That Summer by the Beach...

Ted and I spent the summer of ’09 in a small cottage by the beach. The rent was reasonable, the cottage was cramped and we spent 14 to 16 hours a day slogging at the Marriott Resort nearby. Summer Internship a.k.a Industrial Training, since we were 2nd Year Hotel Management students.

Ted and I had been friends since the eighth grade and we stuck together till college. We got along very well in spite of being quite different from each other. He was universally liked and I was universally despised. He drank & I was a teetotaler. And that kind of sums it up, ha ha.

We started out with our internships, all excited to be there. Posh hotel, flashy uniforms, big presence in the industry, we thought it would be LEGEN- wait for it -Dary!!! But soon, we realized that none of these things matter to the people getting into the premises from the staff entrance. A reasonable shift for an employee at an Indian Hotel is 9 to 10 hours, which includes breaks. But India being India, labor laws and regulations are a joke. And technically, trainees are not employees. So we were forced to work for 14 to 16 hour shifts at a time.

That summer was tough and both of us coped with it differently. Ted chose to drown his fatigue in rum and weed. Not having that luxury, I soon developed severe back aches. Went to the doctor, who prescribed rest. So I went to the training coordinator in college. He thought I was faking pain to get out of training and told me I had to power through it or I would fail that year.

I tried but got bed ridden in a few weeks. When I stopped going to the resort, Ted just couldn’t muster up the will to go anymore. A whole month, we lay there on our beds, tired, defeated and unsure of what the future had in store for us. Ted kept rolling joints all day and drank all night. We would step out at night to go to Temptations, this sports bar next door.

We had long meaningful conversations that Ted forgot all about when morning came. We would sometimes sit at the beach, kicking at the sand while I contemplated suicide by drowning to end the sorrow. Ted would strike down the idea. Ted stayed intoxicated continuously for a whole month, and I kept passively inhaling weed & cigarette smoke.

Then we just got up & dusted ourselves.

I started training at this smaller hotel nearby as I knew I had to complete the minimum number of days of Industrial Training needed to pass. We cleaned the room at the end of the month and threw away around 500 empty bottles of Old Monk. Ted went back and completed training. Surprisingly, even after having missed a big chunk of his training days, the HR didn’t realize he was gone and awarded him a certificate of complete attendance.

We passed that year and we graduated the year after. I still have things that remind me of that time, like my back. I developed a slipped disc due to those days at the Marriott kitchen. And after college, I decided not to work at hotels and chose an alternate career path. And Ted had his alcohol addiction as a reminder of that time. Thankfully, he shook it off soon after college but still has a weak liver.

Even though this was one of the worst periods of my life, I look back at it now and laugh, such was that summer by the beach.

NOTE: Have been rather caught up with work lately, hence the delay in this post. This story was never put to paper. Although fictionalised, it is based on real experiences and I have changed a few names.