8th Oct came and went away. The same time, the last year around, was devastating. We were shaken out of our stupors and drunk slumbers – as a nation and as individuals. Remember the 600 girls buried under the collapse roof of a school/ college in Garhi Dupatta? Help came too late for them and too many! We cried! Remember the displaced Kashmiri girls discover in a police raid from Lahore’s hira mandi a month back? We look away! Really how long does it take to stay that way – in where you allow yourself to feel; feel and not judge! We all slip back into our routines. I did that! Maybe it’s humanely not possible to go on feeling sympathy for that long? Or may be it is that life has to go on! I don’t know what it is! There are weird justifications we give for such disasters. It’s the result of people’s sin etc, but what sin those young children that got buried in the debris committed? Who are we to decide on who’s sinful or not? This is what we have been feeding to our children. I was amazed to analyze this piece of data, from a child’s impression about why earthquake struck where it did:

Everyone says that Allah loves us more than 70 mothers and if He took the children, he would directly put the children to the Heaven It’s not the child or women or men, He only sees our sins. I think mostly the children died because a generation of children went to school and they didn’t know that a disaster will strike and nobody knew who will die, who will survive. When they went there, under the debris were bodies and pieces [sic] of small children and elders all dead. Allah loves children but the children who were not following the rules of Allah that, they were not listening to elders, not to their teachers, they were stealing things from their friends etc. They were not praying five times a day and not covering themselves. They were not respecting their elders. They did marriage among themselves. Allah loves everyone but when people do very bad things like stealing and robbing, hurting someone then Allah gets angry.

Why are we using religion to invoke fear in our children then mercy and bounty? Specially us who are watching things from a distance?