About fifteen days back it was Teachers Day, a day specially marked for showing gratitude to those to taught us an enormous deal of lessons to make us the person whose shoes we fill today. Most of those are teachers, parents, tutors, even friends and relatives who endowed in us a great sense of knowledge, morals and principles. But these rules adhered to being good learning, an easy lesson, or something that did not have any collateral damage. Sometimes, there are lessons we learn from dark places that do a lot of damage – but teach us a great deal of good, too.
The National September 11 Museum opened in May this year, a tribute to the attacked in the 9/11 attacks. It has been thirteen years since the World Trade Centre was bombed and attacked and thousands killed. And a few years since the Mumbai attacks in 2008. They have mourned, they have deconstructed and reconstructed, and so spotlessly cleaned up in places, that they don’t even look like there had been a massacre of ideals gone uncontrolled at that very place a few years ago. But scars lie not on the face of it, but underneath it: there are families still scarred by the attacks.
The destroyed buildings have once again sprung up. There still are broken bricks on walls to remind them of the blood that was once smeared on it, but people are still going to these places. They’ve become more than just what they used to be; they also serve as a metaphorical memorial for the fallen innocents and the fallen martyrs who gave up their lives to save others’. Their businesses have started growth again, their bodies may lie but their spirits hover and wander throughout.
The government’s forces have since become stronger, more efficient. People are more protected. They are more alert. But most importantly, they are braver. People are more united. They are aware of the damage done to our nation, to our people, our strengths. But we haven’t grown weak or timid or submissive to that. We have instead, promised to make ourselves stronger and readier for the next time someone decides to threaten our country.
We slip through the cracks, we make mistakes along the way, like a child in a school getting his formula incorrect. But there’s always the teacher waiting there to correct him. There’s always a door waiting to shut when we want to get out, teaching us to make our own door. Our country is wrought with such a multitude of issues that ‘require’ violence, which it isn’t surprising that it has been attacked and terrorized so often. But the best we can do is to learn from those who died — and gave up their lives! They are the real teachers. And from them we have learnt to grow back up from every blow – to remember it, but not to go back to it.
