Where has our conscience disappeared?

"Be safe", I say nervously to my son, who is leaving for his college, holding him bit longer than usual in embrace. It is a matter of few hours when he would be home but I am bit restless. That anxiety is uncalled for but it happens every time I learn about tragic events of terrorist attacks in any part of the world. 

I struggle really hard to stay away from writing about events that involve violence and human rights violation because such incidents are extremely painful to cope with, emotionally draining and their impact is too deep to shrug off and carry on with life as if nothing has changed just because I am not affected by it! There is a deeply disturbing trend of cult of hatred becoming a global epidemic endorsed by religious extremists. 

What kind of people, don't flinch before committing heinous, barbaric sins of taking innocent lives? What kind of religion endorses killing in name of its God and honours the culprits as martyrs/heroes? I fail to understand logic behind any religion that demands people from other religions to be killed! It is difficult to fathom politics of hatred that makes inhuman acts of violence not a regrettable necessity but the whole point and make people who subscribe to their ideologies, barbaric savages. With high stakes invested in terrorism, it has become a new currency to establish religious, political and economic power games for global domination. 

The photograph of the dead child's face in the coffin that many photographers documented in recent Peshawar terrorist attack symbolizing the horror of butchered innocent lives of 132 children, is still on my mind giving me sleepless nights!

The photographs, media covering of the Peshawar attacks would remain just an archival data for those who dispense justice. The candle marches, protests, signature campaigns, angry intellectual debates, political blame games have already started waning as other headlines have taken over the eye balls. The calls for world to unite strongly and decimate those "inhuman species" out of our life" are getting feeble. We are done with discussions at the cocktail parties of how Peshawar attacks are "a rude awakening to the perils of religious fanaticism". We would soon forget about this gruesome tragedy, the pain will dilute or remain just a sad memory till such tragedies occur in our own backyard. 

Yeah, we still remain savage as a race bereft of any conscience and this realization is making it difficult to have faith in humanity any more.  

"There is no flag large enough to cover shame of killing innocent people." Howard Zinn.