Memories of the Taj Mahal, Mumbai

Some personal memories of the Taj:

- My first day at work, ever. I'd joined Procter and Gamble India as an Assistant Brand Manager and was attending a Hoopla, an annual jamboree at the Taj attended by employees from all over India

- My first job offer, ever. This was from the Indian Hotels Company, the company that owns the Taj. I heard the story about "Dogs and Indian not allowed" at their recruitment event

- I met my now parents-in-law at the Taj. Dinner at the Golden Dragon is an excellent way of reassuring the girl's parents that their daughter's boyfriend is appropriate. That tactic worked partly because my father-in-law had a long and fulfilling career with the Tata's. As did my grandfather

- I've had many All Day Breakfasts at the Sea Lounge, overlooking the Gateway of India. My wife and I'd meet there after work to fortify ourselves for the drive back to the suburbs. Once, while I was working through a three egg omelette, a member of the staff walked up to me with a shoe polish kit and offered to smarten me up. Were my shoes inappropriately scuffy? No. A waiter had spilt milk on my shoe and was keen to make amends

- The shoes had also been bought at the Taj. The shoes were a gift from my father, a pair of black brogues from the excellent Joy Shoes which he'd picked up on a business trip to Bombay

- I splurged Rs. 200 on a funky hand drawn map of Bombay at the Nalanda book shop. Not to scale, with handwritten labels, and with cool touristy joints like Cafe Mondegar and Prithvi Theatre marked out with little sketches. Back in the 90s, Rs. 200 was quite a lot of money for something I didn't need. And funky maps weren't all that common

- I've attended a college reunion at the Taj Ball Room, organized by the Western India Stephanians Association. I went in with rock bottom expectations, muttering something to myself about "old fuddy duddies", and wound up having a rollicking good time.

- I've sung Mohammad Rafi's "yeh hai Bombay meri jaan" with gusto if not talent, sitting on a bench outside the Taj. I'm sure I was accompanied by some equally unmusical Stephanian friends. Not totally sure if it was the same evening...

- The Brand Equity Quiz regional finals were at the Taj. I was proudly representing my company after competitive internal trials, and our team was leading the Western India finals with just 3 rounds to go. Then Derek O'Brien snuck in a scrambled word puzzle that has nothing to do with quizzing. I guess the national finals were not meant to be :(

You get the drift.

The Taj is not just some aseptic and characterless dormitory near an airport. It's a living part of a great city. I am not a Bombay-ite. I just happened to live in Bombay for a few years. Yet, the Taj is tightly woven into the fabric of my life, my memories.

The Taj will be throb with life again. Bombay will be herself again. This nightmare will pass.

The Taj

Jamsetji Nasserwanji Tata had visitors from out of town. A proud citizen of Bombay, he wanted to show his city off to his guests. He took them out to Bombay's finest hotel, where he encountered a sign: "Dogs and Indians not allowed".

Angry but determined, he swore he would build a even greater hotel in Bombay. A hotel that would be counted among the finest in the world. A hotel where Indians and whites, blacks and yellows, Hindus and Muslims, Christians and Jews, Sikhs, Parsees, Buddhists, Jains and Atheists were all welcome.

Mr. Tata kept his promise. Thus was born the Taj Mahal Hotel on Apollo Bunder. The Taj is not just any luxury hotel. It is a special place, resonant with meaning. It is every bit as iconic as the twin towers that were attacked in New York on 9/11.

This is the place that the dirty little insects who crawled ashore on the Sassoon Docks have chosen to attack, the place where they shot dead women and children in the middle of the night.



This hurts more than railway lines that get blown up in the hinterland. This is an attack on an idea of India: an India which is warm-hearted, open-minded and walks the world with its head held high.

This feels like a watershed, a turning point. Where do we turn to? We could do worse than look to the character of Jamsetji Tata himself.

Let the Taj be refurbished. Let it be an even greater, even more vibrant, even more humane place than it's been for a hundred years. May the spirit behind the Taj live on forever. Jai Hind.

The Master of Disguise

This blog has a personality. It is a Doer. This blog is like a cool chick wearing shorts and two pony-tails, bouncing a ball. Doers are:

"The active and playful type. They are especially attuned to people and things around them and often full of energy, talking, joking and engaging in physical out-door activities.

The Doers are happiest with action-filled work which craves their full attention and focus. They might be very impulsive and more keen on starting something new than following it through. They might have a problem with sitting still or remaining inactive for any period of time. "

This verdict was delivered by a web site which analyzes blogs and maps them to a psychological (MBTI) profile. Moonballs from Planet Earth is an ESTP blog: Extraverted Sensing Thinking Perceptive.

This is not what I am like in real life. My preferred operating mode, as measured on most MBTI instruments, is INTJ: Introverted iNtuitive Thinking Judgmental. INTJs are like the geeky guys who wear glasses and struggle to get dates:

"The long-range thinking and individualistic type. They are especially good at looking at almost anything and figuring out a way of improving it - often with a highly creative and imaginative touch. They are intellectually curious and daring, but might be physically hesitant to try new things.

They enjoy theoretical work that allows them to use their strong minds and bold creativity. Since they tend to be so abstract and theoretical in their communication they often have a problem communicating their visions to other people and need to learn patience and use concrete examples. Since they are extremely good at concentrating they often have no trouble working alone. "

What's going on here?

One possibility is that the blog analysis tool is pure bunkum; a very real possibility.

Another interesting but speculative possibility is that this reflects the fact that I'm an amateur blogger.

I picked up the blog analysis tool from Greg Mankiw's blog. Mankiw is a professional economist. He is also an INTJ, an unsurprising personality type for a professional economist. His blog is linked to his work as an economist; it started as a teaching aid for his introductory economics class at Harvard. It's not surprising that his professional persona is reflected in his blog.

I am a professional analyst, a credit policy wonk. My time at work is spent wrestling with financial data, regression models and dodgy forecasts. I am blessed: I quite enjoy my job, it fits my INTJ preferences. The company I work for is dominated by NT personalities. But...the point of my blog is to get at stuff my mind wants to play with, but is not related to my work.

Maybe it's natural for extra-curricular activities to be coloured by people's shadow personality.

The Tourons of Planet Bollywood

Swiss Nuggets: Observations on Switzerland following a long-weekend visit

Touron is a great new word, created by smooshing together tourist and moron. It is often used to describe lads consuming lager and chicken-tikka pizza on the Costa del Sol. This word may have found a wonderful growth market in describing Indian tourists in Switzerland.

India is now one of Switzerland’s fastest growing tourist markets, thanks to Dilwale Dulhania le Jayenge. And Indians are now visible everywhere.

In terms of numbers, about 250,000 Indian tourists visit Switzerland every year. That is still only about 1.5% of the market, maybe 5% once business travellers and sports-tourists are taken out of the denominator. But Indians are more conspicuous than the numbers suggest. Maybe it’s the brides on group honeymoons, still wearing their mehendi and wedding jewellery. Maybe it’s the garment exporter, travelling with his extended family, raising his voice on a business call to compensate for weak cell phone reception in the Alps. Maybe its because I’m Indian and I tend to observe people and behaviours I’m already familiar with.

Whichever way, the Swiss tourist industry is warmly embracing this growth market. The Swiss are now promoting Bollywood movies that are set in Switzerland, where not just the dream song-and-dance sequence is shot in Switzerland. And Jungfraujoch, the train station at the top of Europe, the climax of a trip into the Alps, now features a Restaurant Bollywood.

Medieval Living?

Swiss Nuggets: Observations on Switzerland following a long-weekend visit



Bern’s town center, the street plan and the architecture, have been unchanged for five hundred years. It is a UNESCO world heritage site. I was half expecting a twee little museum piece; a backdrop for touristy snapshots, that has been all but abandoned by the locals.

I was surprised and delighted to find a city center throbbing with local life, with grocers, designer boutiques, discount shoe stores and newsagents all spilling out from a very well maintained fifteenth century layout, a bit like a first-world version of Chandni Chowk in Delhi or Crawford Market in Bombay.

City scapes

My strongest childhood stereotype of Switerland is from Asterix, where the Swiss diligently clean up behind the Roman orgies, where they decide to carry Obelix home after he drinks too much and passes out in the snow because he looks "messy" just lying there.




Going off stereotype, I was expecting Swiss city-scapes to be as pristine and pretty as the pictures on chocolate boxes. While some pristine and pretty cityscapes do exist, like the tourist friendly city center in Lucerne, there is also plenty of urban grit.

The graffiti along the train lines in Geneva and the tram lines in Bern can compete with London, Chicago or Bombay. There are practical but uninspired suburbs ringing the beautifully preserved city centres. There are also ugly American style strip malls sprouting neon advertising signs are being planted in chocolate box country side, despite some architects protesting.

Reality bites..even in Switzerland.

The Lions of Lanka

Swiss Nuggets: Observations about Switzerland following a long-weekend visit

The most visible minority in Switzerland are Sri Lankan Tamil refugees.

They include Giritharan Thiagarajan, the head chef at Vatter, an excellent vegetarian restaurant in Bern, who was delighted to meet fellow Tamils visiting his restaurant.

Wikipedia thinks 40,000 Tamils live in Switzerland. Giritharan thinks the number is 80,000…and he might be right. To put that in perspective, the sovereign nation of Liechtenstein, Switzerland’s eastern neighbour, is home to about 34,000 souls.