The Youth Brigade

I have never felt the pain of somebody very very close dying. Neither have I felt angry at god for taking away a loved one. Frustration only comes when I am unable to solve mathematical or logical problems. So a painful, frustrating & supposedly anger generating incident composed by a few men leaves me just sad. Not enough, I guess.

Belonging to generation Y or so to speak, I asked this very Y to myself today. After reading Sol Invitus, wanted to do a little soul searching. The reason was apparent; the close one to go away was my Grandma. I was the last person she gave her inspiring smile. Parkinson's disease took her, not any act of violence. But even with swollen feet, lack of sense of the being she managed to give me a smile of a lifetime. Or should I say the smile for a lifetime. So no pain, frustration or anger stays inside me. My Grandma's smile takes it all away. I guess pain, frustration or anger she had with difficult to live normal condition also went off with that smile.

But I'm not writing this to bring peace to the feelings this particular incident has brought for a lot of you. My grandma till her last breath wanted a cure for the incurable. She wanted to be able to eat food normally, talk normally, walk normally, and feel everything the way she used to before this dreadful disease.  She used to ask question to each and every doctor she met the same question. Although she never found a satisfying or motivating answer she would still ask. She still would try her best to be normal, I remember once she walked down 3 floors to have a look at my first bike even though on any other day she could barely walk a meter. I don't know what wonderful things she had experienced in her normal life to want it back so much. Her normal life was not an easy ride either. Raising 5 kids in Indian middle class would surely have been a great struggle. But she still wanted it more than anything else. The current incurable pain and frustration was not enough to get her spirits down. She still wanted a solution.

In the age of euthanasia, this amazing want for normal life is not only admirable. It teaches me something more profound. The cause or reason or whatever you want to call it for this era of terror is this generation Y lacks the want to struggle for this want. We don't want to even look for a solution to this frustrating and painful problem of terror. We want euthanasia from it, be normal till we can be and then just go off. Even the slightest change from normalcy makes us so feeble, that all we can do is take attack after attack till they find us and give the death of peace. Cause after death there is no terror…

Every terror attack targets who? A Nation? A Religion? A Race? NO, it targets an individual. An individual travelling by a train to his normal work life. And suddenly cause of a terror attack this individual’s normal life no more exists. What does he do? No struggle, no want to ask for a solution, no going from one doctor to another to cure this non-normal life. He just gives in. A feeble defense to an incurable disease will only make him die, and die with no smile for his child.

Posted via email from A Poet & A Photographer

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