Love is the answer

“Oh the torment bred in the race

The grinding scream of death

And the stroke that hits the vein

The haemorrhage none can staunch, the grief The curse no man can bear”

-Aeschylus, The Choepore

Death and sorrow, the obnoxious forces that keep the world on its toes, creeps up on the unsuspecting. Whether it be by sickness, pestilence, war or even a bomb explosion right in the terrified faces of the peaceful residents of a hotel, or the churchgoers basking in the air of holy prayers. Sri Lanka was deprived of 253 such people.

But I’m not here to talk of the government, the ISIS, or any current affairs. This news has reaches the ears of people all over the world, and countries all over the world are expressing their innermost sympathies. France had the Eiffel tower dim its lights, parliament houses all over the world have observed a grim silence of 1 minute, Google has a crossed black ribbon, when clicked, displays the heartrending message of, “Our hearts are with the families and communities of Sri Lanka” etc. etc. Death, along with its trusty companion Sorrow triggers feelings of despair to whoever they touch.

But out of all these feelings of despair comes out a force much powerful than the rest: a divine and pure love so strong that it moves everyone that rejoices in it. The griever of a lost one expresses his/her maximum amount of love. Times of annihilation and destruction like this are the times when love is at its highest. Times like this is when we realize that our country, nay, the whole world is one community. Times like this are when we realize that the loss of our 253 brothers and sisters is a loss of our own. Again I quote Aeschylus’s The Choephore,

“But there is a cure in the house and not outside it, no, not from the others but from them, their bloody strife. We sing to you, dark gods beneath the earth

Now hear, you blissful powers underground Answer the call, send help

Bleaa the children, give them triumph now”

-Maithree Bogoda