Amid all the splendour of the renovated Taj Mahal Palace, a rediscovered window encapsulates the view of a country that refuses to stay down
The 107-year-old Taj Mahal Palace and Hotel in Mumbai is the place well-off Indians will tell you to go to for great afternoon tea and even better sushi.
It’s also the place where they’ll arrange their marriages, on the “lucky couch” in the Sea Lounge, overlooking the Arabian Sea. And it’s the building terrorists chose to attack in November 2008, spraying bullets at patrons in its restaurants and setting fire to a heritage site that doubled as the face of the city.
Terrorists attacked 10 popular tourist spots, killing at least 173 people and wounding hundreds more.
A three-day siege between the army and terrorists ensued at the Taj hotel, in what could be described as Mumbai’s own 9/11. The hotel’s century-old tower wing, with its arched windows and quirky blend of Eastern and Western architecture, was gutted and haemorrhaged smoke and gunfire.
I happened to be on holiday in India when the attacks took place. My first trip to the land of my ancestors had been one glowing Facebook update after the other. But it ended on a devastating note as I sat in the Chattrapathi Shivaji International Airport in Mumbai waiting for my flight home, watching a live news broadcast of the army going to battle outside the Taj. A counter at the bottom of the screen clocked up the death toll and I prayed my flight would leave without incident, as undetonated bombs continued to be discovered in other tourist hotspots.
The terrorists couldn’t have chosen better. Mumbai — pulsating, congested and more than a little manic — shows off the iconic hotel the way you would the good china.
The gunmen had shot up several hotel restaurants, effectively closing the entire historical wing, the, for renovation.
This month I was back in Mumbai in time to see what 1,8-billion rupees (about R282-million) and two years of renovation had done as the hotel prepared to reopen the doors of the historic wing.
The Tower had reopened directly after the attacks, but bounced back in typically hardy and inventive Indian fashion. But the Palace, intrinsically tied to Mumbai’s fragile sense of self and history in a frighteningly transient city, took a little longer. It didn’t come without a price tag though.
In the past financial quarter, with its flagship closed, the Taj group, led by the famous Tata family, reported an almost 80% drop in standalone profit.
But Raakhee Lalvani, the public relations director for the group, shrugged off the numbers. “We’re in a recession — the entire economy has suffered.”
The group continued making investments even as it ran at a loss, she said, adding the newly opened Taj Cape Town to its nearly 100 hotels and resorts across the world.
I had met Lalvani and Nikhila Palet, the hotel’s public relations manager, to view the restored and revamped Palace ahead of the August 12 opening. We made our way into the Palace wing where workers were putting the final touches to the renovated rooms. Staring down at us from the middle of the majestically cantilevered staircase was a bust of Jamsetji Tata, the Indian pioneer and philanthropist who, legend has it, built the city’s first luxury hotel in 1903 after being banned from a whites-only establishment. His place of pride is appropriate.
Five generations later his business and family heir, Ratan Tata, occupies a similar position in this jewel of the now enormous group’s empire. “He comes by almost every week,” said Palet.
She recalled his anxious wait outside the hotel during the attacks and his attempts to enter the building.
In the often emotionally fraught process of rebuilding that followed he held a series of pep talks with the team. “He knows all the staff members and what they’ve been through,” she said, as she greeted a bartender who has been working at the hotel for 37 years.
And though the hotel strove to retain the character of the damaged restaurants and rooms, there have been plenty of updates and retakes on old designs that may or may not go down well with an intensely loyal public.
The Sea Lounge has a “refreshed” colour palette and an elevator has been added alongside the staircase linking the Golden Dragon and Wasabi restaurants. There is new art and furniture aplenty, plus a host of innovative five-star-plus services, such as the Jaguar limousine service, which handily ties in with Tata’s 2008 acquisition of British luxury carmaker Jaguar Land Rover.
A quote by the 72-year-old Ratan Tata directly after the attacks has topped all the press releases surrounding the reopening, flaunted as a prophecy fulfilled. “When we open the heritage wing and do whatever it takes to get back its old glory, we will send a stronger message, a message that strongly resonates among all of us, that we can be hurt but we cannot be knocked down.”
Much has been made of the hotel as a symbol of India’s resilience and its ability to reinvent itself after serious injury.
But sometimes going forwards helps you to go backwards. To restore Mumbai’s first licensed bar after the attacks, renovators had to return to the Harbour Bar’s original building plans. “They discovered in the reconstruction that what had become a wall was actually a window,” said Palet. It was bricked up before there was the panoramic view to be had of the Gateway to India. Now the window has been restored and dubbed the Heritage Window.
The revamped and glammed-up hotel may well be a symbol of Indian resilience.
But the attacks did more than damage India’s security. It inflicted a profound paranoia on its national psyche. And in the end it’s the Harbour Bar’s rediscovered little window, looking out at Mumbaikars milling around the Gateway feeding pigeons and breathing a little easier, that offers a more optimistic view for the country’s future.
Your passage to India
Staying in the Tower section of the Taj Mahal Palace and Tower costs between R3 370 and R4 310 a person a night, depending on the standard of the room.
The historical wing is pricier, with rooms at the Palace from R4620 to R26640 for the grand luxury suites. You have to inquire about rates for the presidential suites.
If the über-luxury — or cost — of the Taj is not what you’re after, there is loads of cheap accommodation in Mumbai for a few hundred rands a night, even in the popular Colaba district of the Taj.
Just do your research beforehand so you know what you’re getting. The best time to holiday in India is in winter, which offers some respite from the sticky monsoon humidity. The tourist season runs from October to February and the good news is that it’s still very warm with clear sunny skies, particularly in Mumbai, where the temperature generally hovers in the 20s.
Flights from Johannesburg to Mumbai have been getting cheaper and cheaper. Emirates Airlines often runs specials and recently had one for as low as R3 750 — with a stopover in Dubai, of course. But generally an economy return flight will set you back about R5 000.
Indian airline Jet Airways started flying from Johannesburg recently and at the time of going to print a return economy flight in December cost R5 206 with taxes.
A direct flight takes nine hours and will take you forwards in time by three-and-a-half hours.