It's been sometime. A few weeks have passed. The sky is clear after the storm. The earth smells fresh, anew.

60 - merely two digits on paper. However, those were the number of hours that the carnage lasted. The story so far has been of bullets and blood, of fear and faded hope, of tears and trials....truth has never been so brutal.

"We can be hurt but cannot be knocked down--this is a memorable day and a tribute to those who saved many lives," an emotional Tata Group Chairman Ratan Tata said as the iconic Taj hotel was reopened.

It was a Wednesday, on November 26, 2008, at 9.35 pm -- on the terrorists' agenda, Trident was to be the victim. Caught amidst gunshots, violence and the kerfuffle of unthinkable heinousness, innocence was to be lost. Prayer, for many hours, would seem futile - purposeless, of no avail.

A door that was a passage to death, a passage to grief, a passage to a darkness that will never end.....now, is nothing but forgotten. No, the wounds have not healed, the memories bear the scars, and sleep doesn't come easy - but are the demands of a ceaseless clock. The clock of life.

On the eve of the hotel's reopening in Mumbai, Trident Hotel President Rattan Keswani speaks at a press conference.

Guests are once again checking in the Taj Mahal Palace hotel and Towers, after it reopened in Mumbai. Certain sections of the hotel have been opened, with assurances of upgraded security, while others are expected to remain closed for months. Repair is on its way. Bricks by brick, there has been utter devastation. There's nothing but charred remains - at many places.

Some impressions never die. Yes, time passes- seasons change....but some scratches and scars remain embedded in the mind's memory. Frame by frame, the tears hardly wash them away. From what it was, to what it is - here's a view from a burnt-out balcony of one of the suites on the top floors of the Taj Mahal Hotel.

Karambir Kang, the Taj Mahal hotel general manager, returned to work too. He lost his wife and two sons in the terrorist attacks at the Taj Mahal hotel last month.

For more than four days, it was the noise of gunshots, the screams of death, the silence of fear, and an emptiness that thudded louder than the heart's beat. There was no melody, no music. Only mourning, even thereafter. Moments that will be hard to forget.

The Mumbai terror attacks has left the world numb, shocked, angry, and shattered beyond words. Today, it's still trying to come to terms with it. What's left - are shreds of nothing. Nevertheless, we are moving on.

Sleep will come easy tonight. Far from the doom of death, away from the gloom of hate - the dreams will conspire to take a place behind closed eyes, in a land of love.