The sweltering heat of a May summer day in Mumbai, India, drove Tula Goenka and her 11 Syracuse University students into the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel for a brief rest.

They climbed the marble steps and entered the landmark building through the century-old, massive glass doors. A tall doorman with a black beard, dressed in regal-colored clothes and a turban atop his head, greeted them as they entered.

Goenka, a television, radio and film professor, and the rest proceeded past the Shamiana coffee shop to their right and the reception desk and walked straight ahead into the shopping area.

There, the group used the ‘cleanest bathrooms’ in the entire city, Goenka said. But soon the small band from Syracuse, N.Y., found themselves back outside underneath the hot afternoon sun.

Goenka took the 11 students to Mumbai to study the Indian film industry in a new program offered through SU Abroad. The students interned at the Whistling Woods Institute, a premier film school in India.

And they couldn’t very well go to Mumbai and not go in the Taj, said Goenka, who two decades earlier had part of her wedding in the hotel.

But less than a year after the group’s trip to Mumbai, terrorists stormed the city, killing more than 150 people and targeting both the Taj Mahal and Oberloi hotels.

Goenka said she plans to take another group to Mumbai this summer, but said she won’t jeopardize anyone’s safety. She said she’ll reconsider if the U.S. government posts a travel advisory or anything else happens.

To her, the Taj was the safest place in all of Mumbai. Last week’s terrorist attacks in India have left her confidence in the world shattered.

‘How have we become that low, to go that far down in the depths of humanity?’ she asked. ‘What makes a person a terrorist?’

Jaahaan Kaur, a senior television, radio and film major, is a native Indian who lived in Mumbai for six years. She participated in Goenka’s program last summer. She said she is almost at a loss for words, and that she’s furious at the people responsible for the violence.

‘I’m angry, I’m mad – I’m mad as hell,’ Kaur said.

Kaur’s sister, Harpreet Bedi, was in the city when the bombs and the shooting began. Bedi works at Standard Charter Bank just a few streets from the Chabad House, a Jewish center where a rabbi and his wife lost their lives in the attacks, Kaur said.

She also left many friends behind in Mumbai when she moved back to her native New Delhi and later to Syracuse. As the story broke in America, she rushed to get in touch with them and Bedi.

But phone lines were down and Bedi couldn’t reach them. Thousands of miles away, Kaur sat petrified. She had no idea if her friends and sister escaped the violence.

Finally, Kaur talked to them. Her friends were fine. Her sister was evacuated Friday from the city and returned to New Delhi, India’s capital, to be with their parents.

Even though she didn’t lose anyone close to her, Kaur’s still in shock. She knows the Mumbai that she and the other SU students explored and lived in doesn’t exist anymore.

‘The cafes we ate at, the clubs we partied at – gone,’ Kaur said. Leah Pelletier, a senior in the College of Arts and Sciences, also travelled to Mumbai with Goenka this summer to learn about Bollywood, the nickname for the Indian film industry. Pelletier, who grew up in Salem, Mass., said she had never seen a city as large as Mumbai before.

It was a bit of a culture shock to her, as she fought her way through the throngs of people on the street, but said she never felt her safety questioned.

The only thing she didn’t like about the city was the attention that followed her. The 5-foot-9-inch Pelletier invited second glances with her dirty blonde hair and fair skin.

She remembers walking into the Taj hotel and being captivated by the mix of architecture in the building from Colonial British to Traditional Indian. She had never seen anything like it.

‘As soon as I walked in, I knew it was the nicest hotel I’d ever been in,’ Pelletier said.

Now the same lobby Pelletier, Goenka and Kaur walked through is torn apart. Pelletier said she isn’t deterred from returning to the country.

‘I joked with my old co-worker in Mumbai that I will move back and help him out with his projects and his new production company,’ Pelletier said. ‘He’s all for that.’

Kaur plans to return to Mumbai over Christmas Break. When she lands on Dec. 25, she expects everything will finally sink in for her.

And Goenka chuckles at the idea of returning to Mumbai. She knows she will climb those marble steps outside the Taj again. Mumbai is near to her heart, almost part of her. Nothing will keep her away. And nothing will keep her from sharing her love of the city and its people with her students.

adbrown03@syr.edu

Published on December 3, 2008 at 12:00 pm