P.C. Gómez

P.C. Gómez, who gives his full name as Prabhat Chandra Gómez, directs the orchestra at the Hotel Shahjahan. He is both a public presence in the hotel’s dining room, cueing the band as guests arrive, and a worker whose late-night schedule leaves him with no practical way home after the cabaret ends.

Identity and Work

Gómez introduces himself as the orchestra director, a role that places him at the center of the hotel’s daily music. During the lunch service, he gives the signal for the band to begin playing as guests make their way into the dining room. Five musicians follow his lead; Sata Bose affectionately calls Gómez their “maestro.”

The music is part of the hotel’s service, but Gómez describes it as labor rather than effortless entertainment. When the musicians sit down to eat, he tells the chef that music on a full stomach is possible only at the Shahjahan. He then turns to his band and makes the distinction plainly: unlike birds, they do not sing to satisfy their stomachs; they play to earn their living. The joke carries the conditions of the work inside it: performance is their livelihood, and meals must fit around the hotel’s demands.

Daily Routine and Hotel Life

The hotel’s timetable extends well beyond ordinary transit hours. Gómez lives there because, once the cabaret show finishes at night, buses and trams have stopped running. His residence at the Shahjahan is presented not as a preference but as the consequence of the hours his work requires.

That schedule reaches into the early morning. At four o’clock, Gómez usually drinks a strong cup of coffee without milk or sugar. When the narrator encounters him at that hour, Gómez makes coffee for him too, adding sugar because he thinks the stronger version would be difficult for him to digest. There is no milk, and the narrator feels guilty for causing Gómez trouble in the middle of the night. The small exchange reveals a considerate side of a man whose own routine is shaped by the hotel’s late-running entertainment.

Performance and the Hotel’s Working World

Gómez’s orchestra helps turn the dining room into a continuing performance space: the band begins at his signal while guests arrive and settle in. Yet the musicians’ meal is not separate from that performance economy. Gómez’s remark about earning a living makes visible the workers behind the polished hotel experience, whose music serves customers while their own eating and resting are fitted around the service.

His circumstances also connect the hotel’s public entertainment to its employees’ private lives. The cabaret keeps Gómez working until transport has ceased, so the hotel becomes both workplace and necessary accommodation. Through his routine, the Shahjahan appears not only as a venue for guests but as a system that organizes workers’ hours, meals, and place of residence.