Hospitality professional and author L Aruna Dhir has walked the lobbies of numerous hotels, engaging and entertaining guests that included stars from the world of Indian cinema. Dhir’s Hotel Adventures with the Stars is an assortment of 27 of her friendships and capers with celebrities. “People who know me know that I’m brutally honest and one has to encounter that badness to write that bad,” shares the poet and brand management specialist. Probably this is what makes her book such a fun read. We speak to Dhir about her book and more. Excerpts…
What inspired you to write this memoir?
Well, the book was dying to be written. The focus of any good book is the stories. What really led to this book was the content… the stories I had to share. I had a batch of readers who loved how I was writing these stories. I used to be a columnist for a news platform. I wrote pieces of nostalgia, commentary on society, culture, consumers and marketing. I once did a couple of posts on Sanjay Dutt, Priyanka Chopra, the villains of Bollywood, etc., and the Bollywood pieces were really hitting the bull’s-eye.
Tell us the one constant that you found in all the personalities you’ve encountered.
That they are only too human, just like any of us. Given all the fantastic things around them, they would come out in the open, and at the core they are simple people like any of us. In the book, I have mentioned happy instances with a couple of people—I’ve met them without their makeup on sometimes or even without their bodyguards. And I’ve seen that they are extremely nice people with a touch of integrity.
Were there any encounters that you intentionally avoided mentioning?
I could not avoid it; I had to encounter it and deal with it head-on. It was not a very pleasant exchange with one of the most well-known couturiers, and he does not make the cut in the book. That showed me the other side of humans where we are given to conning and cheating. That is something that could have been avoided, but it was part of my job and I had to bulldoze through it. But not with the ones I have mentioned in the book.
How did you separate the art from the artist?
Look at my encounter with Mira Nair—she was there to shoot a part of her film. On one hand, she was meeting me for work. But the second time I met her, it was as if I’d known her for a long time. So, the artist did not come into play, it was all her. As for Ranjeet, he was very sweet. For whatever time I met him, it was a revelation. I didn’t really expect him to be a thorough gentleman. What stood out for me was that he was so well-spoken. He was a complete antithesis of the impression that he has built for himself on the silver screen.