Last evening my daughter received a copy of The Wings of Fire by APJ as prize for creative writing at school. I've read the book before and was not impressed. So I don't own a copy because I never wanted to own one. I tried reading it again and found it boring and overrated. I simply can't stand these Chicken Soups, Management mantras or Inspirational crap. Also, I think the man himself is overrated, revered and venerated as he may. I realise the dangers of such sweeping statements as I have made. However, two things strike me. In the aftermath of a news item I read about Marshall Islands. a) What really are his achievements? What is really patriotism? Do we misconstrue reactionary and emotionally-spiked nationalism for a false sense of Patriotism? If he is the nuclear man of India, then by the same token why should we hate the nuclear men of other nations? Are we implicitly arm twisted by our netas to buy nuclear warfare and thus be made unwitting perpetrators of genocide, in the same way the world paints every German of Nazism? Another important inference is the implicit acceptance of the superiority of science over arts and humanities in Indian society. b) The gullibility of captive hero-worshipping audience and reading public.
We have the tendency of ostriches when it comes to bringing the faults of a hero under the microscope and shoot the messenger instead of verifying the message. We look at morals conveniently from the point of people than issues. From mythologies to modern narratives, the discourses are dominated by figures than facts... our collective consciousness is warped in a sense of points of views of those who speak than what is spoken. Every acceptance of a figure as figure-head is a statement of acceptance that a truth has been buried. Any amount of justification that nuclear use is in the interests of national need cannot negate the stockpile alarm which is in the non-interest of global danger.
Civilian needs have non-nuclear alternatives we defer to look at. Thus, the title of the book is not some fancy and proverbial chicken soup for souls needing inspiration, but an innuendo to the nuclear arms race via rocket science. Are we a peace-loving nation? Makes me think. I'm going to be thinking this out a long time!
Before, we wind this up, let me give a bit of info about Marshall Islands that I linked at above. Marshall Islands, officially referred to as the Republic of Marshall Islands (RMI) is a group of small islands (more a grouping of nearby and sporadic atolls) located halfway point between Hawaii islands and Australia, if we travelled East from Equator.With an estimated population of approx. 70,000 inhabitants in 2014, this group of islands is also home to 800 species of fish and 160 corals. It is not to difficult to see that this like a lot of islands that include more popular ones like Maldives is sinking slowly due to rising water levels, thanks largely to global warming. I do not think I would go to the extent of assuming my readers are daft enough that I need to expound on how global warming is caused, one of which is definitely nuclear arms race. So, there is the context. There is the content. There is the man. There is the hypothesis, inference and conclusion.
Meanwhile, check this latest on Marshall Islands:
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