War. Conflict. Invasion. Pain. Suffering.

"Forward, the Light Brigade!"
Was there a man dismay’d?
Not tho’ the soldier knew
Some one had blunder’d:
Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do and die:
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
-Lord Tennyson,  The Charge of the Light Brigade

War. Conflict. Invasion. Pain. Suffering. Death.

That’s what all of us have been hearing for the past few days, right? We’ve been seeing heart breaking visuals from Ukraine. We’ve heard world leaders condemn the actions of Russia. We are witnessing the greatest invasion in Europe since the Second World War. There are questions- Why couldn’t this war be avoided? Can this lead to another world war? Can our planet even sustain another world war, if it comes to that?

We don’t know. No one has the answers. No one knows what will happen tomorrow, no one knows what the future holds for the world.

They say, “Everything is fair in love and war". We say, war is unfair. It’s unfair to the people of Ukraine. To the innocent children, the men and the women. Why do they have to witness their motherland being destroyed? Why do they have to live in fear, and witness blood and gore?

It's unfair to the people of Russia. The people who are against war, who feel “powerless, anguish”. It’s unfair to the thousands who are conducting strikes across Russia, in a rare show of dissent, risking their own safety.

It’s unfair to the world. There’s politics, there's breach of trust, there are a lot of things involved. Irrespective of everything, war is not the solution.

Let us remember, whenever we are told
 To hate our brothers, it is ourselves
 That we shall dispossess, betray, condemn.
 Remember, we who take arms against each other
 It is the human earth that we defile.
 Our hells of fire and dust outrage the innocence
 Of air that is everywhere our own,
 Remember, no men are foreign, and no countries strange.
-James Kirkup, No Men are Foreign

As I write this, 198 people, including civilians, have died and hundreds have been injured in Ukraine. More than 100,000 people have been displaced. You know what that means?

It means that 198 families will never be the same again. Able bodied men and women are leaving their families and picking up arms to defend their motherland. Can we even imagine what their families would be going through, knowing that they might never see their loved ones again?

In pic: A young girl, with candy in one hand and ammunition in the other.

The war will end
 The leaders will shake hands
 The old woman will keep waiting for her martyred son
 The girl will wait for her beloved husband
 And those children will wait for their hero father
I don’t know who sold our homeland
 But I saw who paid the price
-Mahamoud Darwish

Maybe there’s not much we can do. But there are some things that we can, and must, do.

We can pick up our pens and write. We can raise our voices and be heard. We can pray for humanity. We can hope. We can show empathy and love. We can be united.

Sending love and prayers to the people of Ukraine.

O love, they die in yon rich sky,
 They faint on hill or field or river:
 Our echoes roll from soul to soul,
 And grow for ever and for ever.
 Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying,
 And answer, echoes, answer, dying, dying, dying.
 -Lord Tennyson; Blow, Bugle, Blow

References: Al Jazeera

A brief summary of the conflict...