We were learning that the nucleus is the master plan of the cell.
Little did we know that a different sort of treacherous master plan was to be executed.

We'd come, most from the other classes, some from churches.
At first, when they told us there was a bomb, we were almost nonchalant.
A decade of peace had raised a generation ignorant to the meaning of death at home.
As if we somehow thought that a bomb, meant that things exploded, and maybe people got scratched a little, but surely no one is truly harmed?

We knew none of the pain, horror and terror of what it meant, to be bombed.
After all, all we've heard were faraway stories of once upon a time.

But then the voices grew louder.
Casualties came rolling in.
Shock.
Our people had been killed?
The information almost didn't seem to be settling in.
Almost as if the people in churches in Batticaloa aren't possibly real live human beings?
Here? Now?

Class was dismissed asking us to call in parents who hadn't arrived to pick up their children yet.
A teary eyed classmate turned to me saying "A life lost is gone", as if trying to comprehend.
Some were talking about how bombs were illegal and that there must've been foreigners involved.

Reaching home, though, the news told us a whole new chapter.
Batticaloa wasn't alone.
5 others had been victimized.
A nation-wide attack.

The government swiftly flew into action.
Messaging apps and social media banned.
Curfew from 6.
A mixture of grief and terror strewn across the country.

We were unaffected till now.
Yet terror existed.
Nations across the world seem to be stranded in strife.
Sri Lanka seemed to have just been added to the list, and we hope and pray it doesn't stay that way.