The Image that stayed

I cannot the image out of my head… a child with her hands spread out as she ran out on the street during the Vietnam War. Times had immortalized her.

Forget about the trauma that the girl went through, the civilization went through torture an equation of 40,000 dead young men, 300 tons of bone and flesh, 124,000 pounds of brain matter, 50.000 gallons of blood, 1,840,000 years of life that will never be lived, 100,000 children that will never be born… maybe we can afford the last, after all there are too many starving children in the world. Somehow this stayed with me.

Then came Norman Morrison who soaked himself in petrol and burned himself on the steps of the pentagon as a protest again the Vietnam War. Maybe he should taken greater courage and set fire to the president? Surely a person danger would disturb a body of men who slept sound on daily program of sanctioned mass murder.

Sometimes I wondered why the war in Vietnam fought was; of course political inputs are that after World War II French wanted to regain control of Vietnam, which was once colonized by them. But Vietnam obviously opposed this. And US needed France as an ally in Europe against the Soviet Union, so they supported the French. The soviet of course supported the Viet Minh, a pro- communist nationalistic group. And Viet Minh defeated the French in1954, the US also interfered enough to carve South Vietnam enough to keep to communists from gaining support.

From what the tales of post Vietnam say it was as the towns closed down leading to up funerals, old people still sat on the porches and talked, but there conversations were no longer sprinkled with laughter as the new little kids didn’t play outside anymore. As their moms were afraid that someone might snatch them out their yards and send off to war. Sometimes as I read the news I wonder if Uncle Sam’s land still hankers after that, so we have Iraq and god knows what next.

This is not the only memory that my mind retained, and I am truly thankful for the fact that I am not blessed with photogenic memory like Sheldon, Einstein, Tesla or even big sis Ahalya. For this incident in itself made me experience the trauma by just seeing. The impact has been horrible.

I wonder how many more lives are scarred by the picture that Times posted. Each time I think of fire and destruction the picture pops up. I am left traumatized, angry, but these days like last night I have begun to dream of peace.

This post is a part of Write over the Weekend, an initiative for Indian Bloggers by Blogadda.