Sit up and take notice

It's been a long long while since I went to the library.

I enjoyed going down the rows of books, tilting my head to an angle to skim through all the book titles.

It was a pleasant surprise to see posters of award-winning writers stuck on the sides of the shelves which their books could be found. I'm a sucker for the 'in' books (bestsellers or award winning books).

I was really excited when I saw the Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini. I have heard the rave reviews of these two books.

I just finished reading the novels.

I wish I had not read them though.

Set against the backdrop of Afghanistan, the two novels opened my eyes to this part of the world where discrimination, violence and war are part of the people's lives. My heart went out to the women and children suffering there. It was my first and second time reading a book made me tear.

My job involves reading the papers, but I would normally make a conscious effort to avoid reading depressing news about wars, social unrest in other parts of the world.

No wonder people say ignorance is bliss. I know I sound like an apathetic, selfish frog which prefers to live happily in my cozy well, insulated from the outside world.

But depressing news are like flies, hovering around you, with a constant irritating buzz, till you take notice of them.

After reading the novels, they made me do a double-take. Should I continue to shut out all these news and be indifferent? Or should I sit up and take notice, knowing that the happenings around the world may someday affect us in ripple effect?

I chose the latter.

I have been reading on the recent Xinjiang incident and was taken aback by the huge population stats there; 21 million people and only about half of them are Han Chinese, the rest are Turkic people aka Uyghur people. (I alwis thought the whole of China's population is Han Chinese)