At Mumbai Hotel After the Terror -- 'Like Nothing Happened'

MUMBAI, India, Jan. 22, 2008 — -- The most noticeable change is the chair color -- yellow. They must have switched it from the light blue because during the attacks the light blue ones were stained with blood.

The local newspapers featured photographs of the poolside chairs overturned, dead bodies next to them. The image is a difficult one to forget.

I sat in those chairs quite a few times over a year of reporting in Mumbai -- or Bombay, as most people still call it -- partly because I lived at the hotel when I first arrived and partly because the Taj was a perfect meeting place. It is located at the bottom of Bombay, so not exactly convenient. But it is a destination point for business people, tourists and locals -- plus anyone who wants to use the marble bathrooms or sit in the heavily air-conditioned lobby.

When I learned of the attacks, I was in Paris. So I called employees of the hotel -- people who had become friends during my stay -- to learn about the situation.

When I arrived in Mumbai to cover the attacks, I couldn't find a list of survivors or the dead. But the fact is, and I hate to admit it, I couldn't remember my favorite waiter's name. I was scared I would never see him again.

'It Just Feels Spooky'

So about six weeks after the attacks, I returned to have lunch at the reopened hotel. The famous Hussain mural still hung behind the reception desk and a new "tree of life" memorial was near the waterfall.

But the noise, the hubbub, was gone.

"It just feels spooky," my friend Neil said. "It's like nothing happened."

Fresh paint and artwork disguised doors that led to the destroyed wing. Further down the hallway, visitors shopped in a few of the high-end retail stores. Moschino had reopened, but Louis Vuitton was closed with a "work in progress" sign in the doorway.

At the poolside, ceiling fans whirled overheard but the usual bustle of diners, drinkers, swimmers and sunbathers was absent.

"It's so quiet you can feel something is strange," one waiter told me in a quiet voice. "We are so used to running around."

Hidden Mumbai Hero?

I recognized another waiter and I asked him about my friend. He said he was alive and would arrive for a later shift. I stuck around for a while waiting but had an appointment. I promised to return.

When I did, I saw him standing before me. In a flood of emotion, I instantly threw my arms around him and hugged him. I'm sure he was shocked but it seemed appropriate.

I immediately asked about the attacks, but in front of his colleagues he told me he was working "dayside" and wasn't there that night. I learned later that he had rescued more than two dozen guests and spent 24 hours at a hospital by the side of someone who had been shot.

Back in November, when I interviewed an attack victim at a local hospital, she spoke of a Taj employee who checked on hotel guests there. She said that she wasn't even a guest at the hotel, but he still looked after her in the intensive care unit.

I realize now that it was likely my friend.