Wah, Taj

Armed with the steely spirit of Tajness’, the staff members at Taj Hotel in Mumbai put themselves in the line of fire to save the lives of the guests on 26/11

- Shweta Desai

WHEN terror piggybacked on the dark of the night on 26/11 and breached the gates of Mumbai’s Taj Mahal Palace, the iconic hotel’s vaunted spirit of hospitality took on an edge of steel. It transformed into a shield of bravery.

The hotel’s staffers prefer to call this rare component of hospitality, ‘Tajness’, in order to sum up the exceptional culture of service at the Taj Group, that percolates from the topmost echelons of managers and supervisors to the wait staff, receptionists, bellhops … even the doorman at the front gate of the more than a century-old legacy hotel.

And yet, nothing could have prepared them for what transpired on the night of November 26, 2008. Armed with nothing more than sheer bravado and the steely spirit of ‘Tajness’, the employees put themselves in the line of fire to save the lives of the guests, when four heavily armed Pakistani terrorists went on a rampage at the hotel premises for nearly 68 hours, killing 31 people.

"The response during 26/11 was the staff's way of owning and taking charge to make sure that guests are safe," says Mallika Jagad, former manager at the Taj Mahal Hotel.

Jagad, then 24, was the banquet manager on the hotel's second floor, in charge of a dinner party hosted by a top corporate house. After hearing the gunshots, she acted quickly, locking doors, switching off the lights, urging the guests to silence their phones and hide under the table, out of sight of the intruders.

"There was no emergency training given to staff. We were trained and empowered to do whatever we could, to ensure that our guests leave the hotel delighted," she says, adding that the staff did whatever they could under the circumstances.

None of the employees even thought of running away to save their own lives, as they were too preoccupied trying to find a solution to the crisis, she stresses.