I’ve often said, in this column too, that language matters. Whether or not we put a full stop in a rushed ‘yes’ or ‘no’ message, the tone we use, the words we choose. It can make or break a relationship, it can wound, and it can heal. It’s a window, one of the very few ones, into the inner workings of our minds. It reflects a world. Wars happen when language fails us and if anyone should understand the power or value of words, it should be a writer. That’s why, when I see headings like the one I read this afternoon on social media courtesy of our national broadcaster no less, my mind freezes.

On Wednesday morning, a Nepali man tragically died after being involved in a horrific traffic accident while he was delivering food. The only thing that would have been appropriate for anyone reporting on it to do was reflect the gravitas that the loss of life should invoke. Instead, TVM decided to impart this heartbreaking news with a very jaunty “Meta jkollha tkun għalik” roughly translated as “When something is written in the stars”.

I think it was Joseph Stalin who once said, one death is a tragedy; a million deaths a statistic, however, if you happen to be a foreign deliveryman in Malta, clearly, not even your one death is going to be dramatic enough to be reported in a fittingly tragic tone.

You see, far from being something to be ignored, this line unknowingly unmasked the frame of mind of its writer and left us in little doubt that, whatever personal feelings he or she may have about the death of a young man so far away from home, compassion was not one of them. Whether they were in a mad rush to get the news out before everyone else or not, lines like that should never, ever have even been considered, let alone published for all the world to see.

Lines like that should never, ever have even been considered, let alone published- Anna Marie Galea

And then the other nasty, niggling questions come up. Why did they think that was suitable? Would such an obviously callous statement have been made if the delivery man were Maltese? Knowing our people and the way they mourn the dead, I highly doubt it. And then I think again of the countless dinghies filling with water and drowning children that we purposely leave at sea and remember that life is only precious when it’s what we consider to be white and when it has our passport. Malta full up.

I scanned and scanned social media for posts that might discuss just this, but I was greeted with the usual John the Baptists wandering and wondering around this amoral, desolate desert bleating to the locusts and a huge amount of people complaining that they couldn’t get home. Can you take a moment to imagine that? Ajay Shrestha wasn’t even cold yet, his family probably hadn’t even been told that their son would never again be coming through their front door, and all that Charlie was thinking about was that he wouldn’t have ample time to get home and fill his hot water bottle. I don’t think we have ever been further away from a charming Mary Rose Mallia song than we are now.

Shrestha mattered; how we speak about him matters. How we choose to speak about those we don’t know and who can’t give us anything matters. What is more eternal, more intimate than language? It’s all that remains of us when we are gone.