The theme for this week’s book selection is war seen through the eyes of children.
I don’t have any memories of war. But my grandmother does. Kaveriamma was a seven-year-old orphan living with her aunt in Madras during the Japanese air raids.
The year was 1945. The city was under curfew. The government had passed orders that all lights were to be switched off after 5 pm.
One such day, at seven in the evening, a bee entered Kaveriamma’s house. It started with a seemingly innocuous buzz. Soon, it had all ten in the house dancing about mutely in the dark, trying to escape its sting. Unwittingly, Kaveriamma turned on the lights. For her, a bee sting was more frightful than death. Thankfully, no bombs were dropped. They escaped with a minor fine.
Years later, while reading “The Diary of A Young Girl” by Anne Frank, I imagined Kaveriamma hiding under the sofa, wondering why the lights had to be out at night and why people were threatening to drop bombs on her house.
Kaveriamma did not fight in the war. She didn’t lose anyone to it, either but the memories of those years continue to have an impact on her. Just last week, she woke up in the middle of the night, trembling. It took me a while to quieten her and put her back to sleep.
It was while rocking my grandma back to sleep that I recalled what my grandpa had once told me, “Everyone cries over the men who have died and the women, who are widowed. They don’t realise that they are the ones to blame for the war. The only innocents are the children. But nobody remembers the children of war.”
Famous war photographs
Have you ever looked at your childhood photographs and wondered what you were thinking at the exact moment the photo was clicked? What were you doing just before the photograph? What did you do after? What is the story behind each of your favourite pictures?
Here are two photographs that may tell stories vastly different from yours. Each of them more startling than the next, they remind us why war is not good.
Nasir Bagh refugee camp, Pakistan, 1984
Famously dubbed “the Afghan Mona Lisa”, a photograph of a 12-year-old Afghan girl by Steve McCurry became a symbol of the Afghan conflict after it was featured in the June 1985 issue of National Geographic magazine. Her identity remained unknown for over 17 years until a search team identified her as Sharbat Gula. Though the photograph had become very famous, she never saw it until 2002.
South Vietnam, 1972
A girl flees from a scene of napalm dropping. The photographer recalls how the little girl pulled off her burning clothes, screaming, “Nong qua!” (Too hot!), and started running for her life. The photograph became very famous for capturing the horrors of the Vietnam War.
Others famous photographs you can look up:
South Vietnam, 1965
In this picture, a mother and her children wade across a river to escape U.S. bombing. The photographer braved going down to the riverside, which was under attack, to take the picture. This photo was awarded “world press photo of the year” in 1965.
Iraq, 2003
An Iraqi father with a hood over his head is seen comforting his son at a holding centre for prisoners of war.
Content courtesy: Book Lovers Programme for Schools ( >blps.in )
