Tomorrow doesn’t have a face
Shaadaab S. Bakht
Shaadaab S. Bakht, who worked for famous Indian dailies The Telegraph, The Pioneer, The Sentinel and wrote political commentaries for Tehelka.com, is Gulf Today’s Executive Editor.
- 31 Oct 2024
I belong to the hoi polloi, therefore, I have a hoi polloi wish.
And that is peace so that every day everybody doesn’t talk of inflation and everybody doesn’t talk of the cost of living crisis and the ordinary people don’t dread going to simple supermarkets for simple purchases.
But wars don’t end to allow peace because warring groups run out of soldiers or tanks or bombs or bullets or hatred. They end because of other reasons.
Everybody doesn’t talk of the cost of living crisis
When a politician, leading a powerful country and with a legitimate and an easy access to funds, intervenes the war ends. And his intervention is active and doesn’t merely exploit the elements of sophistry during deliberations, at times turned into a self-serving exercise. It is another thing that such exercises are often blindly swallowed by large and unsuspecting groups, which is very disturbing, but has no repellent.
The other reason why wars end is a painful one. It ends when one of the fighting groups loses a lot and the victor poses like a hunter does with the carcass of a tiger. Wars also come to an end when the fighting groups discover through unbearable human suffering that no matter how huge a battlefield triumph is it is essentially Pyrrhic.
As smoke billows from burning homes, as smoke billows from burning properties and as body bags grow in numbers the fighters are taken over by a sense of unadmitted guilt.
The feeling that all wars are evil in character begins to sting. It is the feeling that felled Ashoka after the war in Kalinga.
Well, all the reasons for wars to end are at play and full-fledgedly so and across the world, yet guns turn louder as sunrise leads to sunset, as arable swathes turn arid, as potable water bodies turn poisonous, as modern means of transport turn ancient, as clothes turn shrouds and those praying for peace are left wiping their tears and hoping for a better tomorrow. I am scared. Tomorrow doesn’t have a face.
