Burnt dreams

I thought a lot before writing this. I never ever hesitate for writing about anything but this time, I am hesitating. I am in a dilemma whether to ponder my pen on this motion. Do I have my right for it? Every one is expressing then why not me? Many people from all over Nepal are already aware of this horrendous incident. This hesitation is because it's by them who are considered to be the future of the nation and most enthusiastic group of all the youths and not only that, the students.

Yes, I am talking about the tragic and terribly horrifying incident that occurred at Tri-Chandra Campus on July 20. On that day, some unknown group of students torched the Tri-Chandra's library to ashes. Students' burning their own college library is hard to believe but that happened and the worse part is that it was not a dream.  And my reason for hesitation is; I am not the student of Tri-Chandra, I have never ever been to read the books of the very library and I don't even know any of my friends reading there right now, then should I talk about it? This is their internal matter. The students of my college weren't there to burn them, then why should I speak up?

Then, I remembered the lines of Heinrich Heine, the German poet, "where they burn books they will in the end burn people too." So, now the incident is no more their private affair and what happened was not internal.  And more over I am also a student, may not be of the same college but from the same university and now this incident has seriously raised question even on what I have learnt all those years from the university?

In the fire, the library was completely damaged. About 5000 books and 2000 thesis archived were burnt. It's not just about some books or valuable research papers that were burnt in that incident, but it's about the dreams which have been turned into ashes and it's about the knowledge which has been lost in the flames. I think I shouldn't state about the importance of books for students as whatever we have become till now, is all because of those books. A library is a treasure trove of books which every student must learn to respect and this is what our education as well as culture teaches us. But the irony is that the shameful act was none other then performed by the students themselves.  Here, can't we raise question about the quality of education that is provided in our education system that even a college student doesn't have respect of education.

I don't know the exact scenario of that day. I don't know what happened. May be that was unbearable for those who burnt the books that they found no other way out other than to burn the books. I don't know whether the reason behind it is political or apolitical. I simply know that the words were burnt, the words which marked our civilization, our culture, our knowledge.  Oh, right, those vandals may argue that why books when we can get the so-called knowledge and words now in our tips of fingers through the internet? Here also, I think I shouldn't clarify that those are also the outcome of knowledge which are probably been true only through the traditional archivist of human knowledge.  These vandals who burnt the library not only turned the books into ashes but also the dreams of thousands of other innocent students who really are in enrolled in the college for their better future and their better future obviously means a prosperous country.

http://www.myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=79984 (published on Republica on July 30th)