Mumbai: 
As we mourn the bizarre, senseless and tragic deaths of so many innocent lives at the hands of terrorists, a small part of our hearts grieves for the substantial damage to one of the city's most celebrated and iconic landmarks the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel.
Why do we share this sentiment about a mere brick and mortar structure? Is it because of our deep respect for its visionary founder, Jamsetji Tata, who built the grandest hotel in the country for the city he loved so passionately?
As his friend, Sir Stanley Reed, former editor of The Times of India put it so succinctly in The India I Knew: 1897-1947: "He had an intense pride and affection for the city of his birth, and when a friend protested against the intense discomforts of hotel life in Bombay he growled out: 'I will build one'. Where the young lions of my generation used to take a whiff of sea air, and in the fair season scull down the harbour, he raised at the cost of a quarter of a million pounds the Taj Mahal Hotel and engaged a first class staff to manage it."
Jamsetji's dream began to take shape in 1898 when the foundation-laying ceremony was performed on a two and a quarter acre plot on the Apollo Reclamation, which was leased for a term of 99 years from the Bombay Port Trust. Completed in 1903, the hotel was furnished with the most modern equipment for that time, including a refrigeration plant and lifts. The hotel featured first-class restaurants and shops, dining, drawing, reading and billiard rooms, grand suites and bedrooms, all provided with electricity and even a Turkish bath for the wellbeing of guests!
Does our emotional response to the Taj stem from our pride in the architecture of this Grade IIA heritage structure? Designed by Raosaheb Sitaram Khanderao Vaidya and D N Mirza and completed by W A Chambers after Vaidya's death in 1900, the building is a curious but appealing amalgam of Indian and European features. The Taj, in time, became an international attraction for tourists, foreign dignitaries and the Maharajas and a trendsetter for Bombay, introducing its people to exotic cuisine and different forms of entertainment such as band performances, jazz and chamber music as also cabarets and ballroom dancing.
During the freedom struggle, the Taj became a forum for the exchange of political ideas, emerging as one of the few places in the country where Indians and Englishmen could meet as equals. Groups and associations formed to bring together politically conscious people, met regularly at the Taj and were addressed by political activists such as Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, Mohammed Ali Jinnah, Subhas Chandra Bose and Sarojini Naidu, who in fact, had a permanent suite of rooms in the Taj for three decades.
Most importantly, the Taj represents for all of us, irrespective of our race, colour, creed or economic status, our many hopes and aspirations. Many a visitor to Apollo Bunder has looked up to the hotel's sea-facing façade hoping to enter its doors and stay one day as a guest in this grand edifice. And there are many who have prospered in this city of promise to make that dream come true.
In the true spirit of the city, the Taj management, despite its many staff tragedies during the terrorist attack, has declared that the Tatas will restore the building to its original glory. That will certainly happen with the help of experienced conservation architects. But what of the lives lost who can never be brought back? And who will wipe the tears of those left behind?
Sharada Dwivedi has authored several books on the history and culture of Mumbai along with architect Rahul Mehrotra and, separately, The Taj Mahal Palace and Towers with Charles Allen
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