War

By Anupama Bhargava

I

"Wars are not won by sacrificing lives,

Enemy must be killed."

The meaning generated by the statement above usually involves

Increasing the number of orphans on the other side of the barbed wire.

II

Their mere ruminations had made rows and rows catch the gust of the enemy.

They are proud of their armies because they count the rows and the columns and not lives.

But these politicians of the "civilized" nations still make them appear to be in debate because they are able to give descriptions mainly from the viewpoint of the exhibitors and spectators of the photographs by the journalists in an exhibition hall which looks like the first world fat carving,

All this while pretending in front of T.V. cameras to be shedding your grief in their linen handkerchief.

But in the battle field

Lives lie underneath the smoke,

Winter sleeps in the breaths, and

Silence resides on the tongue,

And only bullets debate the law, and

If it imagines life

It dowses for breathes, and then

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posted 17 June 2003