MUMBAI, INDIA — All approaches to the stately Taj Mahal hotel remain blocked by police checkpoints, and the smell of its charred woodwork continues to waft in the heavy air of Mumbai's crowded waterfront.
But the doors of this Victorian symbol of last month's terrorist attacks will reopen tonight, along with the similarly targeted Oberoi hotel across town, in the highest-profile attempt yet by this scarred city to return to normality.
Like other efforts here to deal with the fallout of the Nov. 26 assault that left about 170 people dead, including 63 of the hotels' staff members and guests, the reopening will be done only haltingly.
The grand, red-domed palace that forms the heart of the Taj remains too damaged to accept guests, and only the prosaic, 1970s-era Taj Tower will be open to the public.
Similarly, of the two hotels in the Oberoi complex, only the Oberoi Trident has been sufficiently repaired; its sister hotel next door still has a gaping hole where its restaurant once overlooked the Arabian Sea.
But those who run the hotels insist that even a symbolic reopening, complete with a prayer service at the Oberoi and a party studded with Bollywood stars at the Taj, is essential to persuading international businesses and travelers to return to India's financial capital.
"The time has come to look forward into the future," Rattan Keswani, president of Trident Hotels, said at a news conference Saturday. "I seek help from all of you to address your efforts to portraying Mumbai and India as a safe destination."
That could be a difficult task. Hotel executives report that nearly 35% of all room reservations have been canceled across the country, and an already weak year for Indian tourism has seen a sharp drop-off in December.
More troubling for this hub of India's economic boom, however, are anecdotal reports from Indian business leaders that their foreign counterparts have begun to cancel conferences and reevaluate the risks of doing business here.
"I think the confidence level amongst businesses within India actually was not destroyed as a result of these attacks. The Bombay stock market was closed for one day, but the day immediately after . . . it actually went up slightly," said Jamshyd N. Godrej, a prominent Mumbai-based manufacturing executive and former head of the Confederation of Indian Industry. "I think the confidence that has really evaporated has been in the foreign business community."
