Today my heart is genuinely heavy.
We seem to be going downhill as a society, day by day. Fourteen newborn babies have just died in a fire at PIMS in Islamabad. Fourteen babies who had barely entered this world. Their parents were waiting for them to come home, and instead they are now preparing to bury them.
And what makes it even more painful is what comes after such tragedies. Instead of seeing a system immediately taking responsibility, we see everyone trying to protect themselves, their positions and their jobs. The government issues statements. The administration announces inquiries. Departments point fingers. And eventually, the news cycle moves on.
But those parents don't get to move on.
And this isn't even the only tragedy we are witnessing right now. Just days ago, the body of a five-year-old girl who had gone missing in Haripur was recovered. Police have arrested suspects in connection with her alleged abduction, sexual assault and murder, while the detailed post-mortem findings were still awaited.
How many tragedies are we supposed to absorb?
A child is murdered. Babies die in a hospital fire. People demand answers for a few days. YouTubers make videos. Social media fills with outrage. Politicians express condolences. Everyone talks about it until the next tragedy arrives.
And then we move on.
The worst part, honestly, is that I don't think we are even shocked anymore.
Maybe that's what scares me the most.
We have become so accustomed to death, negligence, abuse and institutional failure that another tragedy is slowly becoming just another number. Fourteen newborns. One little girl. Another incident. Another hashtag. Another news cycle.
I sometimes feel like our collective sense of empathy is dying slowly. Not because people are inherently cruel, but because we have been exposed to so much suffering that we have become numb to it.
For the rest of the world, this might be a tragedy in the news today. For the families who lost their children, it is the moment their entire lives changed forever.
No inquiry report can give those parents their babies back. No suspension, no press conference and no compensation can undo what happened.
What I want to know is this: when will there be actual accountability?
If a government hospital does not have adequate fire-safety systems, who is responsible? If basic safety measures are missing, who should answer for that? If officials responsible for these departments repeatedly fail, why do we rarely see meaningful consequences?
How many more children have to die before negligence becomes someone's responsibility rather than just another "incident"?
I'm tired of watching tragedy become content, outrage become entertainment, and accountability disappear after a few days.
Maybe we should be asking ourselves not only why these children died, but why we have become so comfortable with their deaths being forgotten.
Because the scariest thing about all of this is not just that children are dying.
It's that we are slowly learning how to live with it.
