectively own the Foxwood, it employs 10,000 people.  Of 2,400 jobs at Mille Lacs, 80% are held by non-Indians, majority of them by the “white man.”

‘Most of us are so thankful for the casino.  I had just lost my job and there was no other place to go.  I came here with no experience.  They sent me to school to become a dealer and paid for my education. Two months later I started at $ 30,000 (a year). Where else can you make that kind of money with no experience?  The casino also pays for all  medical expenses, including free medication, which they even home deliver if I am unable to go to the pharmacy’, continues Terri, the Pai Gow Poker dealer – a white woman.

The next day, I broach the subject with Richard Tesler, the casino manager, ‘They have a tribal thinking in which their employees become a part of the Indian family.’

Back at my hotel Norwich Inn & Spa, I am talking to Dawn, a waitress. ‘My sister is not happy about more traffic and crowding in  schools because of the casino, but most of us are thankful that they (Indians) are here.  If not for the casino, we wouldn’t still be here.  This hotel was under bankruptcy and would have closed.’

With that kind of success comes dissent. Even though the Nevada gaming industry supported the passage of IGRA, the phenomenal success of the Indian gaming business has prompted others to protest the deregulation of casinos that favor the American Indians.  Among the protesters is Donald Trump, the owner of three casinos in Atlantic City, New Jersey, who could face  stiff competition from a New Jersey tribe in the process of planning a casino in the region.

Though IGRA opened up a window of opportunity for the native American tribes, the ultimate success of their enterprises has come from the vision, business acumen and sheer hard work of everyone involved.  Even so, the success has come so sudden, it is as though they have hit a jackpot.  Within a few short years, Joey Carter, the PR director at Foxwood, has gone from cutting wood for five dollars an hour to being one of the owners of the largest grossing casino in the nation.

About a month later, I find myself sitting around the committee members of Ho-Chunk Casinos in Wisconsin. At the end of the day, what does this all mean to the native Americans? I ask.

‘For me personally, our success has gotten us the attention  we were deprived of.  It has given us the tool that white folks understand, namely, money and greed. Now we can capitalize on the same greed that we have learned from them,’ answers Ron Decoralt, of the Ho-Chunk nation’s Planning and Economic Development Committee.

Do you ever get a feeling that now you can afford to strike back at the white man for all the horrible things he has done to the native Americans? I shoot a pointed question.

‘For me, this is not a vendetta.’ Responds another committee member, Lorenzo Funmaker, chairman of the committee and a professional carpenter. ‘We owned all this land around here.  A lot of atrocities and thieving were committed in taking away what is rightfully ours.’

‘The money gives us means to bring back our religion, language and culture. Way back, the white man stopped us from speaking our language. Out went our history and civilization which was preserved and rooted in the oral tradition. White people are hardly civilized. We Indians are very highly assimilated. No matter what, I am still a damn Indian,’ says Amos Kingsley – a construction worker.

While most of the fifteen or so committee members are trying to restrain their resentment to the white man, a twenty-one year old Shawnee Hunt is blunt in his assessment in what this new found success can do for them. ‘The casino money empowers us in other ways.  It helps us get education.  As I am growing up, I realize that first and foremost I am a native American living in the white man’s world. I live in the white community and go to the white man’s school and listen to the older kids always berating how dumb the Indians are.’

Like Shawnee in Wisconsin, several hundred miles east of them, their brothers in Connecticut are as blunt.  ‘Success of the tribe as a whole allows the tribe to be re-born.  The tribe was broken up by the Dutch and the English in 1634.  Over the next centuries, it was assumed that the Pequots no longer existed.  To bring back whatever remained of the tribe, an economic base had to be formed. Thanks to the vision and efforts of our tribal chairman Skip (Richard) Hayward, we have been able to do just that.  It has allowed us to raise our heads a little bit.’  Talking to me is John Holder, director of project development for the ever expanding Foxwood.

‘You know, I don’t feel exactly like we are striking back.  But suddenly, people don’t look at me as the person I once was.  Now they look at me as the same person with money.  One of my close friends, a white man, continuously asks me, How much money do you make? And the good friends that we were, I would tell him. Over a period of time, he began to resent the amount of money I make.  Suddenly you don’t know who your friends are.’

‘You bet they resent us dark folks making all that money,’ Joey Carter tells it as it is, ‘behind our backs, they still call us all sorts of names.  But my attitude is, you can call me what you want, but call me at the bank.’

‘I make it a point to always work on Columbus day,’ continues Joey as a slight smile  crosses his lips.  As much as I feel that he does this in defiance to the white man as symbolized by Columbus, I feel that there is deeper significance to his non-acknowledgement of the very existence of Columbus, whose arrival on the American continent must mean to him and the native Americans as the beginning of them being pushed out of their way of life.

Whatever the case, they have learned well from their experience with the white man.  The French were the first ones to scalp.  The Indians imitated and perfected the art of scalping.  Likewise, the Ho-Chunks were first introduced to gambling, also by the French as early as 1634, in what was then known as the three beans game. And see now what they have done with that knowledge!

There are still people who are upset by this sudden resurgence of the damn Indians.  Most of them however, are happily clanging away at their slot machines, and the ones who are not, are quite happy for them.  ‘Good for them!  After hundreds of years of oppression from us, they deserve it,’ says my friend Beth (Jones). The owner at the local Midas muffler shop, Joe Simchak, sums it up pragmatically, ‘We had it a long time coming.’

© Haresh Shah

Illustration: Celia Rose Marks

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Next Friday, March 28, 2014

Just married in India. On her way to the west to meet up with her husband and start her new life. Miss her connecting flight in Rome. Totally lost. Run into me.

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!

© Haresh Shah 2014

Illustration: Celia Rose Marks

Other Stories Of Friendship

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Next Friday, March 21, 2014

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”.

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.

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.

© Haresh Shah

Illustration: Celia Rose Marks

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Next Friday, March 14, 2014

Up until my first trip to Spain in the fall of 1978, I only had a vague knowledge of the Spanish Civil War and how Franco ruled the country for almost forty years with his ruthless iron fist. In fact it was the dictator’s death that would make possible even to think of bringing any western publication in to the country, let alone a local edition of Playboy. A poignant personal account.