Wah Taj!

From the day it first opened its doors to guests on December 16, 1903, the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel of Mumbai (then Bombay), now known as The Taj, was acknowledged as one of India's finest hotels. The Taj at Apollo Bunder , a coffee-table book written by historians Charles Allen and Sharada Dwivedi, and released in Mumbai last month by the Tata Group Chairman Ratan Tata, compares the hotel to Shah Jahan's Taj Mahal. Just as that monument represents the glorious Mughal heritage, Bombay's Taj stands for “qualities that have made this city remarkable. In its ethics, its pioneering of new ideas, its role as a trysting place for lovers and film stars, maharajas and nawabs, businessmen and politicians alike, in its very location as a landmark and as a witness to momentous events, The Taj epitomises the spirit of the Bombay of yesterday and Mumbai today”, say the authors.

Interwoven with the history of The Taj is the history of Bombay; if Rome was founded on seven hills, Bombay is formed on seven small islands and, as the city developed, all the seven islands were linked together to form a ring. “So it is indeed a city ‘without a heart', with no core or hub from which it grew outwards.”

The focal point of this city is Apollo Bunder, or the Gateway of India, where the Koli fishermen once spread their nets, “traders from Cambay and Calicut landed their bales of cloth and cargos of spices.”

Evocative passages describe the evolution of Bombay into Mumbai. “While the evening sea breeze draws crowds to the Apollo Bunder, people come here to savour the ambience, defined by three great monuments; the arch to celebrate the visit of the only [British] king-emperor to set foot on Indian soil; the statue of Chhatrapati Shivaji and the third is the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel,” we are told.

We get the early history of Parsis and how they were initially very pro-British and “slow to rise to the political challenge of Indian nationalism.” This tiny community — which today numbers less than 80,000 — seized the opportunities that Bombay offered in the latter half of the 18{+t}{+h} century. Parsi shipbuilders transformed a modest backwater into the busiest seaport in Asia, being canny enough to avoid direct competition with the East India Company. Their business acumen made them rich, but they also gave a lot for philanthropic ventures.

Jamsetji N. Tata was born in Gujarat in 1839 — interestingly, the family name Tata was derived from the “peppery ( tato — hot headed) temper of an early forebear, a trait that later generations of Tatas are said to have inherited”! His father came to Bombay in the early 1850s, became an apprentice to a Hindu banker and merchant. Soon he set up his own business and became rich enough to own a large house. After college, Jamsetji joined his father's business and worked in Shanghai and London for a while. He returned to Bombay at the height of the cotton boom, to find his father and his business partners deeply enmeshed in the frantic wave of speculation that ended in the crash of 1865, forcing his dad to sell the house and pile on debts that took several years to settle.

Jamsetji took what appeared reckless financial gambles but, say the authors, “even the wildest of these schemes were laid on solid foundations and, if they invited scepticism, it was usually because his business rivals lacked Tata's imagination for foresight”.

Gradually he expanded the business, bought an oil pressing mill, which he converted into a cotton mill, and eventually bought the first motorcar to be owned by an Indian in Bombay. His two sons were Dorabji and Ratanji.

In the final years of his life, Jamsetji launched four grandiose schemes, none of which he lived to see into completion — The Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore, an iron and steel mill, a power plant, and the Taj Mahal Hotel. Commenting on the popular lore that he built The Taj after being refused admission to a posh Bombay hotel because he wasn't European, the authors say that while “this act of discrimination” might have actually happened, it was “too petty a reason to fire his imagination”. Rather, he built The Taj to restore the image of Bombay ravaged by the Bubonic plague of the 1890s.

Until the middle of the 19th century, Bombay had no hotels worth the name, boasting only “respectable taverns”. By the 1950s these had started giving way to a number of Parsi-owned hotels that vied for the patronage of Europeans. Muslims patronised the bhatarkhanas (eating houses) in Bhendi Bazaar and Dongri. Arabs and other Muslim travellers bought 2-4 annas' worth of food from these and slept in the mosques. The wealthy Muslim travellers hired houses. The needs of Brahmins, who had to eat apart from other castes and from their own cooks, were met by 10-20 special hostelries known as khanavels.

In 1896, Jamsetji Tata suddenly announced he would build a hotel, and The Indian Hotels Company (IHC) was formed. On November 1, 1898, the foundation was laid for The Taj over two-and-a-quarter acres of the Apollo Reclamation, leased for 99 years from the Bombay Port Trust!

The book is full of interesting nuggets. Apparently Tata intended to sell The Taj to some experienced hotelier — he had no intention of running it — but the expensive mistake of having a kitchen on the top floor (rectified in the 1930s), discouraged prospective hoteliers. With over Rs 20 lakh of his own money — worth over £20 million today — sunk in the hotel, Jamsetji Tata decided to keep the hotel.

In 1902, as the work neared completion, Tata went on an overseas buying spree, scouring New York and European cities for expensive equipment — an electric power plant with a back-up system of gaslights, a 15-tonne capacity ice-making plant, Bombay's first cold storage cellars that also cooled a number of rooms — “almost certainly the first such air-conditioning system in Asia”. At a Paris exhibition he saw spun steel pillars and promptly ordered them for the ballroom and the front porch. While the father was abroad, Dorabji chaired, on May 6, 1902, the first meeting of IHC's board of directors. His father advised him to avoid “abominable yellows and reds” in its décor!

Though a liberal, he set great store by astrology and ascribed his good fortune to a Hindu sadhu who once gave him a coconut with four ‘eyes', considered a good omen. He consulted astrologers on the muhurat of the hotel, and this practice continues to be a part of the Taj Group's operations. “Perhaps this explains why with the central dome still incomplete, with only the first two floors of one wing ready, and with the electricity and lifts not yet in working order, it was decided to open The Taj for business”.

In its initial days it struggled for patronage and scouted for custom at the ships docked opposite the hotel. The Britishers did not patronise it and Indians thought it was too western and fit only for wealthy Parsis and Maharajas. The Taj was indeed perfect for Indian princes. The first to stay here was the Maharaja of Bikaner; he came on a private visit in 1904, liked what he saw and returned with a retinue of staff. The Maharajas of Kishangarh, Dholpur and Gwalior followed.

The princely trickle soon became a flood. An interesting story is about how the manager, one Mr Gapp, referred to the Board to find out how much a particular Maharaja should be charged. The decision: “Rs 157 per diem for board and lodging of the maharaja, his children and staff and twenty three rupees for the horses and carriages”! The set rate with full board for a single room was ten rupees, rising to Rs 13 for rooms with fans and attached bathrooms! A suite complete with bath, WC and fan cost Rs 30, including full board”!

But for quite a while The Taj failed to get adequate patronage, and there were question marks over whether it would become the Tata Group's white elephant. From 1920 onwards, spiralling costs of labour and transport threatened the existence of not only Tata Steel but other Tata companies as well. At one point, both Sir Dorab Tata and Lady Tata pledged their personal assets to raise funds to keep Tata Steel in business”. While Sir Dorab shelled out £750,000, she pledged her jewellery, which included the famous 245-carat Jubilee Diamond, one of the largest privately owned gems in the world.

In 1921, after facing two strikes from its staff, the IHC Board seriously considered an offer from Ritz Hotel Company of London and another from the English restaurant chain J. Lyons. But the princely State of Baroda and its ruler, Sayaji Rao Gaekwar, came to its rescue, providing a 10-year debenture loan of Rs 20 lakh, giving the IHC a “much needed injection of capital”.

The Taj was closely associated with the Swaraj movement; Pandit Nehru attended several meetings here, and for Sarojini Naidu it became a second home for three decades.

The book ends with a poignant chapter, which gives a blow-by-blow account of the 26/11 terrorist attack and how The Taj staff went beyond the line of duty to help guests and save precious lives.

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