[See SAJAforum's full coverage of the Mumbai attacks]
On Nov. 30, 2008, four days after the attacks had begun Ratan Tata, the chairman of the Tata Group, which owns the Taj Mahal Hotel, appeared on "Fareed Zakaria GPS" on CNN. An excerpt:
ZAKARIA: And if you had a message to the world, who have witnessed all this and seen your hotel -- the hotel that your great- grandfather built -- go up in flames, what would it be?
TATA: I think my message would be that this has been a terrible blow to us, but we will, in fact, overcome the challenges that are ahead. It has not, in fact, diminished our commitment to go ahead with what we had in our minds, and that we will rebuild what has been damaged or destroyed, and that we will only come out stronger and, in fact, more determined than we were before this very unfortunate event took place [
full transcript here].
Less than a month after the attacks, the Taj and another hotel damaged in the attack, the Trident, were open for business (the Oberoi has not yet reopened and may take six months to do so). From a Bloomberg report by Debarati Roy and Subramaniam Sharma:
A steady flow of cars and guests endured traffic jams, gun emplacements and security checks last night as Mumbai's Taj Mahal and Trident hotels reopened less than a month after terrorists killed 63 guests and employees.
Diplomats, religious leaders and victims of the attacks attended prayers and services to remember those who died. Others came out of curiosity or to dine at the reopened restaurants, which were booked out for the whole evening. For some, including an Aeroflot flight crew that checked in at the Trident, it was simply business as usual.
``I was in Room 602 and the terrorists had rounded us up to use as a human shield,'' said Chennai-based K.R. Ramamoorthy, chairman of ING Vysya Bank Ltd., smiling in the lobby and recounting the night of the attack. ``I came today to attend the memorial service and am staying here.''
Terrorists carrying guns, grenades and explosives entered the luxury hotels on Nov. 26, killing, destroying and spraying bullets. Twenty-five days later, the 105-year-old Taj Mahal Palace & Tower and the Trident Hotel reopened their doors after working day and night to repair damage.
Outside the Taj, a traffic jam of arriving guests snarled the road near the Gateway of India as part of the street was blocked for security. Guests walked past a sandbagged bunker of soldiers to have their bags screened near the steps of the hotel, before passing though a metal detector to enter the lobby.
Meanwhile, below is information about how you can help the families of hotel employees killed in the attacks.
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