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Imagine there’s no countries
It isn’t hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace…

-          John Lennon’s “Imagine”

8:15- that is the time our car pool starts to office – 23 Km drive from Noida to Bhikaji cama place in New Delhi. And around that time  major chunk of employees move out of house for their workplace.  And incidentally it was precisely at this moment that the first atomic bomb- nicknamed “Little Boy” a uranium bomb of 16 kiloton capacity was exploded over the Japanese city of Hiroshima 64 years ago. The first of the two incidents when a nuclear weapon was targeted at humans. The next incident was just three days later in another Japanese city of Nagasaki – for a change this time the plutonium bomb was nicknamed “Fat Man”, but the effects were more or less the  same. Living creatures  within a radius of 2 Kms vapourised into thick air- thick with the debris of nuclear waste and high level of radiation. And that number was around 70000. Quarter of a million people perished with in a year of the bombings. And even now generations are still suffering the effects of that bombings.

Just imagine the same thing happening to us-  coming out of house  to catch a bus or drive a car to office- but before that could happen, you vapourise!  Well if you vaporize, it is still  better,  for those who survive will really have a terrible time for rest of their life- however short or long that may be. And probably that would have happened to those millions of Hiroshimans and Nagasakians who survived  6^th and 9^th August 1945.

Greater irony is that Rawandan leaders, Serb leaders and all those communists and Saddam Hussain were labeled war criminals for the atrocities-  but never Harry. S. Truman. Japan apologized umpteen times for the second world war crimes, but never US or the so called victorious allies. Because they can never be wrong, they are the only morally correct souls existing in this world. Whatever they do is the right thing- they are the ones who make the rules and implement it-Their own Justice-  they are the Gods. That is why it is said that  History is written by the Victors.

Even now we try to convince ourselves that  nuclear weapons are an essential evil- a deterrant – and the main reason for not erupting  another world war. But we fail to understand is the fact there were very near misses.

The weapons the nuclear nations have today  will make Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs toys. The biggies have thousands of them which can finish this planet many times over. And they try to impose the Non- proliferation treaty . It is something similar to a chain smoking doctor proscribing patient from having a puff. Today at least 10 countries are known to have a stockpile of nuclear weapons and more and trying to join the race.  It is better to call these weapons as Assured Mutual destruction (AMD) rather than weapons of mass destruction (WMD). No nation can  survive a nuclear warfare.

Here we are all gathered in what seems to be the centre of the storm
Neighbours once friendly now stand each side of the line that has been drawn
They’ve been fighting here for years, but now theres killing on the streets
While small coffins are lined up sadly, now united in defeat.

-          Phil Collins’s “Both sides of the story”.

Yes we will be united in defeat. And just think of those renegade scientists taking the nuclear technology to the terrorists.

We say we have conscience- and only we have conscience -  even though many of our actions raises serious question mark on this claim. If we truly have conscience, then the best thing we can do is to eliminate these weapons from the face of earth- not an easy choice- but a definitely a sensible one – for the humanity, for all the living beings on this only known habitable space in the universe. Can we ever achieve it?

You may say that I’m a dreamer
But I’m not the only one
I hope someday you’ll join us
And the world will live as one.

-          John Lennon’s “Imagine”

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