Why War Is Never The Answer

Thumbnail credits: foreignpolicy.com

"Come and see the blood in the streets.
Come and see
The blood in the streets.
Come and see the blood
In the streets! "

The news about the martyred jawans had hit me like a bolt from the blue, back in February. I was shocked into silence by this heart breaking act of hatred on the day of love. Death has this uncanny ability to render the most heartless of men to tears and the fact that someone could be so ruthless as to do what has been done to these soldiers, baffles me. I have never lost a loved one to war. That is why, I would never know what it must feel like, when a coffin wrapped in tricolour reaches your doorstep. I would never be able to fathom the enormity of the losses of the family and friends of the deceased jawans. Neither would the people who are baying for blood on social media.

Image source: deccanherald.com

An eye for an eye, you say? You want revenge? Blood atonement? You want Pakistan to be razed to the ground? You want all Muslims to be guillotined?

Well, let me tell you about my friend from Lahore whose mother is a zardosi seamstress. She writes ghazals and mails them to me and asks me if I liked them. If the lyrics and imagery were good enough. If I could smell the lillies she described in the fifth line. If I want her to write another one.

Let me tell you about Kaif, a little boy from Peshawar whom I had met at Hyderabad during my most recent eye surgery. Let me tell you how he sang to himself after the lights went out in our shared hospital room. Let me tell you how he told me to keep on singing and practising music since he thought I had a good voice. Let me tell you how his mother made paratha for me the day I was discharged from hospital. I had promised to write to him once I get back to Kolkata. I hadn't kept my promise.

Let me tell you about the blogger from Islamabad whom I met on a social networking site. We share a common love for TS Eliot and rock music. She hates tea and I can't stand it, either. She writes and performs poetry and I do, too. She loves Jean-Luc Godard movies, just like me.

If there is a war, they will be the first people affected. We will be the first casualties. They would lose parents, homes, friends. We would lose parents, homes, friends. They would have to stop going to colleges and schools lest they be blown to bits in the streets. We would have to stop going to colleges and schools lest we be blown to bits in the streets. They would suffer huge losses. We would suffer huge losses. And the leaders of both countries would sit in their bullet proof houses, guarded by armed security personnels, rubbing their greedy hands in anticipation of their spoils from the war.

You still want a war? There you have it. The whole picture. The prediction. The mothers crying over their dead children, the wives smashing their wedding bangles, the babies who would have to grow up as orphans. The story would be similar in Pakistan and India. Forty nine soldiers have been killed, forty nine thousand more would follow. War, you see, is never the answer.

"My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori."