Mumbai’s iconic hotel, the Taj, rises from ashes after terror attack

Times Online ^ | 21st November 2009 | Rhys Blakely

[cold start]

t is the stories woven into its history that make a truly great hotel, according to Karambir Singh Kang, the general manager of the Taj Mahal Palace & Tower.

A year ago, the hotel became the focus of the world when Islamist gunmen brought terror to its guests and staff.

“The Taj was always iconic,” Mr Kang, 41, told The Times, sitting in one of the hotel’s grand cafés overlooking the Gateway of India and the Arabian Sea. “Now, it has transcended to a different level... Each corridor, each corner, has a story.”

Few are sadder, or more extraordinary, than Mr Kang’s own tale. His wife Neeti and two sons, Uday, 12, and Samar, 5, were among the 31 people who died in the hotel during the attacks.

On November 26, the first night of the assault, they were trapped on the sixth floor of the opulent Heritage Wing. Pinned down by bullets and bombs on the lower floors, Mr Kang was unable to rescue them.

When, suddenly, he could no longer reach Neeti by mobile phone, he realised that she and his boys were gone, although even then, he did not stop working. Throughout the attack — a 60-hour siege that was to claim more than 170 lives across Mumbai — he raced around the labyrinthine Taj, desperately trying to save other guests from the four heavily armed gunmen stalking its corridors.

Dozens of similarly heroic stories later emerged. One family described how a maintenance man, identified only as Mr Rajan, deliberately allowed himself to be shot to shield them.

[HiTech RedNeck]

Furious is an understatement about how I feel about the terrorists who attacked the hotel full of people. Death by torture would be too good for the terrorists.

Will this man be successfully able to resurrect the hotel’s business given the gross human tragedy that took place in it? I hope for his sake and the sake of those who stayed with the hotel, that it is possible. Perhaps he will want to erect a memorial somewhere on its grounds.