Pallbearer or Blanket Comforter?

The month of May had unfolded hurling stones at the visage of reality. It has opened a new chapter in one’s life full of discolored spots of bruises and healed wounds tainted with insights simultaneously on his body of knowledge; spots of stunted activity blackened by mankind’s dark side but scars of learning curve, in many facets of life, which prove challenging but forcibly instructing.

A pall of darkness casted by the carnage of natural calamities and divine wraths, violation of rights of existence and equality, and, worst of all, violence of terrorism and wars.

A blanket of lightness effectuated by one's fortuity not to suffer carnage, fierce roar of fervent rights activists from all and every kind of media, and, truest of all, infinitesimal susceptibility and milder sensitivity to grieving violence.

Why did human bother to weave a pall a pall and a blanket a blanket? As human’s dark sides abscessed, the rest can only gulp or gasp. Harrumph if one wants, no matter how the colossal the common mass, no region of mankind is immune to fester and incapable to abscess.

The appalling act of genocide and displacement of civilian rebels and innocent civilians politically espoused and executed by what unknown dark matter in a leader married with three children – the Syrian war constituting one small blackened spot but gargantuan pall of darkness. Bomb blasts targeting school children and female students in Pakistan by anti-western Islamist sectarians have been indiscriminately merciless and terrifying. Where is the blanket?

The bomb blasts list 2013 in Pakistan.

Many of these suicidal perpetrators had families too. What did they tell their families or children before their actions? What would their related children learn in the future? Yet one died in martyrdom and in true honor in one’s belief. Their actions not wronged by their beliefs; their bravery and martyrdom are justified by their faiths. Political leaders and religious leaders are whom that educate and nourish the means to beliefs and faiths.

The pall of darkness is spreading faster and wider than the blanket of lightness. Human darkest awaken to pall the goodness in human helmed and turbocharged by wealth; the greed and power of having wealth for the “pallbearer” or “blanket comforter?” So many injustices, too many.

** First Prize: Staged Portraits, Stories
     Photograph courtesy Stephan Vanfleteren, Panos for Mercy Ships, via WPP   
A mass protrudes from Makone Soumaoro's neck as she poses for a photograph taken by Stephan Vanfleteren. Soumaoro, 30, is a housewife with three children who worries that the mass could be a tumor. Guinea is considered one of the least developed countries in the world, with most of its citizens lacking access to affordable health care. Soumaoro, like many others in Guinea, hopes to be aided by the NGO Mercy Ships docked in Guinea's capital, Conakry (map).
Jury member Rena Effendi praised Vanfleteren's approach to the subject: "I can't help noticing the poignant, classic beauty of the people, in spite of all their imperfections. The way he approached the subject of health in Africa from the angle of a staged, studio-lit portrait is respectable. The photographer is being innovative but not exploitative, which is a very fine line."
Published February 22, 2013************

Note: Paris Hilton mug shot is not part of the photo but was inserted by blogger for comparative emphasis thought interestingly just.