The Warmonger Within

Meanwhile, in a café in Kolkata, you get to think about the Russia-Ukraine war each time you step in. Meanwhile, Meta has its unbeatable AI to track your penchant for the news, videos and reels related to a crisis that is termed by some media houses as the Third World War. You are a sensible man. You believe in creating awareness. Meta knows you all. So does Insta and thanks to all the saved cookies and temporary files loaded in your device, you are fortunate enough to create your exclusive opinion-centric awareness. You see what you believe. And opinion means, as the autocrats would rightly say, what your opinion is. You have a neighbour who prefers to read the journals, newspapers and discuss how war is depleting the human condition during the lunch hour, dinner time or even at the local teashop. Since you are financially better off, why spend time at bazaar or shanties? “Come buy, come buy” echoes the twenty-firsttwenty first century goblin merchants somewhere around Deshapriya Park where they would add a pinch of ‘conscious gustatory experience’ by sensitising you with anti-war quotes, slogans and your feeds will be fed more with the plethora of the awareness-garbage as some of you never know how your every moment, thoughts, even exchanges via messenger or WhatsApp are being tracked.

Capitalism is an efficient machine. It knows ‘competition is for losers.’ How about creating a tool that negates itself, hence making it popular? Negative publicity- rings a bell? Here you have an intelligent money-minting apparatus: people hate war (at least they say so), therefore the more we talk about the anti-war campaign the more customers we attract. Righto! There is none but one acceptable way to be famous with BARC (Broadcast Audience Research Council), India: use the nonsense of the mass to make sensible agenda. People love to feel that they are growing intellectually–so, let us discuss war, write papers, talk over social, television or print media about it. Sounds perfect–we create for you a sweet trap that makes you feel liberated, free and conscious being, we lead you to a sweet sin that you commit because it feels intellectually vibrant, socially cool, and devoid of the mundanity of daily chores. Take a sip of your cappuccino or take a bite of roasted pork tenderloin in lemon butter sauce and discuss thoughts. Does not it make a perfect Sunday morning?

Before the capital punishment is executed for Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, in a theatrical Bengali production by Belgharia Avimukh, called 22e August, one wife of the ‘condemned victims’ asks the television media, “Everything is sold, right? Intimate sorrow, loss, tear, resentment- everything?”

Of course, it does, as long as the subconscious warmongers live!