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

Gregory Peck andDuke Ellington had hung out, steeped in history and refinement, but it was not his scene. They had to come through the city to catch their flight home, Kelly argued, so why not?
    When it opened in December 1903, the Taj had been a disaster. The British did not like it and it was too expensive for Indians. Broken-hearted, the founder, Jamsetji Tata, had set sail for Europe and died the following year from heart disease. He was buried at Brookwood cemetery, Surrey, in the Tata family mausoleum. But slowly maharajas and nawabs began to treat the hotel as a second home, coming with retinues of servants. By the time the Prince of Wales and Princess Mary landed on Apollo Bunder for a state visit in November 1905, the Taj was turning a corner, awash with indigenous royalty.
    As India changed, the hotel kept pace, the old aristocracy eased out by the well-off figureheads of the independence movement, including Muhammad Ali Jinnah, who proposed to his wife, Rutti, in the sea-facing Ballroom and would lead the new Pakistan in 1947. Sarojini Naidu, a child prodigy and poetess, who became the president of the Indian National Congress, spoke at the hotel. After the Partition of India eventually was declared, it was from the Taj that the first eulogies of independence rang out. When the British staged a formal departure, it was from the Gateway of India, built to commemorate the 1911 visit by King George V and Queen Mary. Once the bastion of colonialism, the Taj had effortlessly realigned itself as an emblem of self-reliance.
    The next three decades saw Hollywood come to love it, too, with Frank Sinatra and Sophia Loren rubbing elbows with world leaders, entrepreneurs and tycoons. In 1973, the over-subscribed hotel doubled its occupancy, with an American-designed Taj Tower. A new lobby was created at its base, on the harbour side, with a private club located above it and named after the hotel’s architect, William Chambers.
    While the public areas were streamlined, the service areas became more labyrinthine with each renovation. The kitchens had moved down from the top floor to the first floor in the thirties and a new sixth floor had been added to the Palace in 1969. After the Towerwas built, new service areas straddled it and the Palace but they did not quite line up. All over the place stepladders led up to storerooms hidden in otherwise inaccessible ceiling cavities. Windows became doors, panels swung round to reveal service lifts. Extra staircases were built but not added to the architectural blueprint. Interconnecting corridors developed irregular angles.
    Will had taken some working on, and during their penultimate day in Goa Kelly kept at him. He needed to make his mind up. Her London salary meant they could afford a more expensive package, which included a free airport pick-up, a butler and a heritage room with a sea view. Kelly was already thinking about the king-size bed, the flat-screen TV, the bath and fluffy towels, a first-class treat after two weeks barefoot on the beach. ‘There’s only so long you can be a hippy,’ Will said, wondering if that was actually true. With his mind half made up, they had packed for the Taj, lured by a night of extravagance before real life kicked in on Monday morning, in London, where the forecast was for drizzle. The line of least resistance was one he had travelled for most of his life, although that was changing.
    The Indian trip was the culmination of two great years. ‘This is my moment,’ he had said to himself, before leaving. His work had been going well. He was in a relationship with ‘a really cool girl and we are going to be together for ever and ever’. He had turned the corner early in 2007, after flunking his degree and spending several years managing Soho bars. One night a customer had offered him a job as a runner at Bare Films, a London-based TV production company, where he had first spotted Kelly. From then on everything had clicked into place.
    Precise,