His dream was finally coming true. His visa was being made ready. It was just a matter of days. Better days were soon to come, better money and finally an end to days of scrimping after days on the roads of Mangalore.
Here is a background to person I am going to talk to you about, my friend, and what he now suffers as a result of the sudden news that made headlines last Sunday, the first of May.
The guy I met on Christmas Eve was a lean, shy and sweet guy with a charming smile and a heart that one would choose to buy even if given the choice of gold.
He offered to gather all my things and take care of them the entire ride, asked about my health even while that was the first time he met me, kept checking to see if i was okay, because he knew that I was nervous about making such a long night ride.
That was just the starting, the starting of a kind of a bond that only a woman like me who has only known the love of a sister and all her life craved for a brother would have.
Days passed. I got to know this guy further. He was a nice, kind, faithful friend, a struggling small town boy with a dream to make all his financial worries end.
But alas, the American or rather the Dubai dream was not easy. Christmases came and Christmases went. His dream still lived on, his days of scrimping consoled by his one and only baby, fair as ever and clothed in a flouresennt green, his car, which he drove endlessly, carrying passengers, perhaps nervous solo adventurers like me who fell in love with him at first sight or happy families oblivious to feelings of this simple driver.
Whereas for me, trips with him were something i looked forward to, simply sitting in silence as this guy took his car along a road that only he could make feel the skies, yeah, so good were his rides, the thought of him someday really going up on those skies and across many to never be on these roads that are mine would tense me, and I would cry, then who is going to take me on my trips here.
But as i said, the day finally arrived, and little did he know that the time wasn’t right, that a bomb was being planted in a country somewhere, a bomb that was to kill no, not a leader, but the dreams of many, like these, with dreams and plans to fly.
And so the bomb fell, and with that, his plans for a better life, with a car now sold and gone, and the flight to his dreams canceled, here is an instance of what happens in a land far away when someone makes a decision which is to change things for so many overnight.
And here i am getting emotional knowing full well that this is just one story among the many, and no, not the worst.
What’s worse than his cancelled flight are the babies dying, some evacuated, while in an ICU fighting for their life, the lives lost, the parents in countries far away pondering anxiously over whether their son or daughter who was to return with a degree will ever come back alive.
And all this for what? Because that bomb had to go off, oh it was so necessary, no there was no other way, peace is not an option, in a world that is already half torn by war, in a world that is already half way crying out in grief, in a world with enought people suffering, dying, in a world that has just gotten up from a deadly pandemic and yet to recover, in a world that needs not conflict but peace, but here and now i choose to stop, because at the end of the day, who cares about my friend, or you, or me, or all the time and effort i put in giving you this short read?
Yes, for at the end of the day, that bomb had to blast, the war had to begin, there had to be an alternative to the world cup match already going on, a movie for some of us to watch and an unnecessary scandal that was so important to bring peace, wasn’t it?
But the question is, are we now at peace? And for those of us who think we are, how long is going to be when we too are going to be mourning for a time when this deadly match didn’t begin, and we were living in some peace?