The Monster Called ‘War’
I stare at the dilapidated structure on the brink of a total collapse just like those around it now reduced to an impenetrable rubble. The cool night breeze pats me in the hope of easing the emotional upheaval plaguing me for the past year or probably for decades before, my patience now laying in tatters.
I sigh painfully even as the structure woefully tilts in the acrid breeze. The shattered glass that once adorned the bank building, shining in the opaline incandescence threatens to splinter any moment now. Despite having witnessed these umpteen times along with the bloodbath, a deluge of crimson flowing in gallons all over me, I shudder.
When will this madness end?
The uncouth think tanks have unleashed cataclysmic bloodshed on the hapless civilians sparing no one, man, woman and child… And this very city that withstood the tests of time, the structures that revelled in the ivory sheen of the Argentine moonlight, that enjoyed rhapsodic blizzards now stands in ruins. Those who survived the mindless attacks have fled leaving me to my lonely barren self. I am nothing more than a fragment of history.
I hear a muffle penetrate the deathly silence around. It’s the sole tree with the last scrap of dark glimmering vestige, standing proud, unaffected by the mayhem engulfing it. I want to weep for all that’s lost… we have moved back centuries ago and I wonder how long will it take to rebuild everything.
There used to be a house right next to the lone tree; a huge structure gleaming inexorably because of the blue tinge of the flooring and tiled walls. I would be peeved by the regular party music interspersed occasionally with a whoop of excited revelry. I would wonder if the parental control was mundane enough for the young adults’ brazen defiance. But today I would trade in anything to get back the days before the capricious whim of time rewrought it all.
Now that home or whatever remains of it is shrouded by low-lying dusty fog resembling a scary apparition. I saw those parents vanish in a blink and the children were not accounted for…. Would I get to see them again? I feel like a raft cast adrift on a lonely sea of unfamiliarity.
My body has borne the brunt of human aggression since time eternity. The so-called super-powers only want to amass and plunder the weaker ones. The consequences are here to see.
The building further tilts… cracks deepening, the dark silhouette waving precariously, untethered.
I have heard the fight is all for me, something to do about the NATO and the QUAD, they say. Having witness the world wars, an apocalyptic shudder grips me. I feel like the mother whose children are fighting for her body parts. Kyiv or Kremlin, both are my children.
This war will have no winner.
Never has.
I am burning…
It’s a slow burn within.
I hear the rumble and I don’t have to see. The building has now collapsed.
Author note:
This is a piece based on the ongoing conflict between Russia and Ukraine.
References:
- https://jagdishkeshav.substack.com/p/of-things-that-matter?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android
- https://www.usip.org/current-situation-ukraine