The attack that hit the soul of Army Schools worldwide

When headlines poured in from Peshawar about the deadly attack on school children on Dec 16, I was catching up on the many messages I had missed on a whatsapp group of my High School mates. It’s a group of men and women in their mid-40s getting ready for a reunion. A group that thirty years ago had soaring dreams, go-getter attitudes and high-ceilinged ambitions. We were all once sons and daughters of military personnel in a school in Hyderabad, India, identical to the one in Peshawar, Pakistan. The world stood before us – to conquer, to create, to contradict. Here we were now in cyberspace – humble and unassuming of our achievements and oblivious to apparent graying cells - reliving with love and laughter minute details of the bygone days. A chill ran down my spine as I connected the two screens. That was us three decades ago - and this was not the way it is meant to be. The kids in Peshawar were meant to grow up, aspire, laugh, succeed, fail, learn, succeed again - conquer, create, contradict.

And they were meant to have reunions.

It is important in my profession to be detached. But I wept as scores of red headlines crossed the wire. These young dreamers were thrust with something their beautiful minds had no room for – fear. What kind of a reunion could they have many years later? What was there to laugh or rejoice about? It was not just lives but their souls that had been attacked.

We, the middle-aged teens flying from all parts of the world for this reunion in Hyderabad grew up embracing the army life we were born into with pride. We didn’t question when asked to pack our bags and “black trunks” each time our fathers announced a transfer. Our mothers would get busy sorting items according to the numbered trunks (Trunk No. 36 was the one that carried “toys” for us). We graciously welcomed new friends, no matter which “Army School” we ended up in and we respected the flag that hung at the gate, signs of patriotism seeped early as our toddler years were spent connecting the uniform with the Dad. “Army kids” were synonymous with being adjusting, accommodating and adaptable to change. We could tell an army kid in a social circle (I still can) just by the way they bent forward with respect while talking to the elderly or the confidence they exuded while talking to an authoritative person. We sought each other and we looked after each other.

That is the child that graduates from every army school in the world. That is the child that was deprived existence last Tuesday.

Thirty years later, we are still looking out for each other, ensuring safety, accommodation and comfort for all those coming for the reunion. Some of us have lived our dreams, some have gone on a tangent, but we have accepted and loved life for whatever it has presented to us in thirty years because we grew up in schools in an atmosphere that taught us to appreciate and value every small thing in life. But that may not be the kind of individual who will emerge from the hospitals in Peshawar.

“I’m a physics student but now I don’t want to be an engineer,” a wounded 14-year-old survivor shot in the hand, leg and back, told a Reuters correspondent in the hospital. “I want to get out and take revenge for all the deaths.”

When Taliban militants gunned down more than 130 uniformed proud youngsters in Peshawar, they eliminated the childhood innocence of many enterprising, ambitious and spirited lives, a promising bunch of individuals who would have made the world proud. 

As Pakistan reels with anger, grief and destroyed childhoods, we would hope the inherent values inculcated to all those children will resurrect and return to provide solace to many others. “I want to be an eye doctor. I will fix my brother’s eyes and mine,” told another child to Reuters. “Jibran wants to be a pilot and, you see, you need perfect eyesight to be a pilot. So I have to fix his eyes.”

When the batch of 1986 in Hyderabad will meet and greet uniformed teenagers eager to learn more about their future, it would be hard not to remember those talented counterparts lost on the other side of the border. May their souls rest in peace. 

What's Your Time?

I just finished reading Mitch Albom’s Time Keeper – in five hours. So if you have a day to laze around and do some spiritual reading about death, this is the book. Why death? Because a lot of us fear it - we fear when it may happen to us, we fear when it may happen to our parents, we fear our dreams and we fear our nightmares. Most of my circle of friends are at the age when phone calls to parents revolve around hospital checkups, blood pressures, sugar and joint problems – or worse. Many of us have already either lost a parent, or both, and dread asking a friend about theirs fearing we may have missed some communication about their loss. The book is about a man who got the gift to remain eternal, or depending on which way you look, he got punished for trying to measure time; all he sought was a remedy to bring back his dead wife. The book is also about another man who never wants to die, so much so that he decides to freeze his body in a cryonics lab before his last breath, trapping his soul essentially. The book is also about a young woman who wants to die - rather take her own life - because the young lad she loved did not reciprocate. Ugh. In short, there are only three characters and the job of one, the Time Keeper, is to teach the lesson of time to the other two, thereby redeeming himself. 

"There is a reason God limits our days."

"Why?"

"To make each one precious."

The book does this – teaches you to stop fearing and love every bit of the time you’re alive, therefore embracing death in any which form it eventually comes.

It has been seven years since my mother died. I was there. It was 5.17am on May 28 in 2007, memorial day weekend, when I heard the nurse yell my name from the other room. Why do I know the time? Because that’s what I did first - look at the clock as I ran. There is a clock in every room in my parents’ house, even in the kitchen and bathroom - no kidding - and checking it is as much a habit for all members as is brushing our teeth. We are constantly planning our day – our wakeup, breakfast, bath, lunch, tea, the time we all start getting ready for a party and the time when we all retire to bed. That’s just how it was at my place. I became the bearer of bad news that morning, waking up my father, ringing my siblings and relatives. They said I was blessed because I was there. I didn’t think so. How blessed was I if my mind couldn’t find solace and every time I closed my eyes, my mother's lifeless body flashed by. I feared the visuals my mind conjured, I feared the anxiety it brought along, I feared what might happen to my kids if I died – I feared death. A lot has changed since then. And nothing has worked better than Time - as it always does - to heal, to forget, to remember. I have learnt to remember “the good times” with my mother and appreciate that she did enjoy every bit when she was alive. What Mitch Albom did for me with this book is reiterate what Eckhart Tolle did with ‘Power of Now’ – LIVE every moment valuably. When you hear of someone’s death, talk about their life and the joys it brought. Just as we were born so shall we die. Take death as an opportunity to celebrate someone's life. And stop keeping time.  

-KCB, April 2014