This has been a dastardly week. Indeed.
Now in my blissful yet torturous study vacation, I was scrolling into my Twitter feed to try and see what the rest of the world was upto when the phrase #sydney siege- started trending. After the initial "What? Siege?" I discovered this (link). And then, the very next day, my Twitter feed, now the harbinger of the worst possible news, tells me that the Talibans are storming into a school in Peshawar, Pakistan and shooting kids. And, note this, it was not random at all. (As opposed to incidents involving American psychopaths like this). These people were burning up teachers (they were female and dared to teach - that is two mistakes in their eyes) and shooting kids in the head.
Not that acts of hate don't happen everyday. As we all know, even acts of hate have to be "newsworthy" to be reported on our mainstream media. Because we all are too busy reading/ watching news about Arpita Khan's wedding or the next big celebrity divorce.
This post is not just a condemnation of what happened in Peshawar. Because condemnations are too many and they are useless.
So, I was reading all this news and thinking about why these things happen and what I and other persons (who are not the government/ UN/other-significant decision maker) could do about this. And I realized we can only do these things :
Now in my blissful yet torturous study vacation, I was scrolling into my Twitter feed to try and see what the rest of the world was upto when the phrase #sydney siege- started trending. After the initial "What? Siege?" I discovered this (link). And then, the very next day, my Twitter feed, now the harbinger of the worst possible news, tells me that the Talibans are storming into a school in Peshawar, Pakistan and shooting kids. And, note this, it was not random at all. (As opposed to incidents involving American psychopaths like this). These people were burning up teachers (they were female and dared to teach - that is two mistakes in their eyes) and shooting kids in the head.
Not that acts of hate don't happen everyday. As we all know, even acts of hate have to be "newsworthy" to be reported on our mainstream media. Because we all are too busy reading/ watching news about Arpita Khan's wedding or the next big celebrity divorce.
This post is not just a condemnation of what happened in Peshawar. Because condemnations are too many and they are useless.
So, I was reading all this news and thinking about why these things happen and what I and other persons (who are not the government/ UN/other-significant decision maker) could do about this. And I realized we can only do these things :
- Not hate the next person because they are different from us
- Empathise
- Respect the right of everyone to practise their faith
- Understand that hate comes out of ignorance, fear and prejudice. --> So let's stop a minute before we comment about some issue we don't know much about, take a minute to educate oursleves about the said issue and maybe we'll realize that it's more complex and deserves more than just a hashtag or Whatsapp forward or whatever.
- We don't all have to become Mother Teresas and spread love, but the least we can do to this world is stop spreading hate.
- Let's stop pretending that we don't have anything to do with the rest of the world and none of it matters. It does. And each one of us has to do some introspection if the world has to change.
- To summarise, let's not let go of our humanity in our everyday scuffle to possess a bit of this world.
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