Hopefully never again.

Having not listened to the news or switched on the TV, I had only found out about the massacre that happened in Peshawar, Pakistan late evening on the 16^th. The images and news cast stay with me and it has taken me a day to put my thoughts in order over my emotional response.

To my compatriots across the border, I speak for every Indian I know when I say that our condolences are with you. I hope you recover from this heart breaking event to be a stronger people.

Of the incident itself, for any man, it is a natural instinct to protect the young. Be it yours or someone else’s. When a youngster crashes into us at a mall our first instinct is to make sure that he or she is not harmed. When we see young people laugh and joke or fret the silly stuff, our instinct is to empathize with them even if they are unknown to us. We naturally are kind to adolescents and children. We take the extra effort that we may not take with an adult stranger. How then when our natural compulsion is to protect, do we destroy that same life. What would drive anyone to such a travesty?

I am able to think only about the most horrendous of them all – Vengeance. 

Retribution, we have always been told belongs to God. Be it Leviticus to Romans in the Bible (Vengeance is mine sayeth the lord); Forgiveness over vengeance and the wrath of God in the Quran; and The effects of Karma in Buddhism & Hinduism; every religion releases man (or teaches release for man) from the burden of retribution. I agree that religions like Hinduism or Islam do say that retaliation within the purview of justice is agreeable. But every one of them forbids you from ever harming the innocent.

So now I ponder what it must have taken for these extremists at the Pakistani school to kill or injure innocents. Obviously it was not justice. Definitely the loss of humanity.

And once we lose humanity what else is left?

Whatever be the cause, our need right now is to not react as we did at the WTC incident or the Godhra incident.  For violence breeds violence and the last thing we need is the loss of even more innocent lives. My heart goes out to the families who were victims to this atrocity. 

I am also concerned on what course retaliation will take. I hope that this incident motivates justice and not more vengeance. I hope it deters the creation of more extremists. I hope the anguish of these families motivates positive action and not revenge because our first priority now is to protect everyone we can. 

And most of all, I hope we never have to face something like this again.