Mumbaikars struggling to come to grips

“I feel very sad and scared since these are the places we visit all the time. The way in which it was done, one wonders what can happen next,” Nishita John, a consultant, said.

“Eateries which we frequent like the popular café Leopold were also attacked. Is any place safe in this city?” she said.

Others like entrepreneur Vishal Mohandas will never be able to forget the day when they lost their friends or relatives.

“I heard about my friends who were working in the hotel. I am not sure about how many of them were hurt or killed but its shocking since it is for the first time that a terror attack has occurred hitting so close,” he said.

For many of the commuters who travel through the historic Chhatrapati Shivaji Railway Terminus, a site of the terror attack, the shooting came as a rude shock.

“I travel through the terminus daily but never once did I imagine that something like this could happen. But despite the shock of the whole incident, there is little I can do and have to use the Central Railways only,” Jayesh Shinde, a trader in south Mumbai said.

Though many people chose to stay indoors on Thursday, some professionals returned to work on Friday as the bloody militant siege at three buildings stretched into the third day.

“Yesterday, many of us stayed home since we did not know what was happening but now people are returning to work in the hope that the ordeal will come to an end soon and things will go back to normal,” Varun Mathur, a professional, said.

Stock market, which was closed in the aftermath of the attack, was also opened after being shut for a day.

Public transport was operational in the city’s suburbs. Traffic was being diverted along some routes in the Colaba and Nariman Point areas of south Mumbai where hostage situations were still on.

It is not only difficult for the common man to come to terms with the macabre act of terror that claimed over 137 lives and left over 300 injured, but security personnel are also shaken up by the incident which cost them their 17 gallant men.

“It was an absolute shock to see this happen. For us, all the more as we saw our own senior police officer being killed during it,” an Anti-Terrorism Squad official said on condition of anonymity.

Joint Commissioner of Police (ATS) Hemant Karkare and Additional Commissioner of Police Ashok Kamthe were among the 17 police personnel killed in shooting since Wednesday.