Kartikey Sehgal

The Taj Mahal hotel is lonesome at night. The Gateway of India is sealed. Only gunmen patrol the area. Stray visitors are asked to move away quickly.

The lonesome Taj does not reflect the resplendent mood described in newspapers and magazines, when the 105 years old luxurious hotel re-started its services.

The gunmen are still and wary. They ask me to not go near the Gateway and to hurry with my walk along the area. I walk alone; to my left is the enormous sea and deserted boats and to my right is the quiet Taj building. There is nobody on the road, except another gunman.

It was perhaps out of a long spell of quietness, but he smiled effusively when I asked him a question. “The old Taj building is shut for visitors.”

The old Taj building had suffered maximum damage during the 26^TH November attack. “That’s why the rooms are dark.”

The new Taj building was coloured with lights though it couldn’t conceal its mournful counterpart. I met another gunman.
“I thought you are a guest from the Taj, that’s why I let you move around the place.”

I queried, “So it is safe when guests from the hotel move around the place but unsafe when non-guests do the same.”

“If someone asks then I can say that a guest from Taj is taking a walk. But if they learn that you are not a guest then they will ask me what kind of person you have let near the place.”

“I am a guest of the Taj. I don’t stay but I have just eaten dinner here.”

The gunman paused and used some seconds to say, “Ok, but you still move away, please.”

The ‘resilience’ and ‘toughness’ associated with this place are adjectives of daytime. At night, the hotel is dim and fearful like the gunman.

I walked past the new Taj where the doorman and some men in black suits were welcoming a group of foreigners.

The open heartedness and the cordiality of the hotel is an economic compulsion and reserved largely for its patrons. The Taj Mahal hotel has always been a business organization like any other hotel in Mumbai.

However, due to its age, architecture and now the attack, it is considered an icon of Mumbai.

The old Taj building is decorated but deserted

The new Taj building

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