The Siege: 68 Hours Inside the Taj Hotel Read Online Free PDF Page A

general ill-health, she was increasingly bad-tempered. Sabina was feeling down and had not yet recovered from the death of her father in February. When the Taj first floated the idea, she had not wanted to come.
    She only said ‘yes’ when she realized the trip coincided with a society wedding in Mumbai. Instantly, she had regretted it and rang a close friend in Delhi, Ambreen Khan, who was also heading to Mumbai. ‘My life is out of control – I am so stressed out,’ Sabina had complained, telling Ambreen she was under pressure to stay in Delhi for a niece’s pre-wedding party on the night of 26 November. ‘What should I do?’
    She had met Ambreen when the latter was doing PR for the Oberoi hotel. ‘Be careful or she’ll eat you alive,’ Ambreen’s boss had warned. But Ambreen found Sabina ‘easy to deal with’, telling a confidante: ‘She is sweet and wants affection.’ There was a price. Once Ambreen was inducted into the inner circle, Sabina was demanding, on the phone ‘every day, all day, and hard to decline’.
    Sabina had come to this game by chance, starting life as a classical musician, before joining The Times of India to manage its 150th anniversary celebrations. It was her otherworldliness that caught everyone’s attention and often made for the best stories, told by herwith her unnerving frankness. In the nineties, a PR working for the Dalai Lama’s exiled government had called with an enticing offer: ‘Richard Gere is in town and wants to throw a concert for Tibet. Can you organize?’ Sabina had not heard of Gere, but agreed to meet him in the InterContinental’s coffee shop, worrying immediately that ‘this good-looking man’ would annoy her boyfriend, Shantanu Saikia, ‘an Assamese hothead’, who was waiting outside in his car.
    Gere never stopped talking, she told everyone. ‘The longer it took, I knew the more pissed off Shantanu was getting,’ she recalled. ‘I kept wondering why these other diners on tables were staring at Gere. “Can’t these Indians see a good-looking Caucasian and leave him alone?”’ Then his phone rang. He apologized, saying it was his girlfriend, Cindy Crawford. Sabina had not heard of her, and all she could think was: ‘OK, your girlfriend is calling and I have my boyfriend waiting outside. Is this business or what?’ Finally, Gere thanked her and gave her his card, with his private number. When he offered to walk her to the door, she declined. ‘You stay inside or I’ll have some explaining to do.’ That weekend, Sabina and Shantanu rented a video, An Officer and a Gentleman. ‘Mii gawd,’ she shrieked, scrabbling through her bag for Gere’s card. She had lost it.
    In 1998, dabbling again, Sabina had tried a food column. It was a huge success. But these days she had fallen out with The Times , although she could place her pieces wherever she wanted. ‘She either trashed places or lapped up their hospitality,’ said Ambreen, who warned her friend, ‘You’re mean and hard on people. Bad will come of it.’
    Now Sabina was dilly-dallying over the Mumbai trip and Ambreen was unsympathetic. ‘What’s the matter with you?’ she asked, interrupting her friend’s monologue. ‘The whole of Delhi is going to be at the Mumbai wedding.’ At this thought, Sabina perked up and committed to come.
    She had touched down in Mumbai on Monday, 24 November, to be met by a chauffeur-driven Jaguar sent by Karambir. Sabina had been stunned, calling Savitri Choudhury, another strong-minded freelance hack, who lived in Mumbai and worked for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation among others. ‘Sabi, they are launchinga Chef’s Studio. Hemant Oberoi is doing a special dinner for me .’ Pause. ‘I want you and Vikram to come. Let’s make a party of it. OK?’
    At the Taj, Karambir had shown Sabina up to the Sunrise Suite. With marble floors, a magnificent ribbed wooden ceiling, a lounge, a bedroom and a dining nook, it filled most of the hotel’s