My city of Mumbai has a reputation as a glittering, zestful, buzzing Mecca of the East, a cauldron of diverse cultures and nationalities. This tragedy has outraged every one of us living here. Some events in the life of a city, and country, change the future.
A group of brainwashed fanatics stormed into buildings that characterise the cosmopolitan nature of our city. It has left the whole of Mumbai paralysed and insecure. As I write, we don't know when we leave home in the morning whether we will return alive. What kind of existence is this?
There are images that will haunt us forever - mutilated bodies, bloody streets and lobbies, frantic relatives, splintered glass, billowing smoke and heart-wrenching cries punctuated by gunfire and grenade blasts.
With the fires raging at the Taj Mahal hotel, the eerie silence at the Oberoi and the deafening sound of shots from Nariman House - it seems as if we must be watching a Hollywood film. But this horror is real. The sister of one of my closest friends was attending a wedding at the Taj. She sent a text message to her husband at 6am on Thursday morning, after the first night of fighting. By 3pm that day, he had lost contact with her.
These places have been a part of my life in the seven-and-a-half years that I have lived here. I have taken my nine-year-old daughter to eat at the Leopold cafe where the gunmen first opened fire. The magnificent Taj is where I celebrated New Year's Eve with my husband three years ago. Its Wasabi restaurant, which has stunning views overlooking the Gateway of India, was where I was planning to throw him a surprise birthday party next week. The cosmopolitan heart of this city is destroyed and the hurt is going to go on for a long, long time.
Mumbai is traumatised. I want to ask how much more we are expected to take in the name of religious separatism and hatred. I want to ask our leaders: how long are you going to put us in the line of fire? How long are you going to sacrifice innocent lives? Why are the voices, so loud when asking for our votes, silent now?
Our resilience and spirit are wearing thin. We have to do something before any more terror is perpetrated. Where is the political to fight this? From the wreckage, all I have are some elementary questions.
What were the intelligence agencies doing? Where were the coastguards? Why did radar, meant to intercept vessels, not pick anything up? How could no one know that these terrorists had arrived? Why did it take our commandos so long to get involved?
Our anti-terrorist officers fought valiantly and died - and we mourn for them - but our police are not equipped; their weapons are obsolete.
So what are we paying our taxes for? And why was this band of fanatics able to walk in, take our city hostage and turn it into the site of a massacre? Every second month there is a bomb blast; how much more blood has to be shed for the authorities to wake up and defend our precious country?
People in Mumbai are asking whether we should continue to visit hotels and malls. Some even wonder if we should undergo some sort of self-imposed house arrest. That would be ridiculous, but we do need to learn from the US and UK how to draw up effective anti-terror plans.
Soon we will hear the rhetoric from our leaders. That is easy for them to produce. Facing down the enemy is something else.
India is going to have to wake up. We don't want to talk about resilience any more, we have had enough. I am not condemning my beloved country; I would simply like some answers.
