No Flying Objects

 

Tranquil Arabian Gulf and sky from a vastly different time.
Amwaj, Bahrain, 2019.

The warplanes didn’t fly today, no drones,

no sirens nor alerts every now and then,

and there were no frantic calls on the phones

so I came out to the park to walk alone

if some peace could be plucked from a war season.

 

It was emptier, the grass had withered and wore

a fine mesh of soot and ashes, motes of death

blown in by the winds from a stricken shore –

trophy targets had been bombed the day before,

there was no spring anywhere, not a breath.

 

Some old trees had been damaged by the fallout

I too am changed – lopped and bent by strange degrees

too complicated right now to figure out,

there’s no peace though the sky’s clear and I doubt

for those who witness war there’s ever a peace.

 

Those trees are severe wounds that might perhaps mend

and the grass might claw back again, and birdsong

might fill the park at dawn and dusk in the end

as if all this ruin had never happened,

but that will take lifetimes. And roots that are strong.

The war is on my mind still, it's too close to be otherwise. I sit with the intent of focussing on something else, write something else but somehow all my thoughts loop back to it. The first line here floated up on my feed and became the prompt for the above. 

Meanwhile, some friends have got back to their respective homelands to relative safety, thankfully. But there are others talking about the hardships of being in a war zone, the difficulties of living life in uncertainties. The crash bang thud thumps of the missiles or interceptors and falling debris. The deserted streets and souqs and malls, the huge financial losses being incurred daily by ordinary people unable to ply their regular livelihoods. Schools and universities going into online education mode. Can't imagine the panic and stress the war must be causing exam year students and their families, their exams start early May. How does a 16 year old concentrate amidst missile strikes? My feed has images of smoke rising from buildings, road closures, screenshots of SM posts on tips for conflict zone survival, dos and don'ts for civilians- all super scary and agonising. 

Meanwhile, the effects of war have reached us too in India, prices are up, morale is down. There's a LPG cylinder (cooking gas) crisis - we managed to eke out ours somehow till the refill arrived. Was looking at induction cookers as a back up, but there's a total stockout, not one available for love or money. I'm getting the heebie-jeebies because Hormuz isn't just the import route for LPG alone, it carries fertilisers, helium and many other crucial industrial inputs. If this continues it's going to affect farm production to MRI imaging in hospitals. Shudder. 

Our travel arrangements are still on, so glad that we didn't book our usual route through the ME, which is really the default setting for us, having lived there for so long. I am going to be away from couch and computer till the first week of April. Some of my A-Z posts I've managed to schedule, the rest will have to be pantzed  after I'm back. Fingers firmly crossed the war will be over by then and we all will survive/surmount our individual challenges, alphabetical and otherwise.