War
Week 19
Hard to write or think much when your country is caught in the middle of a war with a terrorism-sponsoring, rogue state that doesn’t seem to care for any rules, and you spend your days juggling between checking in on your family members and catching up on briefings from the Ministry of External Affairs and other news sources. It has been a stressful week, and that’s putting it quite mildly. One day, soon enough, I would like to write about it more calmly and with greater clarity, but that is not the case these days. At the moment, I’m just trying to get on with things because that’s life, I suppose, but it has been incredibly hard to really focus on anything useful this week.
Struggling with the emotions of not being there for your loved ones in times of need is a feeling all too familiar to many immigrants who choose to settle abroad. Having to do so during a literal war going on against your country is a particularly jarring experience. I have learned, for example, that war primarily takes place at night. The days have a tense but calm feeling that transforms dramatically at nightfall, painted with dogfights, shelling, and drone attacks. This means that, living 3.5 hours behind in Sweden, I have had near real-time updates to attacks being carried out on India late at night, while my family sleeps, unaware. What does one even do in a such a situation?
There are people who call for peace, a bit tone-deaf, given the brutality of the Pahalgam terror attack. There are people who call for literal annihilation of the other side—an ignorant, if not braindead, take. There are people who merely wish to virtue-signal their wokeness, making no real effort to consider or provide actual input. There are people who have opinions on Kashmir who haven’t got the slightest clue about the ground realities of Kashmir. There are people who have no real answers (perhaps the most honest of the lot). There is no one answer. These are difficult times and people see them differently depending on their own experiences. One thing is clear: there is no room for naivety, both about the fact that India has suffered decades of state-sponsored terrorism from its neighbor, the evidence of which is even admitted to in the public domain, and that the Pahalgam attack became a tipping point for many Indians.
Whether things truly change or not is hard to say; history seems to suggest otherwise with our neighbours. I can only hope that there is no more senseless loss of life.
Some distractions before and during the ongoing war:
🥘 Food
📚 Reading
💿 Listening
- Heartbeats - The Knife
- Reminded of the bittersweet sentiment in this qawwali (and its story, in the caption)- Padharo Mhaare Des - Farid Ayaz & Abu Mohammed