The Taj Mahal Hotel in Mumbai

Mumbai, Feb. 21: An 82-year-old woman with a lifelong dream of sipping coffee at Mumbai’s Taj Mahal Hotel was denied entry because she had turned up in slippers.

For decades, Manjamma, a grandmother from coffee-hub Karnataka, had yearned to visit India’s most glamorous city. All she wanted was to savour the brew at the five-star hotel opposite the Gateway of India.

Her mother had done that 60 years ago — and was so bowled over she could never stop speaking of it to Manjamma.

The need to have an eye examined provided Manjamma the opportunity to make the trip at long last. On Monday, after a glance at the Gateway, she led her family to the Taj Mahal Hotel’s steps with suppressed excitement.

“The hotel wouldn’t let us in because of her sandals. We were shocked,” said Dr Laxman Dandin, Manjamma’s son-in-law.

“She is so upset she has vowed never to visit Mumbai. Yet she had been so excited about the trip….”

Dandin added that the family was told the coffee shop was closed. “When we took the matter up with the manager, she brushed us off.”

The Taj Mahal Hotel was set up by Jamsetji Tata, the founder of the Tata group, in 1903 after such a brush-off. He had been barred entry into the city’s Watson’s Hotel, then an exclusive preserve of the white-skinned.

Manjamma

Manjamma’s granddaughter Sapana, a gynaecologist with a Bangalore hospital, is convinced that skin colour was the reason for Monday’s humiliation, too.

“I believe we were treated so shabbily because we are from south India and have dark skin. Most of those who come to this hotel are foreigners and I’m sure they come wearing slippers and beachwear. But they are never turned out,” she said at a family friend’s home in Vashi, still smarting.

“Else, why were we asked to leave? Both my father and I are doctors and were capable of paying our bill. We said so, but the manager wouldn’t listen.”

Mumbai’s five-stars have been known to use chappals as an excuse to block Indian customers they deem unfit to enter the premises. No such rule applies to white foreigners.

In December 2006, Marathi actors Sanjay Narvekar, Santosh Juvekar and director Nishikant Kamat found the door shut to them at the elite Juhu pub, Enigma, in J.W. Marriot because they had Kolhapuri slippers on.

The hotel’s rules say no one can be allowed into Enigma without shoes, but foreigners are regularly seen at the pub in rubber slippers.

In August 2007, a posh club refused to accept actress Celina Jaitley’s complaint of abuse against an overseas customer.

Many Mumbai residents say they are wary of setting foot in high-profile city hotels because of the discrimination.

“Foreigners are given preferential treatment. If these posh hotels want to cater only to foreigners, they should hang a board saying so,” said advertisement executive Prasad Agarwal, 26, another victim of the slipper ban.

A Taj Mahal Hotel spokesperson said the rebuff to Manjamma was “an unfortunate incident” and that hotel authorities were “looking into the matter”.

Sony Sachdev, adviser and former president of the Indian Hotels and Restaurants Association, said a slipper ban at pubs was now more or less accepted after drunken brawls by a certain section of customers.

“But there is no such rule for five-stars. But these double standards (for Indians and foreigners) are prevalent at all posh city hotels and I apologise for that,” he said.

“Did you know that on a dry day, Mumbai’s hotels are allowed to serve alcohol to people who can present foreign passports?”