“It has been a while since you stayed with us, Ms. Wellner,â€
That’s how the email began.
“It has been a while since we had the temporary happiness of welcoming you to The Taj Mahal Palace & Tower, Mumbai. Is it that your book of travels haven’t brought you to Mumbai? Or, have we fallen short somewhere, for which you shelter’t been back?â€
I believed this notice attached May 19th, 2009 – just under six months after the terrorist attacks that began on 11/26/2008. At the Taj Mahal Palace & Tower , fifty-two people were murdered. I stayed at that hotel in hind part before eight months earlier. My room was facing the harbor in the “heritage wingâ€, which is more than a century old.
You know those rooms, or at least their exterior, since the terrorists made them their particular target. Those were the rooms that you saw on television, in flames. They were were not a part of the hotel’s triumphant reopening less than a month later, which was celebrated by high tea that was attended by one thousand of Mumbai’s elite.
The email was sent by the hotel’s director of sales, and it was a lump email, with the opportunity to safe unsubscribe at the bottom. It continued:
“Please let us know – we would be delighted to do anything we can to help you choose us again when next you are in Mumbai.â€
I first arrived in Mumbai at about 11 p.m., on a express flight from New York. Through a discard in what I thought were clouds, but I figured out the next day was smog, I saw what looked like white holiday lights strung up in the street, and at that time people, hundreds and thousands of people, streaming, dancing. I speculated that there was some order of a national holiday, a way fair. As the plane descended, I saw that it was just a street and people walking around, shopping, eating – a usual weeknight in this city. Greaves India had arranged my trip and for a car to collect me and bring me to the hotel. The driver inched his way through traffic of all kinds – cars, buses, the masses, animals — moving at every angle . In the yellowish tinge of night, in that place were flashes of bright ruddiness, horns honking constantly into the burnt air, with blasts of garlic, bug spray, exhaust. I peeled off my denim jerkin, it was nearly 90 degrees and humid. We drove past the Cama Hospital for Women and Children, outside people were sitting cross-legged on the pavement, others unrolling bedrolls nearby, getting ready to sleep. I resolved that I would not get sick on this trip.
After an hour or so, we arrived at the Taj.
I walked up the carpeted steps of the hotel, my bags were seen to. I was brought straight to my room where I was checked in. I dined in the hotel that death, my heels clattering on the white marble floor. After dinner, as I walked passed darkened boutiques. I had difficulty finding my room again, there were sum of two units corridors onward both side of the step case that looked exactly a like to me, and I only realized I’d picked the wrong individual whenever I clattered down to the end of the wrong hall, and back again. That night, I leaned out the window and looked at the scaffolded Gateway to India – under repair from damage sustained in a 2003 terror attack, I’lunch heard. In front of the harbor wall, I saw taxi drivers stretched outright on the protect of their cars. I saw elaborate horse-drawn carriages, decorated by flashing lungs.
I woke up early the next morning and went short to the window. The taxi men were gone, there were things being so vendors selling nuts, bright yellow and pink balloons, as groups of young women in unblemished head scarves and blue tunics walked by. The gray water was at once filled by boats through remote decks, tightly packed with mob, who would scramble facing onto ramps and then onto the sidewalk. And there were pigeons, and black birds I couldn’face to face identify, and always the air-bladder of cars honking, honking. I didn’face to face know where to look first.
It was a relief to pull remote into my room, which was frosty and cool and calm.
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