A grief that refuses to fade

The morning after the Pahalgam massacre, we remembered the laughter that vanished mid-air.

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Children looked for faces that will not return, mothers dreamt of voices that the wind had stolen. And still, the men who plot wars draw their maps in silence, remaining unshaken by the wailing. For me this is not just grief, but the death of meaning. Surely, they died for no reason. And we live with no reason.

It is not just the dead who suffer. The living too ache with fractured memories and empty hands. Mothers fold clothes that will never be worn, and fathers set an extra plate that they must soon take away. They thought we would forget but we remember. We remember the small shoes left at the door, the songs half-sung, the meals half-eaten. We remember the laughter that vanished mid-air, the goodbyes that never thought they were the last. Our loss is not merely of life, but of time, of continuity, while our political leaders speak in cold numbers, distorting the truth with euphemisms. Killing the innocent with no logic is an interruption of the very pulse of existence, the death of meaning.