Mumbai wide awake, but shell-shocked

Mumbai is a city where busy roads set the note for the madness and the magic throughout the day. So, to find these roads empty of traffic just past midnight is shocking.

It's almost like the city that never sleeps has gone into deep slumber.

But in reality most people are wide awake, disturbed by the images of the encounter that's going on since hours at Taj, Trident and Nariman House. But they are yet not able to turn away.

"It just feels unreal. This is stuff that happens in the movies. As a city, Mumbai has seen many disasters but this one is altogether different. It's very disturbing -- the pictures of the terrorists. After all they are regular guys; they look normal," said Priyanka Bhasin, one of the residents of Mumbai.

These terrorists had guns and two of them were photographed at the entrance to CST station.

And the fact that is giving normal citizens of Mumbai sleepless nights is -- have they been killed or have they escaped? Or is it that they are among those terrorists still inside the hotels?

The police, though know the details, haven't yet gone public with the information. And the uncertainty, almost like that of a film, has still to reveal its climax. Except this is real life..

"Firing is still going on. We are scared of the terrorists," said a Mumbai resident.

But while the city is shaken, its enterprise is still intact. And to prove that, several posters came up across the city literally within hours as a tribute to Mumbai's top cops who lost their lives during the war against terror.

It's an image which is almost cinematic; just like the city itself. This seems to be the part of the reason why terrorists would target it as by doing so, they are targeting the core of the nation's imagination