BACK TO THE FUTURE

A Survivor’s account of the Indo-Pak nuclear holocaust It has been one year today since I came to live in Japan. I am lucky to be alive, and lucky that the Japanese agreed to take so many of us refugees. At first I didn’t want to leave. It wasn’t easy to give up my career as a researcher with the automatic fusion project. But then, after the day of the fireballs, when I lost nearly every one I cared for, there was really no reason to stay. I’m told the problem began 50 years ago, in the 1990’s when powerful people in Delhi decided India should stockpile nuclear weapons. that was the beginning of the Great arms Race, as Pakistan too, began to turn its engineers towards fabricating those perfect uranium spheres they needed to set off the chain reaction. After that, sane rational, educated people in South Asia set their minds to making the most fantastical weapons of war. We made them, so cleverly and ingeniously, but we foolishly thought they would never be used. Because Indians and Pakistanis were actually coming closer, in every sort of way. Ordinary people in India and Pakistan had friends across the border via the “Hindu - Urdu insta-t rans internet” . And our computers and our software were far and away the best in the world. Together we were doing so well that we boasted of the return of the Golden Age when the Buddha and his followers set technology free. Ah, we were clever, but not wise. Our entire nuclear umbrella was locked to our mighty computers. It was our computers that would set IN motion the entire process of mounting an attack. in our foolishness, we had decided that all these “gigabytes of capacity” could think faster and better than humans. We may never know what exactly started the war. There have always been people, in India and Pakistan , who liked the idea of war. If we ourselves had been properly sane, we should have locked them up, for they were dangerous, and irresponsible. There is also a rumour that children, as a joke, crashed into the computer system that controlled the nuclear missiles, and since it was a race, both India and Pakistan launched their bombs at about the same time. And then .... Delhi was like the heart of the Sun itself, ten million degrees at burst point, and blast winds and fires spreading the damage. I saw people melt before my eyes, and Earth turn black. Yesterday I took a trip to Hiroshima, and in the museum there I looked at the pictures, and felt I’d seen it all before? Our holocaust, or Hiroshima’s? Hiroshima’s pain was a hundred years ago! when the bomb fell on Hiroshima, all the clocks stopped, and time stood still. And it is still standing still, Because past , present and future have merged. We have become more clever, but we have learned....nothing. Next year I will go back, and try to pick up the pieces of my life. And try to move forward. This time. Shaven Mohan Class 9 C, Sardar Patel Vidyalaya, New Delhi   Home