What has the world come to?

As a writer of fiction, my work predominantly consists of creating distinctive characters that move my story forward. There’s the hero, the conventional sidekicks, the supporting characters and the villains who keep posing obstacles in everyone’s path. Each one must be different from the other.

While it’s easier to write about the hero struggling to come to terms with her destiny and the circumstances that will lead her to it, the problem always comes to writing the part of the villain. Here’s the thing: as humans, we all have something or the other going on, something that makes us fall and then get up again. Writing a character similar to us and making them heroes in a way is the easy part, it is when you have to write someone who is dissimilar to you is when the problem begins.

When Stephen Kind wrote ‘Rose Madder’ he was able to create a character like Norman- an abusive husband and a demented man- so convincingly that it was eerie. I had actual goosebumps when I read the story because I had yet to learn that such people existed and could be a threat to innocents. I knew I could never write a character like Norman with as much clarity as Stephen King did. Any degenerate villain I would write in any of my stories would be slightly inspired by Norman.

For me writing a character like Norman would also be disturbing since I would have to think like a person whose only thoughts would be about gaining control and making people do as he said. He would want to use violence and he would regard the whole world as something he could manipulate.

He was a person with so much hatred that it was scary and I hoped that people with these characteristics only existed in the pages of books that could be closed and stowed away in bookshelves.

So it is absolutely heartbreaking when you find out that these people exist in real life and use violence and fear to manipulate people. And for what? I would never be able to understand how the killing of innocents will ever achieve anything.

Is it the intention of terrorists to destroy the world and rule over the ruins?

Their purposes can never be understood and perhaps I do not want to know what goes in the mind of people who spread only hatred. The media labels their acts as ‘cowardly’ but I believe their acts are that of ignorance, for they live in delusion that their deeds are nonpunishable and ‘good’. But most importantly, they feel like they are achieving greatness for their cause and this excuses their savage activities.

These people spread hate and when they cause destruction, they confuse the people and make them question and suspect people that do not belong to their beliefs and culture, thus causing division.

Hopefully there will come a day, when hate and intolerance will be expelled from this world. Until then, I'm just praying for the world.