Monthly Archives: January 2016

Hello Readers!

Our ASTU class has been focusing on 9/11 attacks and the trauma such events and wars cause. We are all aware of the 9/11 attacks and how it is and always will be remembered as one of the biggest traumatic event in the history. It’s not only the event that we remember but also the thousands of Americans who lost their ‘valuable’ lives in those attacks. Several Memorials have been built as a tribute to their lives, the most well-known being the National September 11 Memorial and Museum located at the World Trade Center site about which Dr. Luger discussed in the class. Marjane Satrapi quoted in Persepolis “An entire nation should not be judged by the wrongdoings of a few extremists” sums up the consequence that the majority of innocent people suffer because of the wrongdoings of few people and the 9/11 event was no exception. Along with the Americans, the 48,644 Afghan and 1,690,903 Iraqi people also paid the ultimate price for a crime they did not commit. They lost their lives too and suffered drastically. But their pain and loss is not given as much importance even though the trauma was equal on both the sides if not more. This makes me think about the discussion we had in class on Butler’s book. Butler in his book raised questions about how does one evaluate the value of an individual’s life and who decides their ‘value’? Why are lives of some people given more importance than that of others? It also makes me wonder that if we still have the ‘us’ vs ‘them’ perspective then we claiming to be ‘globalized’ and being ‘global citizens’ does not make sense to me . If the concept of ‘global citizen’ really exists then why don’t we consider everyone as one of ‘us’ and why don’t we eliminate the ‘them’ perspective?

Welcome back readers,

We started the second semester with a very poignant and heart-breaking story “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close” by Jonathan Safran Foer which is about a jittery nine year old boy Oskar who lost his father in the 9/11 attacks which led him to solve the mystery of the key he discovered in his father’s closet. The attack on the World Trade Towers which is one of the major theme in the novel was a national trauma suffered by the entire nation and in the larger sense world as a whole, but the drastic impact it has on the life of an individual is strikingly portrayed by Foer in his novel.
While reading the novel, I was moved by the grief and pain Oskar went through after losing his father in the 9/11 attacks and the changes these attacks brought on both personal (Oskar’s life) and national level .It took me back to the national trauma that I encountered as a citizen of India during the 26/11 Mumbai attacks. Unlike the 9/11 attacks during which I was too young to truly understand the actual situation and the people around me also only relied on media for the updates, 26/11 attacks were something that I witnessed not only on the television screen but by knowing about the situation from few of my acquaintances who actually lost their loved ones in the attacks. The essence, resilience and the very soul of India’s commercial and entertainment capital- Mumbai was tested like never before five years ago, when just 10 terrorists turned the world’s fourth largest city into a war zone, holding major landmarks such as the Taj Mahal Hotel under siege for three long days and nights. 166 people died, hundreds got injured and the entire nation broke down.
Even recently, the attacks in Paris were so heart breaking and tragic. The increase of such traumatic incidences in the world today are shameful and a threat to humanity and peace. The physical damage unkind attacks like these cause gets swept away quickly with time but the mental and emotional damage these attacks cause leave ever-lasting scars. We need to come together and stand by one another and not against one another to fight these wrongdoings in order to live in love, peace and harmony.