Requiem

How does one even begin to console families who have lost loved ones at the Marriott bombing? Many who died are from the ordinary working class: Silverbird taxi drivers, Satpams (security guards) and hotel workers; often sole income earners of their families.

The Indonesian TV channels, in typical professional nosiness, have shown wailing family members of victims at their homes; homes filled with snotty-faced children, crying; homes with mouths waiting to be fed. Gory images of charred remains of victims are shown on prime-time TV: the slow unzipping of the orange body bags, the total abject horror on the faces of families as reality sunk in -- it is a sight that could break a thousand hearts.

Survivors speaking from hospical beds voiced disbelief at how someone could do such an evil thing: to explode a bomb during peak lunchtime hour right outside a packed hotel lobby and restaurant--it is cruelty that is beyond comprehension, it is humanity at its lowest.

Our prayers are with the souls of the victims and their grieving family members. Everyday we go about our daily lives with the given belief that we would end our day alive, fulfilled at having put in an honest day's work.

I believe those victims of the blast at Marriott started their day on August 5 no differently.

But yesterday, their day ended at lunchtime rudely and abruptly. And for the rest of us who live and work in this beloved city, our days would never feel the same again.

Will we end our day today, alive and fulfilled? And the day after?

Someone out there is bent on denying us this right. But we should not relent, we have to trudge on with the belief that another day awaits us tomorrow, ready to be filled with our hopes and dreams. We need to soldier on. We owe it to ourselves. We owe it to the victims at Marriott.