I was only six, but I remember the newspapers that we pasted on the windows to avoid detection by enemy aircraft during the India-Pakistan war of 1965.
I was older at the time of the 1971 war between India and Pakistan and was a hosteller in Delhi. We blackened the dormitory windows and took turns at night to sound the hostel alarm in case of an air raid siren.
Later, I visited an Army officer, who was a friend of my uncle. He had lost a leg in the 1965 war. I saw the grim reality behind the sad expressions on the faces of the officer and his wife – the price that many have to pay during wars cannot be counted in numbers.
Almost a decade and a half later, during my first posting in the Railways, I reached my maintenance shed one morning to find the staff agitatedly walking out of the premises. I was interrupted by my supervisor from trying to stop them. “Sir, please do not stop them, otherwise they will turn on you,” he said. The Prime Minister had been assassinated and riots followed. My immediate senior had to take shelter with his family in empty oil drums. They were the fortunate ones.
The past 100 years have been tumultuous globally. We have witnessed innumerable genocides and wars. Each act of violence has its repercussions for the people who live through the harrowing period. Yet, the next generations either develop or at least pretend to develop amnesia when perpetuating the same atrocities on others in later years, seemingly oblivious to the fact that their life too is transitory.
William Wordsworth imparted a life-changing lesson. He said: Life is divided into three terms — that which was, which is, and which will be. Let us learn from the past to profit by the present, and from the present, to live better in the future.
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