By Nahrizul Adib Kadri
There are days when language folds in on itself. Yesterday was one of them.
No clever line can soften what happened in the early hours of yesterday. A bus, carrying students of Universiti Pendidikan Sultan Idris (UPSI), was making its way from Jerteh back to campus in Tanjung Malim. A route many had travelled before — quiet, long, lined by trees and darkness.
But this time, something went terribly wrong.
We now know the basic facts. We know the location, the time of the emergency call, the name of the highway. We know how many did not make it, and how many survived. But beyond the numbers and news alerts, there is something we cannot reach. Something sacred, and silent.
We do not know what it feels like to be the friend who called out to the person who had been sitting next to her the whole journey — and was met with silence. Or the mother who packed a bag she thought her child would open later in the morning. Or the father whose phone rang before sunrise, only to deliver news no one is ever prepared to receive. We do not know what it means to receive that final call. Or worse — to keep waiting for one that never comes.
And maybe we shouldn’t pretend we do. Because to understand grief that deep is to live through it — and no one should have to.
But even in our distance, we feel it. Not in full — never in full — but enough to make us pause. Enough to hollow out the chest, to tighten the throat, to spark that sudden, wordless stillness that only tragedy brings. It’s a sadness that arrives uninvited — a deep, aching kind. The kind that doesn’t cry out, but sits heavy in the chest, like a weight that refuses to lift.
We imagine the unthinkable, and though we’re only on the edge of it, that imagining alone is enough to leave us shaken. We think of the mothers. The fathers. The siblings who had just waved goodbye. The unanswered texts. The unopened luggage. The doors that will not open again.
And so, we gather. We speak. We pray. We write messages we know won’t undo anything. Messages that feel small, fragile even — but we send and share them anyway. Not because we believe our words can fix what’s broken. But because silence, at times like this, feels like surrender.
In moments like these, presence becomes a kind of language. A standing vigil. A collective breath held in honour of those who can no longer exhale. We gather not because we have answers, but because grief — while deeply personal — should never be borne in isolation.
Fifteen lives were lost. That’s not just a number. That’s fifteen unfinished conversations. Fifteen rooms that won’t be opened tonight. Fifteen names that were written on class lists, now circled in sorrow. Their friends will have to return to campus with one seat empty beside them, one voice missing from the group chat, one name they’ll struggle to say in past tense.
And yet, despite all this — despite knowing that our grief will always remain smaller than theirs — we still show up. We write. We bear witness. Because even a gesture, no matter how small, tells those who are mourning: you are not alone.
Let this be our offering — however quiet, however humble. A flicker of human warmth in a moment gone cold. Let our presence say what our words cannot: that we honour their loss, and we will not look away.
Tonight, may our hearts bend quietly toward theirs. Al-Fatihah.
Ir Dr Nahrizul Adib Kadri is a professor of biomedical engineering at the Faculty of Engineering, and the Principal of Ibnu Sina Residential College, Universiti Malaya. He may be reached at nahrizuladib@um.edu.my