I would have woken up on 14th August with refreshed patriotic feelings. I would have watched the independence celebrations on TV, listened to the national songs, watched the people make promises for their country again. I would have answered all the independence greetings messeges on my cell.
But I woke up on 14th August with new dreadful feelings. I watched people crying, listened to laments. I answered the condolence messeges on my cell.
On the eve of 14th August, at midnight a suicide bomber blew himself up at a police station in Iqbal Town Lahore, killing 8 people and injuring so many others. Among those critical was my dear beloved uncle. He suffered extensive brain injuries; a fractured skull, massive subarachnoid and intraventricular bleeding. It damaged his brain stem and for three days he breathed through a ventilator, his heart beat through epinephrine and dopamine. He finally succumbed on the fourth day.
I have seen the faces of dead suicide bombers in newspapers before, with a prize money for those who provide the police with some clue about the bomber's identity. But this particular one was different. I looked at him for a long time.
People read it in the newspaper next morning and went on with their lives. While some felt sorry and some treated the news like a junk email others were just ignorant about it. When I told one of my friends about the blast, he said, 'Oh God....theres been a blast in town?' Well...how can you expect everyone to know; everyones' beloveds werent hurt in the blast.
Life is so unpredictable. Dreams are shattered in an instant. Plans are destroyed, wives get widow, children get orphan in a second, specially when one decides to blow oneself up in a crowd and kill some policemen, a woman who used to sweep the floors, a man who used to sell balloons on the road, a twenty year old guy who had come to return the cell of his friend (he was married and had a daughter by the way) and two friends who had come to the police station to pay the bail of a person and get him out, one of whom was my uncle.
The day he passed away wasnt less than a doomsday; must have been for the family of all those who died so unexpectedly. One cannot even start imagining what must have went through the mother who raised her son and lived with him for fifty two years....fifty two years...it takes two seconds to say and 1.6 billion seconds to pass. The daughters, the sons, brothers, sisters, cousins, uncles, aunts, nephews, neices, friends, neighbours...yes all cried...invariably. Its not that I havent seen so many people crying on deaths, its just that this time there was no one to condole anyone. Everyone had their loss and everyone felt it...deeply.
Yes, we got a separate country sixty one years back. Yes, we are an independant nation. Atleast we can kill any one we want, any time we want, how much we want.
