“Israel had no $#&*in right to bomb Lebanon on the pretext of counter attacking terrorists…” came the strong response from one of my close friends who seemed deeply affected by the recent turn of events. The next 20 minutes he took me through the history of Israeli occupation of Lebanon, the creation of Hezbollah and the dubious stance of the US and UN. His contention was
- Israel has evil intentions of occupying Lebanon
- How can Israel kill civilians in retaliation to its soldiers getting kidnapped?
- UN is a separate body and cant get dictated by the US
And he had a lot more; let me spare you of the rigmarole.
As I pondered over what he said…Its like this huge board game that we are playing; GOD created this for man, put in all his efforts to make it complicated and interesting, enabled the luxury of having infinite number of participants, no age restrictions, no restrictions on gender, color, religion and many more such interesting parameters. But, the problem is, he forgot to give us that small booklet that contains the rules of the game. And, this probably caused every member, every country, every government, every organization, and every supposed terrorist outfit to come out with their version of the rules. Not surprisingly each one has a different version completely contradicting the other versions. Its in this “contradiction” arises arguments, hatreds, battles, wars and eventually loss of lives.
Follow the principles of Geetha advises my dad on a regular basis. “The Geetha”, authored by our very own “lord” Krishna who pulled every trick in his sleeve to win the battle against the Kauravas. Things weren’t greatly different in the other avatar either. The righteous “Rama” stood behind a tree to attack an unfortunate Vali from behind; an act very much against the “rules” of a war. The mighty nation US that promptly chided India (the step mother that she is) for testing out nuclear weapons seemed quite proud of her achievement in wiping out the Japanese towns of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I am given to believe, that was the “only” way to end the war. It’s like different versions of rules that we come up with, and each updating the earlier written ones. Possibly like Windows versions. Each version has very little semblance to the earlier one; while the whole world uses them, it still crashes even under normal circumstances. In my IT city Bangalore, people have taken this philosophy to road traffic as well. I remember when my good old friend from the US asked me which side of the road we drive in, the left or the right, with a sheepish grin I whispered…”the center”.
Hmmm maybe there ain’t any rules. It’s meant to be the way it is. This game where we are mere moving objects, with varied emotions, highs and lows, and here we are competing to “reach” what we believe is a “finish” line. No wonder, Al pacino (in Devil’s advocate) calls HIM a prankster; HE has rolled the die and is now watching us play. A game it is, with no rules. I still want to ask HIM, why don’t we have a choice…maybe I don’t want to play!
You are you
I almost skipped a beat. The motor cyclist raced from the right most side of the road to the left in a jiffy with a thin air cushion between his rear and my car bumper. I mouthed every bit of vocabulary my college life has taught me. As I relaxed, I looked into the rear view mirror and much to my amazement, this guy drove like a maniac only to park his vehicle and empty his bladder along the road side wall.