My Short Stories. Garden of Ashes.

Aarav sat on the crowded bus, his fingers nervously tracing the edges of the old photograph in his pocket. It was a picture of his daughter, Meera, standing proudly in her school uniform, her toothy smile radiant. That smile had been his anchor, his reason to endure, ever since that fateful day when everything changed.

The market had been bustling, filled with the chatter of vendors and the laughter of children. Aarav had stepped away for a moment to haggle over a bag of rice when the explosion shattered the world around him. The blast claimed dozens of lives, including Meera’s. It left behind not just rubble and broken glass but a gaping void in Aarav’s heart.

In the weeks that followed, grief consumed him. But grief soon gave way to anger, and anger to resolve. Aarav made it his mission to understand why. Why someone would plant a bomb in a crowded market. Why his daughter’s life was reduced to a mere statistic in a news report.

Today, he was on his way to speak at a community center, sharing his journey of loss and resilience. He had spent years advocating for peace, rejecting the cycle of hate that terrorism seeks to perpetuate. He believed that healing began with understanding—not just of the victims but also of the forces that drive people to such acts of violence.

The bus screeched to a halt at his stop, and Aarav stepped off, clutching the photograph tightly. He would speak of Meera, not as a victim, but as a symbol of hope. Even in the face of terrorism’s destruction, he had chosen to cultivate a garden from its ashes—a garden where love and understanding could bloom again.

Terrorism has no place in our World!