Mumbai Is Getting Back in Business
Gunmen-Hit Cafe Reopens; Denizens Resume Mundane Tasks

By Rama Lakshmi
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, December 4, 2008

MUMBAI, Dec. 3 -- Nineteen-year-old business student Tanay Karnesh and his friend Prathamesh Gangnaik got to the Leopold Cafe early on Tuesday to eat breakfast at a table with a view. They wanted to sit close to the glass wall left spiderwebbed by the bullets that pierced it the previous Wednesday after gunmen arrived by boat from the Arabian Sea.

The assailants stopped first at the 137-year-old Leopold, a favorite hangout of foreign tourists and Mumbai old-timers, and opened fire with automatic assault rifles. Seven people were gunned down.

But within five days, Leopold was back in business. Since then, it has been teeming with customers and curious sightseers, all still rebounding from the terrorist attacks that killed at least 171 people in this coastal city.

As Karnesh ate his chicken omelet, Gangnaik, also 19, listened to Metallica's "Nothing Else Matters" on his iPod.

"There was so much trauma here, and yet Leopold reopened so quickly. That is the Mumbai fighting spirit," Karnesh said. "We know how to pick ourselves up and move on."

A live radio program on the city's popular FM station Radio One was playing mellow music, taking calls and reporting from the Leopold on examples of that Mumbai spirit -- the cosmopolitan financial capital's reputed ability to pick itself up and carry on after every bombing, riot and bout of mayhem.

As soon as the gunmen's three-day siege ended Saturday, vendors and hawkers returned to the city's street corners, the local trains were packed as always, and people went back to complaining about the traffic jams.

"I wanted to tell the terrorists, 'Look, my shutters are up again,' " said Farhang Jehani, Leopold's affable owner. "The customers point and count the bullet holes on the walls and the pillars even before they place their order. A lot of new people are walking in to see: What is this Leopold? Why did the terrorists target it? And my old fans are coming back to reassure themselves that it is still open."

Some contend that "the Mumbai spirit" is just cliched hype, that the city's celebrated resilience merely reflects hard reality.

"The city knows how to deal with the continuously changing reality. It says, 'This is the way the world is, let's go and live in it,' " said Mahesh Bhatt, a popular Bollywood filmmaker. "But it really is a question of pure livelihood and an animal sense of survival, otherwise someone else will take away your job. You don't want the world to find out you are dispensable."

Still, for many Mumbai residents, that spirit of resolve is genuine, and the heartbeat of the city's resurgence lies in plans to restore the historic Taj Mahal Palace & Tower hotel. The ornate, crowning dome of the 105-year-old waterfront icon, under siege during the attacks, was engulfed in a ball of fire and nearly came crashing down.

The intricately carved basalt stone structure was the first luxury hotel on the subcontinent that Indians were let into during British rule. It is a mix of several turn-of-the-century architectural influences and drew from the Florentine, Moorish, Gothic, Mughal and Rajput styles. The creator, industrialist J.R.D. Tata, wanted it to be "second to none east of the Suez."

"It is the pride of the city and an important historic landmark," said Abha Bahl, co-founder of the Bombay Heritage Walks. "The facade reflects the spirit of the city, the coming together of so many cultural influences. And it stood strong against the terror attack. Like the Taj, we will not fall."

Historians say the Taj shaped the social life of the city over the past century by introducing the country's first air-conditioned ballroom and first Turkish bath, as well as chamber music and live jazz. Many meetings during India's freedom movement were held there, and even Mahatma Gandhi addressed meetings at the Taj.

A number of the city's heritage and conservation planners want to set up a panel to work on the restoration of the heavily damaged Taj. A celebrated conservation architect, Chetan Raikar, is likely to be part of the team. This week, renowned artist M.F. Husain -- whose paintings adorned the hotel's lobby, which was destroyed -- announced that he would paint for the hotel again.

The author of a forthcoming book on the hotel's past, Sharda Dwivedi, said its intricately carved wooden railings, ballroom, suites and bar have been gutted.

"The Taj is not just a hotel, it is a living museum. So many of the very, very valuable and antique crystals, exquisite chandeliers, porcelains, lithographs, maps, carpets, furniture and contemporary art from around the world have gone," she said. "And what is absolutely irreplaceable is the sentiment, the memories attached to those."

Bhatt, the filmmaker, disputes that the burning of the Taj was the defining moment of pain for all Mumbaikars. He called the hotel a "temple of affluence" and said this was the first time the city's rich had been targeted.

"Let us not forget that there are many Mumbais within Mumbai. The Taj's damage is of no relevance to hundreds of thousands of people in the city. It is the rich people's 9/11," he said. "But the city has seen far worse -- when hundreds were butchered in Hindu-Muslim riots and when local trains blew up in the 2006 bombings. And Mumbai has found the strength each time."