Police barricades block access to the damaged Taj hotel
Watching TV images of the Taj Palace burning as psychopaths run riot through Bombay leaves me with mixed feelings. Half of me is relieved that I’m in London, with the ability to delay our flight into the city until things calm down. But the other half – the journalist half – wants to bring the flight forward and get into the thick of it.
In the end, we went with cooling our heels in London for a week while we wait to see how things pan out. In all likelihood Bombay will pick itself up, dust itself off and get on with things. Like New York and London it has all the braggadocio of the metropolis. There is far too much going on to let a bunch of wing-nuts with AK-47s, box-cutters or home-made bombs get in the way of business.
The defiance from the Taj Palace summed it up – even as gunmen were still setting fire to parts of the Bombay landmark and commandos were firing grenades through windows, the Taj website carried a message that every inch of the hotel that had been damaged would be repaired.
The bullet holes will be patched, the scorched furnishings replaced, the marble polished and the hotel will get on with what it has always done.
Just like I imagine Bombay will.
December 1st, 2008 → 6:25 pm @ jason