Read Leela Jacinto's notebook from terror-stricken Mumbai.

Also read her previous report: "Heroes bow, politicians take the rap in terror's aftermath"

At a kiosk on Mumbai’s scenic Marine Drive opposite the Oberoi hotel, which was attacked last week, a scrawled message on a poster screams, “We want war with Pakistan.”

In the aftermath of the Mumbai attacks, which killed at least 172 people, there is discernible sense in some quarters of Mumbai’s population that India would be justified in striking alleged Pakistani-based terrorist camps.

“When we have enough evidence that Pakistani-based groups and individuals are responsible for the attacks, why don’t we just go after them?” asks Vinod Pursran, a 62-year-old Mumbai businessman who joined the crowds gaping at one of the devastated sites of the recent attacks during their lunch break in this busy commercial district.

Indian security officials and politicians say the attacks, which began Nov 26 and lasted nearly 60 hours, were carried out by Pakistani-based militants. While New Delhi has been careful not to blame the Pakistani government for the attacks, the latest accusations have increased tensions between the two South Asian nations.

On Monday, the Indian government summoned Pakistan's high commissioner to lodge a formal protest over the attacks in Mumbai.

When asked about the grave implications of a conflict between two nuclear-armed nations, Pursran said it did not bother him. “I’m not worried, not at all, because we have to go inside Pakistan and destroy the terrorist camps,” he said.

It’s hard to take the pulse of this teeming metropolis and its 13 million-strong, extraordinarily diverse population. In the absence of opinion polls, analysts are loath to aggregate the public mood. But there’s a palpable sense of rage in India’s commercial capital. While the anger is primarily directed at the Indian government’s failure to act on intelligence to thwart the attacks, India’s old foe is also bearing some of the brunt of this rage.

The old India-Pakistan blame-game

In a case of serial déja-vu, sabres are once more rattling in this nuclear corner of the globe following one of the most brazen terrorist attacks on Indian soil. The rules of the India-Pakistan blame-game follow time-honoured patterns, although the particular contexts change.

Based primarily on the testimony of one gunman captured during the Mumbai attacks, Indian investigators say the militants of last week’s assaults were trained in an Islamist training camp in Pakistan.

Indian investigation teams have also tracked the abandoned ship from which the attacks were reportedly launched as well as some of the personal belongings of the men who carried out the audacious operations. They all point, they say, to a Pakistani involvement, most likely the Lashkar-e-Toiba, a Pakistan-based militant group.

While the Lashkar has denied involvements in the attacks, senior Pakistani officials have repeatedly asked their Indian counterparts to provide evidence of Pakistani involvement before issuing incendiary public accusations.

Islamabad’s position comes as the Indian media, quoting Indian investigation sources, produces a steady stream of reports of Pakistani involvement. These include a recovered satellite phone and a GPS device tracing the attackers’ planned return to Pakistan after their mission.

Rice to the rescue

Alarmed by the escalating tensions, US President George Bush is dispatching Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to the region later this week to try to ease the tensions between the two neighbouring nations.

Amid fears of a troop buildup along the Indo-Pakistan border, a senior Pakistani security official warned that a buildup along Pakistan’s eastern border with India would result in Islamabad pulling out its troops from the western border, where they are fighting a Taliban and al Qaeda resurgence in the troubled tribal areas along the Afghan border.

It’s a disclosure guaranteed to displease US political and military officials who have repeatedly voiced concerns that Pakistan was not doing enough to fight Islamist militants in its tribal zones.

The latest escalation threatens to dampen the hopes that a new US administration led by President-elect Barack Obama would be invested in tackling the Kashmir dispute, which lies at the root of India and Pakistan’s six decade-old history of animosity.

Despite the ratcheting tensions, there are several voices of restraint in India’s commercial capital. In an editorial in “The Hindustan Times”, a national daily, renowned Indian-born novelist Amitav Ghosh called on Indians to seize the opportunity to “forge strategic alliances with those sections of Pakistani society who also perceive themselves to be under fire.”

Even here, at the ground zero of the recent Mumbai attacks, there are calls for restraint. Scrawled prominently below the shrill pitch for a war on the Marine Drive poster is a statement which reads, “We don’t want a Pakistan war.”

Read also: "Your Mumbai questions answered"