Trace Mumbai’s history through Taj’s lens

For 108 years, the Taj Mahal Palace has stood like a sentinel near Apollo Bunder, offering passengers in ocean liners plying in the pre-aviation days their first view of the city. The hotel’s 240-ft-high dome is still an official triangulation point, along with a chimney and a rocky island, for ships of the Indian Navy to fix their position in the harbour.

The hotel is also a witness to the city’s restless history: it was born in the wake of the 1898 plague, hosted maharajas and freedom fighters, and was the first place in the city and the country to bring inventions like electricity and phones. It was also the city’s most fashionable hotel and a harbinger of entertainment trends, bringing the cabaret in the 1930s, jazz, ballroom and tearoom dancing and later, the first discotheque. All this history makes the Taj not just a hotel but an institution.

The story of the hotel, its founders, its city and the hotel company has been put together in a book The Taj at Apollo Bunder by historians Charles Allen and Sharada Dwivedi, which was released by Tata group chairman Ratan Tata on Friday on the 108th anniversary of the hotel’s founding.

The book was first planned for the hotel’s 75th anniversary, and then for the centenary in 2003. Dwivedi also convinced Charles Allen, a master writer of oral history, to co-author the book. “After 26/11, I met Sharada and said we will have it upgraded (to include the terror attack), but document it as another chapter of history,” said Raymond Bickson, new CEO of the Taj group.