Headline Woes

"Mutilated bodies litter bomb site." Courtesy of CNN.com.

Headlines like these astonish and infuriate me. When S. spent a year back home in Karachi before we got married, I read a similar headline reporting on the Bohri Bazaar bomb blast - something about body parts being scattered over the streets and buildings. I remember thinking, No, not parts, not limbs, nails, bones, organs. That could be my love on the street, my whole life, my youth, my old age. He could have stopped off at a paan and juice shop for bhel puri, or accompanied his mother or sister to the cloth market.

How easy it is to be frank and graphic when you don't care, when you don't love what's been lost.