“Mom, look, I’ll make you fly in this, one day”, an eight-year-old said, looking at the plane flying in the sky. That morning was quiet and peaceful. The mom walked her son to school before heading to work.
School is buzzing with the innocence and fear of unfinished homework and unprepared tests.
“Hey, look at this toy, my dad bought this for me”, another 8-year-old, giggling with happiness, showed her friend.
A beautiful morning, and the sun shines behind the buildings. Trees sway in yellow and green shades. Clean roads. Freshly blooming flowers, shy, like a boy wearing a new dress, lined the sides of streets; no one plucked them.
Delightful ‘Hi’s and ‘Good mornings’ were exchanged in the air.
That’s how every day starts. Especially, the days that are gonna shatter, always tend to be the brightest. At noon, a cloudy sky, chillness blended with warmth. Constant helicopter sounds above the city, children peeking from the school in awe.
But the televisions and radios said something else.
The tension between the governments, panic among the people, and innocently curious children.
Within a fraction of a minute, an unimaginable moment, too quick to notice.
Just before the government came to attack and take down the helicopter. Just before, parents, who were running, picked their children up from school. A few explosives reached the ground. While the teachers are shouting to students to hide under the strong steel table, while they try to get every child in the same room, before the protection strategies could work, the devastation takes the form of fire, explosion, screams, collision of houses, schools, holy places, hospitals, and parks.
Smoke and plume everywhere, everywhere the eyes could reach. Fire – which fire? Fire from explosion, or fire for survival, which fire shall be spoken first?
Shattering, everything is shattering. The entire city is now a warzone. Everything changed in a minute. Everything.
The lives of hundreds of people were taken away in a minute. A peaceful lifestyle of thousands of people has now turned to be a search for loved ones. In a minute.
The school collapsed into nothing. A few children, with minor injuries, were rescued and went searching for their parents. Some child met their parents, reunited. Some parents met their child dead. Some parents, holding hopes to see their child alive. Every living soul found under the tragedy is a celebration. Loved ones searching for their family. Only to find out, they are the only ones alive, among the people they know. Only Alive.
Help is offered for the rescue. Humanity peaked, just after it was killed. The child, drowned in dust, dressed in blood, with a broken hand, bleeding in the elbow, was rescued, and rescuers were trying to stop the bleeding. She cried, not in pain but in agony and fear. The little children are trying to understand the massacre of peace and humanity.
Another 8-year-old, found dead under a pile of cement ceilings. Taken out, placed in the area where every rescued dead animal is found. A mom came crying to that 8-year-old. Roaring in pain, asking the child to get up and speak, get up and take her on the flight, fly her around the world, as he promised this morning. The couple at 80, found alive with minor wounds in the room, while the couple at 30 was found dead in the kitchen. The peaceful city in the morning is now filled with screams and pain and tears, and blood, the sound of drilling and lifting. The dust flying, the dust of deaths flying everywhere the air goes.
The 8-year-old girl found the toy. The Toy– her friend held in her hand, with a smile, in the morning. Now found near the edge of the road, only half of part toy is with half turned smoke.
The red coloured flower near that toy, the only blooming flower. The only smile, the only hope, in the shape of a flower.
The little girl placed the stones around the flower, and part of the wall that had broken into easily liftable pieces, on top of the stone. And left her friend’s toy as the guard for the flower. She went in searching for the known face in the unknown Chaos.
That war might have killed thousands of lives, yet a flower escaped to keep humanity alive.
- Hoping for the lost peace
The Dust of the Dead (Deva)
Author
Devashree is a chartered accountancy student, having a passion for writing about simple things around us. Walking the roads of Periyar.
