Pranav Kodial

Building Blocks

I stand with the crowd, watching. The emergency services officers and their dogs sift through the debris in an attempt to find more people underneath. Or their bodies.

“Building came up just five years ago,” says the guy next to me, “must have been that powerful typhoon, the wind and heavy rain last night, that did it.”

I nod slowly. No, you idiot, I don’t say. The dusty haze above the debris hasn’t still settled, but I can see through it. In the distance, the sun is setting behind a school building built over a hundred years ago. Built with excellent quality material, according to rock-solid safe plans, duly passed without bribing a single authority.

school shooting . . .
everyone blames
the shooter