Holding balloons and flowers, employees pledged on Thursday to re-dedicate themselves to Mumbai's Taj Mahal hotel when it reopens at the weekend after the 2008 militant attacks in which guests and staff members died. The hotel, which suffered extensive damage from a siege laid by four heavily armed gunmen.
The November strikes, which lasted over 60 hours, killed 166 people. Standing on the grand cantilever stairway, staff members cheered and tossed rose petals in the air after chairman Ratan Tata garlanded a bust of the founder of the Tata Group, India's oldest conglomerate, which also owns the luxury Taj hotels.
"This flagship property, this venerable Old Lady, is going to reopen in the same glory, the same splendour of more than 100 years," Tata said, his voice cracking, ahead of the hotel's scheduled reopening on Sunday, also India's independence day.
Tata had vowed to "rebuild every inch" of the iconic hotel, founded in 1903, and which has played host to maharajas, heads of state, chief executives, movie stars and entertainers alike. Architects, designers and restoration experts from India and around the world spent more than 21 months assessing the damage, then restoring the hotel, said Raymond Bickson, managing director of Taj Hotels, a unit of Indian Hotels Co Ltd.