The last 48 hours have been horrific, to say the least. Because the news has never been so saddening. Because in the last 2 days I’ve read things like these:

The smallest coffins are the heaviest.

Pakistan woke up to a day of mourning on Wednesday after Taliban militants killed 132 students at a school in the city of Peshawar.

My son was my dream. My dream has been killed.

If you are a parent, hug your children tight tonight. Give them one extra kiss, because many in Pakistan can’t.

Yes, it brings tears. It can make you cry. It made me too – so many times over now. It pains to see that little innocent kids were killed in a barbaric act to show power, terrorise people, to prove to the world the existence of a handful of people who don’t value life – and this time lives of children, so young to even understand what hatred is.

It can be nerve-wracking to even imagine that it could’ve been my brother or sister in that school. Well, they were my brother-sisters who breathed their last yesterday morning. Watching the news sends shivers down my spine, and tears down my eyes. I could not have my dinner. And all this feels so traumatising that I’ve kind of stopped watching the news – because I’m literally unable to work after seeing all this. It has affected me so much.

And this doesn’t end here. This massacre resulted in something like this:

Hafiz Saeed, Musharraf blame India for Peshawar massacre

Hafiz Saeed on TV Threatens Terror Attacks Against India

Bomb scare in Gurgaon. Turns out to be a hoax call.

Wasn’t the massacre enough to have jolted people that some self-styled leaders begin another attack of hatred!? This time without even thinking that something like this really could not have been planned by someone in their right of mind! No nation would want to harm another nation’s children. Because children are not bound by borders – they are God’s reflection on this Earth. Innocence, which is away from barriers of religion and soil.

These terrorists, and such “leaders”, are the twisted few people who are destroying our faith in humanity. Much as the ones who rape people, even kids, curbing their rights, imposing power on them and then justifying it (read: the Uber driver who raped a woman in Gurgaon and still sleeps unapologetic in the jail; and the numerous others doing just that each day). The same idiots who take advantage of their legal rights and destroy lives of others (read: Rohtak sisters who asked for money or else destroyed careers of young men).

We sure did miss something while teaching morals, I think. And maybe we laid so much emphasis on the academic intelligence that we forgot teaching emotional intelligence. Yes, education will help eradicate terrorism and such inhuman acts, but the education of the right kind. One that teaches love, that teaches respect for others. One that teaches empathy, one that teaches care. An education which forces us to question illogical beliefs, which makes us raise a voice for the right. Change the world, one step at a time. And this education just can’t be taught in schools. It begins from home.

So even though I have a little less faith in humanity this year end. I feel a lot of responsibility. We as a generation feel a lot of responsibility. To bring about change. To be an example for others. To teach the next generations more about love & respect. So that there isn’t a time in their lives when they’ve to see images of kids being slaughtered.

Ending the post, with many prayers for their souls, and a much disturbed mind.

But, with a hope, for a better tomorrow.