The enemy of mankind
Since time most eternal.
The bastion of man’s follies
The worst of his instincts
It is war. One of many.
But sooner rather than later
It will draw to an end,
And the battle-weary will realize
That it achieved nothing
But death and destruction
Defeat and despair.
It crushed the victor and the vanquished
The warrior and the commoner.
Its gruesome horizon littered with
Elderly abandoned parents,
Injured, orphaned children,
Victimised women and men.
Entire populations displaced,
Bustling cities under siege
Indigenous communities silenced,
Wiped off the face of the earth
As if they never existed.
Oh, some did shed a tear?
But for their own martyrs,
Their ailing, injured, broken
Their feeble, struggling ones.
The compassion reserved for ‘your’ side.
The cascade dedicated for ‘your’ people
But it was you who
Defeated them and lost.
Your ego and theirs.
Ours.
Which engendered hate and greed
Which created the other
Which created the battle
With no end, no soul
No respite, no dawn.
No meaning, no purpose.
A struggle with nothing to return from
Nothing to win, and everything to lose.
In this fight over mine and yours
We lost sight of the now
Of the whys and the hows,
Of what was ours and theirs
All of it and none of it.
Maybe some of it?
Maybe none of it.
Of reconciliation and remembrance
Of knowledge, pure and pristine.
That road would have been rigorous
But a worthy, honourable one
Not unjust, not unkind.
Not blood-soaked, not tear-stained.
It would have been ours to embrace
Ours to build together,
Ours to flourish on, ours to win on,
Like war is ours to lose.
Richa Tilokani holds a Master’s degree in Business Administration (MBA) from SP Jain Institute of Marketing & Research, Mumbai and is an author and poet who started out as a marketing and advertising professional.
