Where an Attaché Comes With the Room

AS a certified butler from the Taj Hotels training program in New Delhi, Anupam Guha says he has waited on all manner of esteemed personages, including the former British prime minister Tony Blair (“a dignified man, ” he said, “with a very soft human heart”) and Aga Khan IV (a fan of sweets, to whom Mr. Guha served sugarcoated strawberries).

Of late, however, Mr. Guha has brought his remarkably servile skill set to the United States, as part of a new “royal attaché service” at the Pierre hotel on Fifth Avenue. The service, started in July, promises guests at the hotel's 11 Grand Suites, which can run anywhere from $5,000 to $20,000 a night, almost unlimited access to Mr. Guha and two other immaculately trained Indian associates, all of whom sport white gloves, perfect posture and clipped colonial accents.

“The main thing in our job is not to simply deliver something but how attractively we can deliver it,” Mr. Guha said. “It's all about royalty.”

The regal treatment includes alleviating minor annoyances and prepping little perks - unpacking bags, fixing a shoelace, delivering a smoothie - as well as providing more refined pleasures like a royal bath: precisely heated, expertly drawn, and filled with things like Pink Pepperpod bath gel and Celestial Maracuja Sugar Polish. (Note: the attachés prepare the bath but do not provide the scrubbing.)

As the eldest of the three-man team, Mr. Guha. 29, said, he is fluent in 22 subjects related to five-star doting, which include in-room dining, knowledge of international customs and, of course, complaint handling. His skills also extend to fixing the remote, getting spots off the carpet and something called “power dressing.” Mr. Guha says that his primary role, however, is to act as a super-efficient liaison between the guest and the hotel staff - part fixer, part personal assistant, and all yes-man.

“I would never consider a request to be bizarre; we always say it's challenging,” Mr. Guha said. “I have always been taught that guest is god, and god cannot have a bizarre request.”

It's a job that also includes being a “friend away from friends” for travelers, Mr. Guha said, albeit a friend who keeps an intricate in-house dossier on everything from what kind of mattress you like to how you take your coffee. Indeed, part of the advertised appeal of the attachés is that “even unspoken wishes are intuited,” something Mr. Guha said is accomplished by keen observation of the guests' likes and dislikes.

“The royal attaché is not the person who is doing the thing but is maintaining the profile of the guest,” he said. “We are multiskilled persons: detectives, doctors, engineers, you can call us anything. And we can be anything.”

And sure enough, it seems being a good butler can resemble being a really nice college roommate, right down to making late-night pizza runs - “Absolutely I would,” Mr. Guha said - as well as listening, discreetly, to worldly woes.

“If someone wants to share anything with you, his or her experiences with you, you should be a wall which doesn't allow other people to hear it,” Mr. Guha said. “Once the royal attaché steps outside the suite, he is like a clean blackboard.”

And if there are tears, he said, he is ready with a hankie. “And if the handkerchief is too small,” he joked, “I can even open up my jacket. That's why I have multiple uniforms.”

Such elegant obsequiousness is a staple of butler training in India, where the Pierre's parent company - Taj Hotels, Resorts and Palaces - is based, and where Mr. Guha, who hails from the eastern city of Jamshedpur, trained. Last year, he and his two fellow attachés, Rishabh Jain, 22, and Sujoy Choudhury, 24, were selected to come to the United States from a pool of thousands of other candidates, and spent six months training for their New York debut.

Since arriving, they've been much in demand at the hotel, but have found some time for outside activities. Mr. Jain, for example, has gone sky diving and is learning keyboard and Spanish. Mr. Choudhury, his roommate, has taken up playing pool on a downtown team. And Mr. Guha visited Niagara Falls, though he admits to missing his wife of four years, who is still living in India.

But appropriately enough, he seems to keep a stiff upper lip. Asked what he would request if he were to stay in a Grand Suite, Mr. Guha seemed bemused.

“I am the person who delivers,” Mr. Guha said with a laugh. “I am not the person who wishes. I have never thought on that: Who would be asking me on my wish?”

Well, just what if?

“My personal preferences are very minimal,” he said. “You can give me hard mattress or soft mattress at the end of the day. I am tired, and I should be sleeping.”