Marco Polo’s recurring drunken episodes and loss of control

Marco Polo’s recurring drunken episodes turn the Hotel Shahjahan manager’s private drinking into a hidden burden borne by his staff. His abrupt disappearances, violent intoxication, and morning return to work create a sharp divide between the composed authority visible to guests and the disorder Mathura Singh must contain at night. The episodes also reveal how thoroughly the hotel’s hierarchy depends on employees managing the consequences of their superior’s loss of control.

The manager’s disappearances and volatile returns

Marco Polo’s behavior is unpredictable even before his drunkenness becomes visible. While giving instructions, he can seem distracted; on some afternoons he leaves in white shorts and a white short-sleeved shirt, carrying his walking stick, without anyone knowing where he has gone. At times he disappears even during a crowded dinner service, leaving the butler and Satyasundar Bose to manage the room without him. His absence is not presented as a planned delegation: the staff are left to improvise around the unexplained departure.

The uncertainty extends to his moods. When Marco Polo returns, he may have changed completely. In one described episode, he strips off his clothes one piece at a time and throws them around the room, while Mathura Singh waits outside, unsure what to do. Entering seems pointless and potentially dangerous: in his drunken temper Marco Polo might throw a shoe at him. Soon, however, he calls Mathura in and slurs an order to summon the bar manager. The shift from volatile isolation to issuing commands does not restore ordinary order; it pulls another employee into the episode.

The drinking also takes place beyond the hotel. His own cellar cannot satisfy him, so the man who directs everything at the Hotel Shahjahan goes elsewhere for spirits, drinking in a shabby Anglo-Indian suburb. Ram Singh, the bar manager, is accustomed to foreign liquors and finds the smell of this drink sickening, yet he has to keep his composure. The contrast is material as well as social: the manager’s access to the hotel’s cellar does not prevent him from seeking a harsher drink outside it, while the staff must respond to the consequences wherever his appetite leads.

Escalation, damage, and sudden collapse

On returning to his room, Marco Polo demands whisky and soda. His intoxication then intensifies into a frenzy so forceful that even two servants cannot keep his large body under control. Wearing only his underwear, he breaks glasses and smashes bottles on the floor. He then embraces Ram Singh, dances with him, and tries to kiss him while continuing to sing. The scene overturns the usual arrangement between manager and subordinate: Ram Singh, normally serving drinks, becomes the object of the manager’s erratic attention, and the authority of the employer gives way to an unpredictable physical spectacle.

The episode ends not in a managed recovery but in an abrupt return to awareness. Marco Polo recognizes what is happening, pushes Ram Singh out of the room, and collapses onto the bed. The staff’s response must begin where his control fails. Someone enters cautiously, switches off the light, covers his body with a sheet, and leaves. The account gives no suggestion that the manager later directs this care or remembers receiving it; the actions belong to the workers who remain alert after he has stopped functioning.

The danger left for Mathura Singh

The disorder does not end when Marco Polo falls asleep. About an hour later, Mathura returns to clean the broken glass from the floor. He does so because the manager may rise at dawn without remembering the night and injure himself on the shards. That caution is grounded in an earlier accident: on one occasion no one dared enter after a bout of drinking, and Marco Polo cut his foot by stepping on a piece of glass the next morning. He summoned Mathura and complained that the staff were punishing him for being drunk and failing to care for him.

After that injury, Mathura stays awake on such nights. He sits on a stool outside the room, sometimes staring at the clock and waiting for the night to end and the sun to rise. His vigil is a direct consequence of the previous morning’s cut: he has learned that Marco Polo’s apparent sleep is not the end of the danger, and that the manager’s safety depends on work performed beyond his awareness. The broken glass therefore has a continuing force in the pattern. It is first debris from the manager’s uncontrolled drinking, then the instrument of an injury, and finally the reason Mathura keeps watch and cleans the room.

Morning recovery and hidden labor

To the narrator, these nocturnal scenes are invisible. Mathura tells him about them; the narrator had never detected them from Marco Polo’s appearance at breakfast. Even after the excesses, the manager can work with seemingly inexhaustible energy, laboring like a mule. The contrast is not merely between drunkenness and sobriety, but between two versions of the same working day: at night, servants cautiously contain the manager’s body and its damage; by breakfast, the manager’s capacity for work conceals the episode from an observer who sees only the public routine.

That concealment helps explain how the pattern can recur without visibly dislodging Marco Polo from his position. His volatility terrorizes employees and keeps them alert, while their vigilance repairs the immediate consequences of his behavior. Mathura’s careful cleaning, his sleepless watch, and the servants’ discreet handling of the manager preserve the appearance of normal operations. The episodes thus expose an unequal form of dependence: the hotel’s authority rests with Marco Polo, but the practical work of protecting him, the room, and the next morning’s routine falls to those beneath him.