Dear Editor,
I wish that there was one person in the President’s kit of comrades who had the courage, character, and class to educate His Excellency Ali about mourning etiquette. There is a time for dinner, another for political speeches, and others for the warm and fuzzy. But before those, there is a time when one more word of sympathy, another expression of condolence, is enough to compel a primordial scream. Enough! No more! Not now!
People need to grieve in their own time, their own space, according to their customs. It is indecorous for anyone, and this includes a President, to foist himself, his compassion that is really propaganda wrapped in the banner of empathy, upon the grieving so thoughtlessly, vacuously, crassly. I have known the mourning to chase a national leader away, and this is what should have been done on this occasion. Respectful distance is what should prevail, especially from those who say that they care. Care and console, but it is a sign of class and grooming to know when to withdraw, not to overdo.
A dinner at this time when there is a knot in the pit of the stomach, and there is retreating from the smell and sight of food? A crowd of strangers flocking and hovering at a moment when the grieving just wants to be by themselves? The people who lost loved ones, the survivors, are not exotic marine creatures in some goldfish bowl to be peered at and pressed and fed, and their calamity converted into a circus. Is there none in the Office of the President, none among the protocol officers, who can boldly and respectfully alert: this is just not done now, better to leave this for later, when the wounds are less raw, when the pain is not as piercing, when the quivering spirit is approaching something akin to calm?
These children did not leave us in the course of ‘normal circumstances’ however such may be defined. They were taken from us in the most brutal manner possible, and due to the callous and cavalier culture that passes for public service in this country. Public service, a main artery of government, is to the daily injury of the citizenry unlucky to have cause to interact with its elected and selected agents.
Dinner is fine, but just not now, as in last Sunday. Too close for comfort; serves only to force the lost and lonely to stand to attention, in observance of the dictates of some warped belief, some misinterpreted idea, that this is to the credit of government, and that it honours those who passed, or those who survived. We honour our dead through quiet respect, not with lavish spectacles. Since this fiery cataclysm descended on the children trapped in that dormitory, it is considered to be politically cool to dance on their unfinished graves, besmirch their memories, and disfigure even their departure. Announcing developments about housing and education has a harsh, abrasive, and jarring sound at this raw hour. As good as those are, they can be articulated and publicized as much as such pleases a little later, when the time is more conducive.
We should not be taking a tragedy and making it into a study in excess, if not low comedy. We insult the dead and the living with this unseemly haste to capitalize on what happened. Like if it is just another cheap and shabby propaganda opportunity. Then again, only those who know better, who possess what is genuine inside, are able first to appreciate what I table, and second to manage themselves in a manner more appropriate to the situation.
Sincerely,
GHK Lall