Unto urban societies and sky-high buildings, what doesn’t happen in plain sight, doesn’t happen at all.
It’s quite a wintery night. All tucked in, we watch our TV-shows or put on our reading glasses to finish reading the last dialogue by Paulo Coelho, with warm mugs of sweet stirred with love in our hands. At this point, no distress must be entertained. Now, keeping at bay all our menial troubles, why do we still feel life is unfair?
A mother singing lullaby to her child somewhere near the border of our country, having eaten naught but one bite of solitude the entire day, does not understand the warmth of those mugs. The 15-year-old girl who was told to evacuate her hometown and bid adieu to her half-torn books and a doll with black hair turned grey does not understand the language of your TV show. The boy who grew up a little earlier than he should have, whose childhood became but an epitome of manliness and vision, a bulk of responsibilities, does not understand the clarity of those reading glasses.
The refugee who ran at a pace so fast that he did not know where to stop, whose displacement was only sympathised by the world, does not understand the coziness of your blankets. The soldier whose life was but a feud between two nations and his breath a politically ticking clock does not understand the literature in your books.
The politics you watch on your $500 TV is not even half of it, for the blood and screech is so intense it could cut right through your plasma screens. The world is a political playground where agendas are worth more than casualties. The privilege of being able to write about it while it happens is not rare, but a part of a bigger picture. From a place of privilege, everything seems “stories and hashtags”, and yes, violence happens, but how often do we encounter it?
Remember, just because it doesn’t happen to you doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen at all.
Opinions are not just an Instagram post, but a step towards accepting the reality of lives other than your own. And having the courage to voice your opinions means having the audacity to claim changes in the face of modern politics, for what is poverty and helplessness but a wild face of politics?