Rest in peace, little angels!

Jyotsna Dayal

As I was busy with my son’s birthday celebrations, I didn’t get the chance to watch TV or go through the newspapers. The next morning, while sipping my daily cup of tea with my newspapers, which has become a sort of ritual for me over the years, my eyes fell on a huge picture of a cherubic-looking boy in a casket. Tears rolled down my eyes while reading the tales of horror and the ordeal the innocent souls had gone through in the Peshawar school shootout.
My little one, who was sitting next to me, looked at me with puzzled expressions and asked me innocently, “What happened mama? Did someone scold you?”
I did not know what to say. I thought he was too young to understand the meaning of terrorism. But so were those who lost their lives in the dastardly act of terror. Somehow, I gathered courage and flipped through the pages of the newspapers….only to read more poignant stories followed by heart-wrenching pictures.
Being a mother, even the remotest thought of something like this made me shudder with pain and disbelief. This left me wondering how could anyone kill innocent children who are harmless and posed a threat to none.
Throughout the day I kept on thinking about the mother who would have meticulously prepared her child's favourite lunchbox or the father who would have dropped his son to school after kissing him goodbye only to know that it was his final goodbye to his child. I thought of children who would have gone to their school in their neat and tidy uniforms, only to return in caskets.
My heart went out to the children who survived the attack. At such an early age, they have seen death so close. Immediately, I thanked my stars that I was not born in Pakistan. But the second moment, I rubbished my own thoughts. How could I even think something like that when the entire world is facing terror threats. This can happen to anyone, anywhere. Terrorism knows no boundary. It has no caste, no religion.
At night while flipping through the pages of my son’s birthday album, I thought about the mothers who would never be able to celebrate their children's birthdays anymore.