The C'Wealth Games is a perfect example of our class structure

The Commonwealth Games, which are to be inaugurated in Delhi on the October 3, have been characterised by Indian commentators as the biggest rip-off scam that has been pulled off within independent India, a tsunami of corruption that has laid waste at least the coastlines of India’s izzat.

No doubt, down the line, the journalists and some bureau of investigation will seek to get at the truth and then perhaps the tumbrils will roll. Or perhaps the ‘no doubt’ is a bit optimistic.

The international media have not been slow to contrast the Indian mess with the triumph and showmanship of China’s Olympic Games or of South Africa’s relatively smooth hosting of the Football World Cup. The Indian press, trying to divert the attention, turned to the question of who should inaugurate the event.

The consternation, with TV footage and really disgusting photographs, has concentrated on the squalor of the unfinished accommodation which the athletes will occupy.

One much quoted incident involves an Indian boxing champion who went into the rooms allocated to him and sat on the bed. The mattress fell through the bed under his weight. He was amazed to find that it had been placed on the frame of the bed without any springs, planks or any other base to support it. I believe he has quit the Games in disgust.

I describe the trivial episode in detail because it reminded me of the time when I was lodged in a Delhi hotel which had more stars than a North Korean general. The rooms were great, the air conditioning worked but had to switched off when a TV crew turned up to interview me for matters related to the literary event I was attending.

They switched on some bright and hot lights to illuminate my features and after some time this made me hot, bothered and sultry. I proposed to Tavleen Singh, my beautiful interviewer that we take a break and have a cold beer.

She agreed, I took one out of the well-stocked mini-bar and looked around for a bottle opener. There didn’t appear to be one in any of the obvious places, so I phoned room service and was very politely told that the bottle opener was fixed to the wall above the washbasin in the bathroom. That way it couldn’t be mislaid. Perfect!

I took the beer bottle to the bathroom and located the opener. It was a perfectly serviceable metal device but it had been fixed to the wall three inches above the washbasin. It meant that no bottle could be placed under it and levered open. I called Tavleen Singh to share the absurdity. She immediately brought it to the attention of the management as she knew them.

Within ten minutes there were managers, engineers, architects and five other officials examining the anomalous bottle opener. ‘Mistrys’ were summoned. Apologies extended, pre-opened beer proffered.

The little mistake, worth a curious laugh and nothing more, was symptomatic of the larger picture. The mistry or his apprentice who had fixed that bottle opener to the wall had never used such a device in his life. The device hadn’t opened the bottle but it let loose the genie that told stories of the vicious class structure of India.

Which urban Indian has not experienced the toilet seat which can’t be raised because it has been fixed too far back under the flush cistern? Again, the workman has no use for such a toilet and can’t be expected to automatically appreciate its mechanics.