A day of remembrance

A day of remembrance..
I woke up today morning with a mucky feeling in my stomach. My head was heavy, and a sense of uneasiness pervaded my body. It wasn’t the best of nights. My sleep was pretty disturbed, with images of blood smeared bodies, stunned and scarred faces, limbs writhing besides its decapitated owners, buildings in flames – all kinds of grotesque images kept floating across my mind’s eye. I am normally a deep sleeper, but yesterday night, I kept tossing and turning for most part. Early in the morning around 4’ish, with a cup of coffee in hand, I stood in my Balcony absorbing the pitch darkness that normally precede a dawn. It is as if the night throws up its deepest black on to its canvas in these early hours, before the stirring brightness of the day repaints it to gold. It was at this moment it dawned on me that today is 9/11, and I understood the significance of my disturbed sleep.
It has been fourteen years since that tragic day at the beginning of this beautiful century. Enough reams of paper have been spent recounting the horrific spectacle of those few hours; I wouldn’t want to recount it again. But, this date is now etched in the collective consciousness of humanity, and will forever remain a grim reminder of gestalt change in Modern Man’s psyche of what violence and terrorism could mean. After Auschwitz, this attack, when properly understood, went beyond the scope of rationality and even imagination. Planned, executed with merciless precision over a religious ideology by a group of educated young men only establishes the fact that no matter how progressive we materially become, our instincts still lie with our Hominid ancestors. That Streak of savagery, irrationalism, instinct for violence are merely dormant in most of us; and given the right impetus and conditions it could sprout, and plunge headlong to a result that could be as devastating and debilitating as the happening on World Trade center on that fateful day. And that is the gripping fear which faces us today. And after 14 years, it has made us suspicious, less trusting, more susceptible to racial and ethnic distinctions, highly insecure and paranoid. When we thought we were becoming more cosmopolitan, 9/11 pushed us back a few centuries psychologically. We believed, we had seen the worst forms of meaningless, baseless violence during the last century; but little did we realize we would quickly be on the back foot pretty early in this one.
On this day, my sympathies, deepest condolences and profound empathy to all those families who succumbed to this act. I shall pray that in years to come, we would have redeemed ourselves sufficiently, individually and collectively, as recompense to all lives tragically lost. It is the least we can do for them.
God rest all their souls.
Bala

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