Wednesday, June 05, 2002

Nukes in a paradise!

God Almighty shall ask one of His many angels to sound the trumpet. Time the fourth dimension, will stand still. Moments later everything would be destroyed, each form to the finest of smithereens. The yonder sun will fell down to an arm's stretch. Waters shall bubble, concrete’s melt and airs flee. Winds of the hell will blow to announce in every cleft that the day of judgement has come. That would be an end of the world. Dooms day!

This is what the religious scriptures have to say about the ultimate fate of our globe, universe per se. Wait!
We have all this horror in the making. Fillip the mirror the other side around. Imagine for a heartbeat’s span.
India, the land of antiquity, tolerance and much more, decides that its patience is at the end of its tether, apparently because of continued terrorism on its soil. In the same vein it refuses to acknowledge that Kashmir, the cause of this entire ruckus, is a dispute, rebuffs it is a problem even. Albeit, contrary to Indian claims, some sixty thousand people have perished in the God’s paradise over the last one decade. Wherein football grounds are graveyards now, a couple of thousand little orphans greet you, tears welled up in their innocent eyes. An infringing stick grenade readies to cripple yet another teenager. All this is certainly not normal; it merits to be called a problem, at least.

Pakistan, the ineluctably naughty neighbor capitalizes on all this, all the while with their political, diplomatic and moral support. Actually it has been more, which is an open secret. President Musharraf, the eloquent smart thing perhaps fancies a little nap off the sheen blue waters of the Dal, in the cool zephyrs of emperor Jehangir’s ‘firdose’, but for the knights on the prowl. They don’t let him, ergo his capers!

Bloated with rage, India attacks Pakistan, one fine day. Pakistan holds back for a while and ardently defends its sovereignty. Given the conventional advantage India enjoys, it makes progressive strides. Jingoism swells. A furious Pakistan retaliates with a 30-kiloton nuclear bomb, one of the many in their insouciant stockpile! What then, Doomsday fast-forward!

The temperatures will touch to ten lakh degrees or equivalent to that in the Sun. A giant mushroom of death. Everything will get blown, our intransigence too, to the oblivion. There shall be confetti of nuclear radiation on the reddened sods, blackened souls and the charred remains. Then it would be a big commingle of gloom.
India would answer in the same coin. Pakistan would be strewn with arms, legs, blood a lot of their arrogance. A trillion decibels of destruction. Sock it to unless it is no more, Jinnah’s dream cut short.

God Almighty must already be feeling terribly complexed. Messieurs Musharraf and Vajpayee doing their dirty rehearsals. Stretching and strafing His wonderful creation. All this dehumanization for a small paradise, down here, that once subsisted. We, if you’ll excuse me the expression, India and Pakistan, haggle about it like the two monkeys for a cake of cheese in those nursery rhymes. We have mowed its backwoods, transgressed its virginity, poisoned its rills and yes…murdered both its innocence and innocents. Last shot dead a sane soul called Lone. A heaven that is now a haven for carbinieries and musketeers. Uniformed and masked. It isn’t a vast minuet now; it long ceased to be one.

One billion and hundred forty million of the mankind across the divide do not want to be blackmailed into a calamitous war. There are a myriad ways to sort out differences. No daisy cutters, only daises and daffodils here, please.

India and Pakistan, we, if you will again excuse me the expression, understand one language, share the same waters, breathe the same airs. One taste, one flavor, the same likes and dislikes, a similar passion. After all we have been one people, surely we don’t need to kill each other.

The suave General said yesternight that he wouldn’t nuke India. Indian premier Vajpayee followed suit, said war is not a priority. Let this tenor prevail! God, we can wait for the judgement day.

I invoke Cicero…
I prefer the most unfair peace to the most righteous war.


Sameer