These days I read these news articles, see
these videos and a sudden weight falls on my heart. A kind of gut wrenching
feeling which I cannot erase in totality. Something brims up to the full within
me, may be a sorry, silent scream. Something uneasy. Like a very small yet
existing part of your soul is hurt, bruised really bad and you can’t ease that pain. Amidst all the work and your tight schedule these articles, these
videos with very graphic images or footage of the reign of terror, dead and
wounded civilians, the smiling portraits of the harbingers of death and
vengeful world leaders, though are just images
beamed onto your screen or just ink on a paper, jabs at you and you cannot
rub some ointment on it and hope it will be fine next day because you know it
is happening and you know it is true. And you don’t even know how to make them right. You don’t know them, these people- the victims or the assailants. Then why
feel any of it? Because these are the people just like you and me, leading
their normal lives and having dreams and aspirations. Only theirs have been
brutally snatched away for no fault of theirs. And this is what disturbs me.
And it disturbs me to my very core.
I may be very far away from where the “war”
currently is but the sorry state of human life makes me cringe and cry in
horror. Like how unworthy has human life become all of a sudden? Have you seen
the faces of those children in the war zone and fleeing from their homes? Their
eyes are dead. They have been so scarred that I cannot imagine what it must be to
be one of them.
All political affiliations and arguments aside,
all diplomatic discussions aside, all strategic plots aside, you know who is
suffering the most? These civilians. Caught up in the crossfire between war
politics and scapegoats to international rivalries, these are the people- people
who dream nothing but to lead a life where tomorrow holds possibilities, where
they can earn their daily bread and come back home to a warm bed, where
children have nothing but homeworks and tests to worry about, where the
parents’ only worry about their kids is their academic performance and may be
that girl or boy problem their teenaged kid is talking about, not one where
they ask themselves if they will wake up to their child’s living or dead body
the next day- who are hurt the most. It is these people like us, the
“commoners”, the apparent “nobodys”, the “populate” that is suffering every
day. They bombed their people who were leading their normal lives, so they
bombed back in retaliation. And jeopardized in the exchange of fire between
rivals whose politics is beyond their understanding, is that 5 year old kid who
just wanted orange cake for breakfast the next day, or the new mother trying to
manage home and work or the father deciding if his daughter would like the pink
or the purple dress for her birthday. All of a sudden the world they so
meticulously built vaporizes into thin air. The kid now has to worry if he will
get food at all to eat the next day and the days after that. He just saw his
elder brother not talking to him anymore, and his parents wailing till they had
no more tears left to cry and he had to suddenly leave all his toys and his
favorite video game behind and ride a tiny boat away from home, wrapped in his
frail grandmother’s old blanket. He did not like it. It was cold and the sea is
scary, but Father said it would be fine. But brother won’t be joining them and
he did not understand why. The young mother now doesn’t know if she would be
ever able to manage everything on her own for the entire length of her life
because one half of her support system now just vanished. He had gone for a
concert, never came back. The father dressed his daughter in the pink dress,
yes she liked pink better, and lowered her six feet under the ground along with
his soul.
I do not know what I can do for them. I do not
know if I am allowed to feel the pain of these people who are apparent
strangers. I do not know if it will all be the same again. I do not know if
there will be a bigger war. But I do not want those nightmares to haunt me. I
do not want those bad dreams to wake me up all weary and scared where I had
dreamt of being in those places and losing people who matter. If mere
nightmares can affect me to such an extent I cannot imagine what it must be to be living in one of them.
