When sons leave the world before fathers

It is universally accepted that the weight of a dead son proves heavier to a father than the heaviest mountain on the earth. In epics like the Ramayana, the Mahabharata and the Iliad there are stories where fathers go through the deepest agony man has ever known. Andho muni (sage) sent his son Rishi Kumar to fetch water from the river Saraju where the young man becomes the target of king Dasharath then on a hunting expedition. The king unwittingly throws an arrow at the sound Rishi's picher makes at the time of getting filled in. Before dying Rishi asks the king to carry his body to his father. The king does so and the sage curses the king that he would know the agony of a bereaved father's soul. In the Ramayana, Dasharath had to banish his dearest son.
In the Mahabharata, Dhritarashtra, also blind, had to suffer the ultimate bereavement of 100 sons. Arjun, the undefeated greatest warrior in the Mahabharata, lost his son Abhimunya when he broke through the 'chakrabuha' only to be killed by seven chieftains of the opposite Karurava camp in an unequal and unethical war. On the opponent side, Asvathama, son of the great warrior teacher Dronacharya was also killed in almost a repeat mischievous manner, thanks to Krishna's shrewd advice.
In Homer's Iliad too, king Priam had to endure the killing of his 50 sons in the Trojan War. In all such stories, fathers have lamented the greatest of all bereavement. But their mothers are out of the scene except of course in the Mahabharat. In this epic, both Gandhari, Dhritarashtra's wife, and Subhadra, Abhimunya's mother are brought into focus to show how their hearts bleed when the bad news reaches them. Even Abhimunya's wife Uttara goes nearly insane at the inconsolable bereavement of her husband.
Then there is the tale of Sohrab and Rustam in the 10th century Persian epic Shahnama where the son gets killed at the hands of his father Rustam. But in all such stories, they got killed in the battle field. However in today's Bangladesh, it is a completely different war theatre where sons or daughters are done to death on the lap or before the eyes of fathers. The other day foreign exchange traders, a father and his son, were attacked by a group of assailants at Khilgaon in the city. In the attack, the bullet-hit son died soon after but the father was admitted to a hospital with severe injuries. Years ago, stray bullets from criminal gangs took away the life of young girl riding a rickshaw with his father on the Rampura Road.
The other most tragic incident occurred last year when so-called political activists set a running bus on fire in the city's Azampur area. The son in his 30's helped his father get out of the burning bus but only to be consumed by the inferno that it turned into soon. Imagine the anguish of the old man when he asked why it was he who survived the fire instead of his dear son!
In all such deaths or killings, the natural order is disrupted. The old should go first but this script is at times rearranged and so there are premature deaths and it becomes all the more difficult to accept when muggers or other criminals take away lives only for money or to serve other interests. The declared wars have long gone and those are replaced today by undeclared and often coward ones marked by blood-letting. Today not fathers alone but mothers as well pass restless time until their sons and daughters return home safely.