I happened to visit the Taj, CST rail station, and Cafƒ© Leopold – three of the worst hit attack sites – on the one-month anniversary of the attacks by coincidence. The Taj, which reopened four days before Christmas with 62 percent occupancy in the tower building, was bustling as usual aside from the extra security keeping out pretty much anyone who didn’t have a good reason to be there. CST was lively with the customarily insane amounts of train travelers, heading to Goa for the New Year, or elsewhere for business and pleasure. Cafƒ© Leopold, which reopened the Sunday after the attacks, was brimming with tourists and locals alike, unphased by the bullet holes still visible in some of the walls. Business at Leopold has increased five-fold since the attacks, with patrons flooding to capitalize on the cheap beer and quality eats. The streets of Colaba are once again packed with vendors, partygoers, tourists, and “Bollywood producers” trying to convince the tourists to come be extras in their films.
On December 26 there was little reminder of the attacks at all. In parts of the city, a few organizations held memorial concerts and in front of the Gateway to India a few hundred people gathered to wave the Indian flag, and rally for a change in government, a change to prevent attacks like those in Mumbai from happening in the future. Entering the Gateway to the rally, were perhaps the most visible signs of the after affects of the attacks: a metal detector at the entrance, as has become normal at many other establishments and public places around the city. Security everywhere has increased tenfold, and walking the few hundred between the Gateway and the Taj, as you approach the wall between the sidewalk and the Arabian Sea, police officers whisk you away, and entering any hotel you’re likely to be sniffed by bomb dogs.
But on December 26, instead of kneeling around candle light vigils, and crowding the Taj and Oberoi hotels in remembrance of the dead, instead, the people of India’s largest city paid their respects in a more unconventional way: they flooded the streets, bars and cafƒ©’s of Colaba to enjoy the balmy winter night, refusing, resiliently, to let anyone’s agenda control their mode of existence.