Hiroshima: Reflections on War

War. Devastation. Desolation. Isolation.

Futile by all means, yet the source of the

world’s greatest treasure,

it’s history

so vast, its magnanimity

illusionary.

Its secrets and lies luring even the

weakest of intellect.

War.

A notion rife throughout the centuries,

brooding, bruising, controlling,

contorting, confusing.

What do they tell the soldiers, willing to give

their lives for countries that are nothing

but glorified pieces of land?

Land that will no longer sustain the humanity

that exploits it endlessly.

Do they force upon them the truth — the reality?

Do they tell them that their lives would mean

nothing to megalomaniacs who sell their souls

for a taste of power?

Do they tell them that they are nothing but pawns

on a checkerboard, bartered in the name of “the greater good”?

Nothing but the hope of an illustrious career, and

a glorious life span to console the guinea pigs

raised to one day be a saviour.

And what of the common beings?

Homes destroyed, families astray, children abandoned, and the dead decayed.

Centuries old fields are crumbled and carnage is beheld.

Where once a child’s evening was spent in gregarious abandon,

there lies a fractured family’s fragments.

The fortunate who return are not as fortunate as believed,

dust covers their scabbed underlying wounds that don’t show and

never heal,

zest and chants conceal their pale faces.

Forcing the juvenile to hide their shivers,

they kiss goodbye in the hopes of a white picket fence,

bid adieu to a childhood barely spent.

The ones who flee are labelled traitors, but were they not robbed

of a right to be free?

They had a choice you say but did they truly?

What is the cost of their freedom?

Shots slice mercilessly through flesh that was once a father,

a son, a hope, a home, a family.

Whatever will free them from dreams that imprison them, haunt

them, torment them endlessly?

Forever seeing the faces they could’ve saved,

courage, they liquidate, but it’s never enough.

Why fight wars that will never wear? Aren’t they a bluff?

Pain and grief have bled through the generations,

ancestral fallacy is their true heirloom,

old prejudice seeking space in the tiniest crevices of their hearts,

forming differences and distances just because of a mark.

Innocents slaughtered in a war between powers,

their insatiable hunger destroying all that is there

to live for.

Don’t they know that ultimately nothing is left?

What remains to rule if all is lost?

Unrest, ruin, and an endless desire.

To what end?

To what end?

To the army who spends each day as if it’s their last

and yet have hearts and humour we can never surpass.

To the innocents who never knew they’d

lose everything they ever had, who spend

sleepless nights and endless days sifting

through rubble that confines their tribe.

To the cruel reality that has created

war, and all the futile wreckage it has caused.

Ask again — at what cost?

Writen By Pavaki Nanda (Sat Paul Mittal School, Ludhiana). __ EdTerra Edventures conducts various other programs for the youth. If you go to school and are under 17 years of age, ask your school to contact us to arrange a visit to your school for an introduction to “Japan” and other journeys under EdTerra’s India Discovery Program. For queries call +91-11-48885800 or visit EdTerra Browse Journeys page to know more about the programs for school students. Visit our FB page by clicking HERE. Also, check our podcast page by clicking HERE.