MUMBAI, India -- The walls that the rockets blew out have not been repaired, and the plaster is a dense scattershot of bullet holes. Dozens of holes, blasted by grenades, pockmark the linoleum floors.
One year after the terrorist attack that left 166 people dead, the Chabad House - a once-popular site with Jewish travelers where six foreigners died - remains scarred, still and quiet.
In part, that silence is a symptom of how much remains unchanged since 10 militants with assault rifles fanned out across Mumbai last Nov. 26, attacking hotels, a train station and other targets, paralyzing India's financial capital and shocking the country.
While Mumbai's large hotels and important business centers have paid richly to improve their own security, many worry that the city as a whole remains vulnerable to another assault from Lashkar-e-Taiba, the Pakistan-based group blamed for the attack, or other assailants.
"Nothing has changed to alter the vulnerabilities of Mumbai," said Ajai Sahni, executive director of the Institute for Conflict Management in New Delhi.
"The only institutions that can protect against terrorism are state institutions. They are failing to do so. As a result, private institutions are being forced to spend large amounts of money on largely ineffective security."
At the time of the attack, critics complained the police were poorly trained and outgunned. Many, armed only with sticks, fled the attackers. Others, including the city's anti-terror chief, were gunned down.
Today, the front of the Taj Mahal hotel, where 32 were killed, is sealed. All visitors must pass through a narrow aperture, which on a recent afternoon was watched by seven men.
All bags are screened, and the entire property is ringed with barricades and guards.
The Oberoi Group has spent $83,000 on new baggage scanners, metal detectors and patrolmen at its Trident hotel, where 33 people were killed.
Metal detectors unused
Meanwhile, a single guard talking on a mobile phone monitored the wide main entrance of the city's Chhatrapati Shivaji train station, where 58 died and 104 were injured.
Inside, a throbbing river of commuters flowed around six unmanned and largely unused metal detectors. Almost no one was stopped at three checkpoints that lead to the tracks.
Deven Bharti, a top city police official, said that apparent disparity doesn't reflect the many invisible measures police have taken - and the 1.3 billion rupees ($27.7 million) they've so far spent - to make the city as a whole safer.
A thousand men have been deployed to keep watch over high-profile targets in south Mumbai, including the Chabad House; 500 closed circuit television cameras have been installed across the city and a thousand more are on their way.
The police, who came under harsh criticism for their failure to act quickly, have also created 39 mobile combat vans to patrol the city around the clock and five strategically located commando hubs, with 70 to 100 men each, to speed their response to any future attacks.
"A whole process has been set in place," Bharti said. "We are much better prepared. We have learned our lessons."
But the Chabad House has yet to bounce back. While the conference rooms of the Taj Mahal and Oberoi's Trident hotels buzz with commerce, at the Jewish center there is only the swish of ceiling fans and the frantic flapping of a trapped pigeon's wings.
Rabbi Avraham Berkowitz, who heads the Chabad Mumbai Relief Fund, says the delay is due to security concerns as well as the deeply personal nature of the community's loss.
"Everything we had here in Mumbai was destroyed," Berkowitz said. "It takes time to go and put the pieces back together."
