Condolences and more...

The news came as a shock. Although I only knew one "petite" Badar who studied with his even more petite fiance (who later went on to become his wife), I refused to believe it was the same Badar. We had worked together on some group projects and presentations during the early BBA semesters. We remained acquaintances after that, occasionally exchanging a friendly greeting if we happened past each other on campus. Just a couple of years ago, my parents came to know that the wife from a young couple they had met in Calgary was actually his sister, and so now... he is not just an acqaintance and former classmate, but he is also the brother of a family friend. That makes the news of his violent murder harder to digest. It just can't be... (http://knicq.blogspot.com/2004/10/family-destroyed.html)

One can never come up with the right thing to say at moments like this. Beyond the torture Badar must himself have endured, I cannot stop thinking of the torture that his wife, his parents, his siblings are going through right now as they replay scenes of horror in their minds...

Death itself is hard enough to deal with. The senselessness of violence must make the pain unimaginable. Even if they can eventually come to terms with his death, they will never come to terms with the violence that he suffered. "Why?" will always haunt them. It will haunt us, and he wasn't even a part of our lives. I feel anger in my heart, and I can't imagine the wrath that must boil over from the hearts of his family. If we pray to god to give peace and strength to the families who lose their loved ones, then we must pray ten times as hard for Badar's family, for that peace and strength must be very elusive right now.

At times like these it is best to say little, and yet I cannot help myself. Perhaps it is my effort to make some sense of what has happened, or my attempt to prevent this from being just another tragedy. I hope we take away something more than just grief from this tragedy. I hope this does not end with just prayers, a funeral, and the apprehension and bringing to justice of his killer. I want more... we all should want more.

In the movie "Collateral", Tom Cruise's character kills a man who falls on the Taxi he has taken hostage to take him around town for his killing spree. The Taxi driver is obviously shaken, to which Cruise's character asks him if he knows of Rwandans, who kill thousands of people a day, burning entire villages alive. He asks him if that ever made him join Amnesty International or the Red Cross or any movement to protect human lives, and if it didn't why was he freaking out over a single guy's killing who he knew as much as he knew the next Rwandan.

Cruise's character in the film of course is a killer with a cool psychotic rationale. But his character makes a point worth pondering. We never really care about violent death until it hits too close to home, and even then, we may never really do much about it. So Ejaz has been apprehended and hopefully punished for the crime he has committed; is that really the end of the story? SHOULD that really be the end of the story?

We will say our prayers for the dead and the surviving, and then we will return to our lives as usual. Occasionally the thought of this crime will incite pangs of anger and pain and not much else. But there is SO MUCH ELSE to be done, so much else we need to do, and we just don't realize it.

We can write pages on killings in Rwanda, Darfur, Palestine and Kashmir - what could be done, what should be done - and yet we will leave from here with only two lines of prayers and feel we are no longer obliged. Do we really think this is it? Do we really think there will be no more Badar's and no more Ejaz's?

As a society, we are complacent, self-centered, and content with out blind apathy. We are quick to relieve ourselves of any responsibility of any such tragedies and crimes. "It's Society" we claim, yet who does society comprise of if not us? It's about time we did something to change the state of affairs. We are not victims... we are not helpless mind-numbed slaves of societal doctrine.... we are the creators of those doctrine, we decide which direction society takes, and if we have chosen to let society become it's own animal, then it is a choice we have made, not a decision imposed on us. Perhaps we have made this choice so we can turn away when bad things happen... blame someone else, something else... so we can point a finger and comfort ourselves with the thought that we were never a part of it. Yet we are. If we are a part of that same society, then we are a part of it, even if our part won't show for another few years.

Let's stop blaming the government and our law enforcement agencies, for once. Let's stop blaming the tobacco industry, the pharmaceuticals, the gun-makers and the hunters who use them. Let's stop blaming capitalism, fanaticism, fundamentalism, or any ism. Let's stop blaming television programs, video games, books and novels. Let's stop blaming the schooling system, or the underpaid and under-qualified teachers. Let's stop blaming bad parents and dysfunctional families...

Let me correct that... let's not blame these institutions and elements as if we are removed from them... let's not pretend we aren't a part of them.

Blame OUR mode of government, OUR enforcement of law (or lack thereof), OUR capitalist, fanatic, fundamentalist or other ideals, OUR over-indulgence in tobacco, medication and guns, OUR television programs, video games, books and novels that we print produce and make available that propagate and fantasize violence, OUR schooling systems, OUR under-qualification to teach our children, OUR bad parenting and the dysfunctional families WE create...

Truth is, as jarring as this experience may have been, we really don't know what else to do but move on with our lives. It's the way we have been trained to deal with pain and death. The only one's who have difficulty moving on are the persons directly affected by it, but even they will eventually move on, and years later there lives will be no different than ours, and this will just be a memory, albeit a very painful one... but still, just a memory. And there is nothing wrong with moving on with life. What is wrong is moving on as if nothing ever happened. We may have been about as directly involved and responsible for Badar's tragedy as for the ongoing tragedies in Darfur (not at all)... but that doesn't mean that we say our prayers and never think about it again. If there is anything we should feel guilty about after a death resulting from violence, it shouldn't be the continued calm in our own life, it shouldn't be the music we still enjoy in our cars, it shouldn't be the jokes and the laughter that are a part of our life or our character. If there is anything we should feel guilty about... it should be not resolving to ensure that neither we nor our children ever in any way become directly responsible for an act of violence. We must stop to consider if we might be contributing to a future act of violence by encouraging prejudices and intolerance in any form, be it for a person or an ideology. We must consider if we are raising ourselves and our children to consider alternative ways of dealing with attitudes, persons or events that may not be palatable for us so we may avoid resorting to violence, either in action or in words. We must pay more attention to the choices we make, more attention to the choices our children make.

I pray for Badar's soul, but more than that, I pray for his surviving family. Badar still has plenty to pray for him.... His family has one less person to pray for them. I pray that God may give them strength to endure and peace to resolve his death, and that He may strengthen their love that it may bind them together and comfort them. Badar will never come back, and the only solace for his family will be that we, society, take something from this grief... from their grief... and resolve to do our bit in preventing another act of senseless violence that could steal a son, a brother, a husband, a father and a friend all at once, just like that.