Tears for the Taj

I feel attacked. I feel disturbed. I haven’t slept enough the past 3 days. I am in far away Singapore, a safe haven in today’s anytime-terror world; yet I feel as if I’m still in Mumbai, India.

I have many thoughts to dwell on - the attack, the perpetrators, the sheer insanity of it. But there is one that hovers in my mind, almost like a background to my whirling thoughts these past 3 days - The Taj.

To a lot of foreigners, outside those who’ve actually stayed there, it may sound like just another hotel. They don’t realise what the Taj means to me & I’m sure, to so many others in India & in Mumbai specifically.

The Taj at Colaba is in my mind, the first & foremost Indian architectural wonder. Unlike all the British raj built structures like the Rashtrapati Bhavan, VT, India Gate, Victoria Memorial or the many splendid buildings that were passed onto us, this one was built by an Indian to (kind of) show the bird to the Brits.

The interesting thing is that I don’t recall reading this or learning about it from anywhere. When I grew up, it was a different era; India went from self-imposed autarky to suspiciously sniffing liberalisation. Further, I went to school in Delhi, steeped in babu-dom & the shadows of government buildings everywhere. I learnt of another big city called Bombay, a place that my father went away to for half the week on work. A place that didn’t have winters, where it rained a lot, where people went to work on trains & relaxed at the beach on weekends, where they had a hotel called the Taj.

Appa always stayed at the Taj or the Oberoi. Though he liked both, the clear favorite was the Taj. Once, after eagerly browsing through the splendid photographs of the Taj magazine he brought back, I remember being completely awed by its architecture, the domes, the spires, the jutting-out windows with perches for kabootars. It didn’t feel like as if anyone actually stayed there - it looked like a splendid cross between a musuem & the Rashtrapathi Bhavan (ok ok so one person stays there, but that’s not much!). To partly confirm this & to partly show off my new found knowledge I asked - ‘Appa, do you stay at the old Taj?’

He stopped what he was doing, gave me a broad grin & said ‘No, not every time. I go on business trips every week, the old Taj is meant for a luxury vacation’.

‘But have you ever been inside’, I asked, slightly disappointed.

‘Of course. I’ve even stayed there a couple of times, but its very expensive’

Cut to many years later, I started working & was to make my first trip to Bombay (yes it was still called that then, & yes I’m that old!) & got to know I was to stay at the Taj. Being fresh plankton in the corporate food chain, I was doubling up with someone in a room in the ‘new’ wing. It was pretty snazzy, mind you & I did walk to the old wing & gazed at the wide staircases, smelled the old wood, chandeliers & the carpets. But I always felt as if I’d missed something in life by not staying there.

Over the years, I never got to stay at the Taj as a guest. I moved to Mumbai & have been to the Taj on numerous occasions. I’ve been to the restaurants, the disco, the coffee shop, the various banquet facilities attending company conferences, even the business centre. I have a particularly fond memory of a birthday celebration at the Sea Lounge. But I’ve never stayed in the old heritage wing.

Until twenty days ago.

Being now based in Singapore, I needed to stay in a hotel on my most recent visit to Mumbai. In the intervening years since my one & only stay at the Taj new wing, 2 small events had happened; Bombay became Mumbai & I had struggled up the corporate ladder to become a respectable vertebrate.

Alas, the Taj was yet unreachable for me to stay in. However this time I was accompanying a ‘blue-whale’ of my company & since he got to stay at the Taj, so did I. But again, it seemed, at the new wing.

But being the accompanying fish to a blue-whale has its advantages; I was upgraded to the heritage wing 2nd floor. And that too a harbour-facing room. You should have seen me - I was grinning from ear-to-ear & excitedly messaged the wife & a few of my friends.

I still recollect vividly walking along the wide central staircase, into my side of the corridor, looking down & up the strange but elegant ‘well’ that separated it from the row of rooms opposite. My room - 246 I think - was magnificent; a four poster bed, mirrors encased in white, a tiny enclosed balcony that jutted out for a stunning view of the harbour. Next morning I awoke to a surprise - sunrise in Mumbai! Having always stayed in the western suburbs, I have only seen sunsets & always assumed that one never could see a sunrise in Mumbai. I felt blessed.

Breakfast was at the Sea Lounge, bringing back memories of the day not-so-long-ago when I sat in celebration with my wife, on the very table in fact.

Writing this, I suddenly realise so many odd things that happened on that visit that I never remembered until now. For dinner, I wasn’t sure what Jim (the big man I was accompanying) would like to eat. So I got a list of all the restaurants at the hotel - the Zodiac Grill, Shamiana, Golden Dragon, Wasabi & Masala Craft. Earlier, charged by the sunrise, I took a walk along the Gateway promenade, down to Radio club, turned towards causeway, passed Leo, Mondy’s, Regal & back. Over the last 2 days, I feel as if I’ve done this route in a dizzying mix of blurred camera images, satellite maps in news reports, & heard these very restaurants as sound bytes, pictures & news reports. Ironically, despite all the excitement around this trip, I didn’t carry a camera.

And to top it all, on that very trip, I got to know of my new role that would mean no more trips to Mumbai for now; it was as if the grand old hotel was telling me ‘I let you in once, young man, but its not going to happen again too soon’. I’m grateful. Many years from now, when my son asks me if I have stayed at the heritage wing of the Taj, I too can say ‘yes I did son’.

Where do we go from here?

To say that the Taj is ‘iconic’ is too small & mild; it means far more than that & somehow the term does not do justice to it. In my profession, its the fashion to term anything & everything as an iconic brand, therefore diminishing the stature of some things by associating the same term to them. eg, would we call the (other) Taj as just iconic? Similarly with the the Taj at Colaba. Its got a certain aura about it, an aura of contrasting textures; grand, awe-inspiring yet comforting, solid. It seems to say, ‘I have stood long before you came here, & don’t worry, will be here long after you have gone’. Its a legacy. Mine, yours, ours. A legacy & a symbol of the society we want to live in. The terrorists have struck at this, our legacy. It has trembled, crumbled in some places, groaned but has stayed on its feet, keeping its promise of being there for us.

Now its up to us. We need to stay sane. We need to stay calm & think objectively, with clarity. We need to make sure that never again do we have someone mock & threaten our legacy in this or any other manner.