Letters to the Editor

Dance of death must come to an end
The world has been facing the anger of terrorists, wicked rulers and anti-social elements since time immemorial. The poor, the refugees and the downtrodden have been exploited and the powerful have always been having their way. The state, politicians and business communities have not met the demands of modern society. We have witnessed gory incidents of massacre, rape and organized violence in cities worldwide. The decay of institutions has taken its ugly toll.

The other reason is the growing communal hatred among communities, which should be reduced by the efforts of the state and the people.

The politician is the third factor in this game; either he is insensitive enough to ignore the realities or he is busy grinding his own sword. There are reports of murder, violence and arson from places as far removed as Sri Lanka (where the Tamil Tigers have been fighting for a separate state since 1983) and Chechnya (the small state, that wants independence from Soviet Russia). But who cares for the victims of Sri Lanka and Chechnya?

This dance of death must come to an end. Those responsible for massacres and arson must be brought to book and special courts have to be set up for their trial. Why abolish capital punishment when the innocent masses are being killed? That fear would keep many a terrorist at bay.

Pleasure at the risk of others
Despite the authorities having recently erected posts indicating the maximum permissible speed limits on Fifth Lane, Colombo 3, vans, cars and motor cycles, some with modified exhausts, continue to ply this narrow by-road at dangerously high speeds.

Such speeding is more evident between 7 p.m. and the early hours of the morning and is worst on week-ends when there is the added hazard of a regular group using this road as a race track. This callous driving continues to be a threat to life and property apart from being a nerve chilling source of annoyance in every sense.

This is an open appeal to those speeding on this road to please drive sensibly without exceeding specified speed limits for their own safety as well as the safety of others. They may perhaps have not realized the anxiety they are causing to gain a little advantage or pleasure taking tremendous risks.
Let's hope that saner counsel will prevail especially at a time when respect for the law and basic courtesy are fast deteriorating.

August 6 marked the 60th anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing
The day that a ‘rain of ruin’ came down
July 16, was the 60th anniversary of the testing of the first atom bomb, deep in the heart of the New Mexico desert. The blast was blinding, flashing a light that was seen 180 miles away. The two men most immediately linked to the bomb were also witnesses to this horrifying spectacle.

Kenneth Bainbride, the director of the lab where the bomb was developed said later: "No one who saw it could forget it, a foul and awesome display." And J. Robert Oppenheimer, who led the team of scientists was reminded of a line from Bhagavad Gita. “I am become death, the shatterer of worlds."

The Second World War was getting nastier by the day and the US Army needed to streamline and coordinate the nuclear weapons research. So in 1942, the Manhattan Project was set up in New York City to oversee this. The headquarters was later shifted to a secret site near Los Alamos in New Mexico. It also had 37 installations elsewhere with 12 university laboratories and a workforce close to 100,000.

This highly sensitive undertaking fell on two diverse men of great calibre. The brilliant Nobel Prize winning scientist J. Robert Oppenheimer, an intellectual and a liberal and the tough no-nonsense Brigadier General Leslie Grives, weighing nearly 300 pounds, a committed rightist. The General had just completed construction of the Pentagon, the massive military complex which, I believe, is the largest office building in the world. It was also a target of the 9/11 terrorists.

Though the work at Los Alamos culminated less than three years later, its success was the result of the painstaking research of many Nobel Laureates over many decades. Said Oppenheimer: "It involved the collaboration of scores of scientists from many different lands, though from first to last, the deeply creative and subtle and critical spirit of Niels Bohr guided, restrained, deepened, and finally transmuted the enterprise." The Danish physicist Bohr's theory of the structure of atoms in 1913 radically changed what was perceived earlier.
Within three weeks of the test in the New Mexico desert on August 6, 1945 at 8.15 a.m. one solitary bomb was dropped over Hiroshima, Japan. In an instant some 80,000 died and most of the city itself ceased to exist.

The then American President Harry S. Truman in a broadcast to the nation said, "Sixteen hours ago an American airplane dropped one bomb on Hiroshima. If they do not now accept our terms, they may expect a rain of ruin from the sky the likes of which has never been seen on this earth."

Four days later, a second bomb killed another 40,000 in Nagasaki. On August 14, Japan surrendered. On August 15, Emperor Hirohito addressed his nation over radio explaining that the enemy: "has begun to employ a new and most cruel bomb, the power of which to do damage is indeed incalculable."

A boxful of toys..
A cardboard box
filled with toys
whose days are done.
A cement roller
a broken jeep
a plane that once soared
on imaginary power.
A ball, a game
once played with joy
now lie abandoned
in a cardboard box
to be given away
to someone else
who needs to play.

Your childhood treasures
cannot be preserved
in a changing world
only memories remain
of your childhood happiness
packed into a box
to be given away.

But in their place
stand school bags and books
erasers, pens and calculators
that push you into a future
made uncertain by political chaos
but still you study
on shiny desk tops
keeping late hours
Yes, happiness is no more
it's packed
into a cardboard box
to be given away.

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