Now with enhanced security!

 This Quality Inn and Suites, where I stayed last weekend on the world's slowest drive up to Boston, should consider evaluating their security practices.

On top of the in-box, at the reception desk, so they'll be handy, for the night shift.

The Broadway Hotel, Kolkata

Yellow shutters and soot-crusted screens. In the bar, curtains, the warm beige of dim lightbulbs and eighteen ceiling fans on full; their whirring rush of air dulls the incessant honking outside on Ganesh Chandra Avenue. (Calcuttans simplify life by using the horn in lieu of brakes, clutch and turn signals). The dark wood-wainscotted walls of the Broadway Hotel saloon are made of primeval hardwoods no longer available at any price. Smoking is prohibited these days. A sign announces that it "is an offense,” but the tall walls are a suspicious dingy ochre, as if they had had the chance to collect smoke for many long-passed decades. This hotel does not have a faded grandeur; it has whatever it has always had, unchanged.

The waiters wear wrinkled burgundy Nehru smocks with black embroidered patches above their hearts, reading: Broadway Hotel. Oh, how I wish there remained such a place on Broadway! Squat red leatherette chairs crowd against brown formica tabletops buffed almost white in places; there is little left of the original faux-burl woodgrain pattern. Mildew specked mirrors along one wall double the already ample space, which has soaring ceilings. The soap at the men's handwashing station is dispensed from a swinging tin bottle that pivots on a mount, bolted to the wall above the sinks. If it ain't broke please Lord don't fix it.

When I alight from the elevator cage the children of the manager are laughing and howling in their adolescent Sikh turbans, playing narrow soccer on the polished red cement floor of the fourth floor corridor. Moments after I have dropped my bags on the single bed, the half-deflated miniature basketball is kicked through my still-open door. On purpose, I am certain. It rolls about the room, and within seconds the curious duo are peering through the curtain at the door, sticking their noses right into my room, demanding to know how tall I am. I've been here ten minutes, and I could live here forever.

 The hotel's website (they are not out of date) almost proudly announces that none of the rooms are air-conditioned. The bed, edged away from the wall, better to be under yet another churning ceiling fan, has no top sheet. This saves everyone time and bother. You would be no more likely to require a top sheet than to walk out into Calcutta wearing a sweater.

It is 11am. I stretch out under the helicopter downdraft, close my eyes, and lean into the single pillow. I have flown all night from Africa, with a 2am to 6am layover in Mumbai. I couldn't be more tired, but I am ecstatic to find myself in the most splendid ten dollar hotel in all of Asia.

Ciné in the Nation's Service

The arrival of exiled former president Jean-Bertrand Aristide yesterday in Port au Prince did not provoke quite the same media frenzy as his similar return in 1994, when dozens of journalists thronged the tables along the terrace at the Oloffson Hotel and I met countless people I am still pleased to number among my friends.

Nonetheless, there were journalists at the airport to greet him, and, according to my friend Daniel Morel, perhaps five to ten thousand citizen well-wishers. Although the few mentions of Haiti in the international press yesterday focused on Aristide's return, the bigger story here is the tidal wave of support for Michel Martelly, the former konpa musician turned political outsider. Barring a fraud of monumental proportions, he is certain to be Haiti's next president. Martelly is the closest thing to a local version of a rock star, and the people treat him like one. He enjoys a sort of pre-emptive cult of personality not seen here since Aristide's heyday. At his demonstrations people swoon and raise their arms toward the sky. On the one hand it is tragic to see the Haitian people once more investing their infinite and exuberant faith in a mere mortal, and one with no government experience at that. On the other hand, it is that very exuberant faith that grabs hold of the visitor to Haiti and enchants forever. So the spectacle is both beautiful and depressing, like so much in this country.

Port au Prince is awash with pink posters of "Tet Kale" (the bald-headed man), Michel Martelly.

For once, I am working on a documentary here that refuses to get caught up in the cyclical vagaries of Haitian political life; the return of Aristide and the cheering crowds of pink-shirted Martelly supporters are things we hear about over dinner at the Oloffson, not experience firsthand. Yesterday, I encountered on the terrace there a television crew who had been at the airport covering Aristide's arrival from South Africa. To my delight, I recognized them and they me; the cameraman and soundman were both alumni of my sound recording seminars at the Siné Lekol in Jacmel. Although both their administrative building and their classrooms were destroyed in the earthquake, often described here as "the events of January 12th," the school's spirit was not. The students immediately set to documenting recovery and rebuilding, filming the living conditions of tent-camp residents and seeking out gripping stories of survival. They have already made countless films.

To see two of my students gainfully employed using the skills I had helped to teach them filled me with pride and hope. Cesar "Bougon" Massena was clutching a boom pole and a shotgun microphone, and threatening my livelihood with his abilities. I couldn't be more pleased.


Crew photo: Pradip Malde

And no, I'm not staying there...

 In Ninh Binh, the "Mark of the Beast" Hotel. Just like the Eagles said, the kind you can check into, but you can never leave.