The spectacle of suffering

There are no words large enough to hold the weight of what happened at Milestone School and College. No vocabulary invented by man can hold the shape of a classroom of children crushed under a falling sky. Some dreams were silenced mid-sentence. Others never got the chance to begin. Mothers ran barefoot into fire. Fathers dug with their hands. There are families right now who have forgotten how to breathe.

Read more

Uttara air crash exposes deadly gaps

And yet—somehow—in the thick of this unthinkable grief, people found the space to pose. To post. To perform. Welcome to my city, where catastrophe is content, a clout-chasing opportunity dressed in black.

The building was still smouldering. Parents were clawing at hospital gates, desperate for news. Burn victims were arriving faster than doctors could respond. And instead of silence, we got flashes. Instead of support, we got soundbites. The cameras came before the counsellors.

The fire hadn't even stopped licking the flesh off children when the swarm arrived. Not doctors. Not trauma specialists. But the three horsemen of public dysfunction: politicians, journalists, and spectators. Each with one goal—visibility.

Not all came with malice, but many came with ego. As if grief by proximity grants relevance. As if being seen grieving is more important than allowing others the space to do so. The result? Chaos. Ambulances delayed. Hallways jammed. And the children—those who survived—had to endure not just the ordeal, but the noise of a country addicted to its own reflection.

At the National Institute of Burn and Plastic Surgery, staff pleaded—begged—for crowds to move aside so patients with third-degree burns could be attended to. These weren't just injuries—they were open doors to infection. Burn victims are among the most vulnerable patients in medicine: their skin, the body's first defense, is gone. Their immune systems are compromised. They need sterile rooms, filtered air, antibiotics, and oxygen. What they got was breathless onlookers with dusty phones blocking the way for ventilators, touching stretchers, and flooding corridors. Onlookers who never thought that some child survivors could be infected by their very act of "witnessing" the survivors' pain.

We are no longer a grieving nation. We are a ghoulish, camera-happy circus addicted to the sound of our own concern. Everyone wants a piece of the pain. Everyone wants their frame in the frame. Even if it means kneeling beside corpses. Even if it means blocking an intensive care unit entrance to adjust your angle. There is something fundamentally broken in us if we cannot draw the line at a child's charred body. If we cannot sit still in the face of horror. If we cannot mourn without narrating our empathy. This wasn't just a tragedy. It was a mirror. And what stared back was not humanity—it was narcissism in high definition.

Let the dead rest. Let the living recover. And for once, let us ask: what have we become, if even in the presence of unimaginable sorrow, we can't tear our eyes away from our own reflection?

And if that's too hard, then at the very least—move. Get out of the way. Let the real heroes in.

One VVIP arrived with the poise of someone attending a ribbon-cutting. Another posed in front of the debris, eyebrows furrowed just enough for the camera—before blocking stretcher access for a better shot. "Important people are passing," his entourage declared, as nurses screamed for space. No one batted an eyelid. We've normalised stupidity to the point it now wears a press badge or rides in a convoy.

Journalists combed through the scene like it was a fruit market. Zooming in on half-melted schoolbags. Shoving microphones into the blood-streaked faces of children. One reporter asked a grieving mother how she felt—as if "devastated" needed confirmation on tape. When the woman couldn't speak, the reporter narrated: "She is too emotional to speak"—before shifting left for better lighting.

Read more

What led to the Milestone tragedy?

Then came the civilians. The onlookers. The republic of curiosity. Ladies bringing kids to "see the wreckage," uncles parking bikes across emergency entrances. Influencers "standing with Milestone" while pouting next to a crumbling wall of ash. There is no shame anymore—only captions.

Where were the police? Either shouting into megaphones no one listened to, or clearing space for the very important nobodies. Because apparently, nothing says "respect for the dead" like livestreaming over their ashes. We didn't just fail the victims—we trampled over families in our mad rush to be seen caring. When did grief become performance art? When did loss need an audience? We've turned human suffering into a genre. We binge-watch tragedy in 30-second clips and scroll past death like yesterday's meme. Our response to national trauma isn't reform—it's content creation.

The only thing louder than the sirens was the echo of "like, share, subscribe." So, here's a humble request: the next time a tragedy strikes, stay home. Donate blood. Send supplies. Pray, if that's your thing. But please—resist the urge to narrate someone else's final moments like it's a story you own. Nothing is too small; if possible, do this: fundraise for skin grafts, share verified donation links, demand accountability (why were children learning under a flight path?), advocate for real emergency reform. Listen. Sit with the silence. Let mourning belong to those who lost, not those who want to be seen losing something. You are not the protagonist of this pain. No one needs your analysis, your selfie, or your sorrow in cinematic colour grading; no need to further political agendas in instances like this. Sometimes the most human thing you can do is: nothing. And when smoke fills the sky again—and it will—rush in with oxygen, not opinions. Because this country cannot afford another disaster made worse by those who mistake visibility for value.

Barrister Noshin Nawal is an activist, feminist, and a columnist for The Daily Star. She can be reached at [email protected].

Views expressed in this article are the author's own.

Follow The Daily Star Opinion on Facebook for the latest opinions, commentaries and analyses by experts and professionals. To contribute your article or letter to The Daily Star Opinion, see our guidelines for submission.