Sarfraz Shah: 'Yaar, nahin maro yaar' (friend, please don't kill me)

Rage it seems is a bigger river than the Nile. When unleashed, it can completely destroy the balance and structure that our minds attempt to give us. When rage takes over, and the illogical takes precedence, than what have you got left? What really are you able to hold on to with some form of value if the sensical becomes nonsensical? Where can I bury this incident? Whom can I lay the blame on? I need to move on, but I need to satisfy my conscience first, somehow or the other. In the absence of any real justice, I will even settle for a cheap substitute. Please. Just give me something. Anything. My mind needs to just shut the hell up, process this reality, and digest it so that I can move on. After all, I have X-Men to go and see tonight.

Sarfraz Shah. 19 year old Sarfraz Shah. 19 year old student aspiring to study Computer Science Sarfraz Shah. Youngest brother of four brothers Sarfraz Shah. Son of Manzoor Fatima Sarfraz Shah. We murdered you last night. We didn't even let you hit twenty years of age. We didn't care that you asked us to save you. You were clearly fooled by the uniform we were wearing. I can console you though by telling you that you are not alone. We are on a murderous rampage. There is nothing left keeping us from taking another life tomorrow. There is no defense. There is no measure of protection. Most importantly, there is no will to stop us. It seems as if we couldn't even wait to see if there really was a heaven or hell after death, for we have created our own hell right here. Frankenstein it should seem, is finally awakening.

The anger is piercing its way through me. I'm looking for a victim. I want to blame the Rangers. I desperately want to blame them. I've seen the evidence and in any court of justice, the blame would lie wholly on the shoulders of those uniformed men. However, for those of us living here, it isn't as simple as that, is it? In fact, for those of us living here, if we truly ask ourselves what happened in that park on June 8th, we would realize that we were only looking at the effect, not the cause. Those rangers pulled the trigger to end that boys life, but we put that boys life onto a gambling table many years ago. People of this country, you need to ask yourself why the hell all of this is going on. You need to study it. You need to feel it. You need to look for an answer regardless of how uncomfortable it is. As much as I am disgusted with what happened, I am not in the least bit surprised at it actually happening. In fact, I am surprised that it isn't happening more often.

We have NO value for each others lives. We have value only for our own lives. The evidence is in the gunmen everyone hires to protect themselves. It doesn't matter if a market place comes to a standstill when five of your gunmen are surrounding the place, because at least you are protected. We have enlisted the help of thousands of gunmen throughout the cities, all individually hired at basic wage levels, to protect us from each other. We are trying to put out a fire in a forest by blowing wind at it. How incredibly stupid as a nation can we be? When the hell will we open our eyes and realize this is a beast created by us and no one else?

Law and Order is an uncomfortable reality that every society has to accept if it wants some form of justice. It means that even if no one will get hurt, you cannot run a red light. It means that even if your house happens to be right at the start of the oncoming traffic lane, you still have to go all the way down and take a u-turn and come back. It means that when there is a No Smoking sign in a building, you don't fire up a goddamn cigarette right next to it. If these absolutely basic concepts are not met, how the hell can we expect more complicated issues like police and uniformed violence to be addressed?
We have a disease of multiple heads here. However, one that we need to address immediately is the disgusting amount of gun proliferation in this country. What is it that we are trying to achieve by deploying all these armed guards? Every house has a few, every office has a few, cars are loaded with them, streets are filled with them, schools and parks are filled with them, restaurants are fronted by them, blah blah blah. Have we become safer as a result of this or simply numb to seeing guns all around us? There is no longer any differentiating factor between the armed police and the privately armed micro militias that are scattered throughout the cities.

We are being scared into believing that this is the way towards future protection. This however, is the way towards anarchy. Violent anarchy. We have to stop this gun flow. We have to get rid of the guards. We have to learn to trust each other again. We have to learn to value each other again. These Rangers have become a trigger happy group of people because they see that their uniform is worth no more than the average shalwar kameez dressed man if they are both holding guns. They have seen their value plummet to the point that shock therapy is perhaps their only way of getting some reaction from the masses. This was an incident that went too far. I want to blame them, but it is too easy to blame them. They are poor, underpaid, under appreciated people who will be slapped with the charges and forgotten about in a weeks times. The symptom would have been treated for the day. The disease however, will continue to proliferate. Find your humanity once again friends. We owe it to each other. Sarfraz Shah's mother, Manzoor Fatima, will never trust you or me again. She has written us off for good. She has inherited a lifelong pain that we can never fathom. Can we finally get back onto a path which will never put another mother through such torture? Can we? Dare we?