The bat is mightier

The war is on. Feel free to put away those protest placards, t-shirts, banners. Save yourself the trouble of pushing signature campaigns. Nobody is listening. Whether it''s cricket or Iraq, it''s the same thing. We''re out to kill each other, only the weapons vary.
Colin Powell waved a vial of something horrible (anthrax?). Former cop Shane Bond tried ''badla''.Nearer home, in Mumbai, a group of people held a press conference and unveiled a lethal stainless steel weapon called ''Panjshool''.
The purpose behind all three acts remained identical: to demoralise opponents and unleash psychological terror. Bush Jr is hell bent on his vendetta strategy ("I''m doing it for daddy"), but at the end, it''s innocents who are paying the price. And what a price.
Coming back from Pune a few days ago, my companion and I were caught in a traffic jam in what is delicately described as a ''sensitive'' locality of Mumbai. Suddenly, my companion realised why the traffic was crawling.
"Oh, my God," she exclaimed, "let''s lock the doors..." Her spontaneous reaction was to hundreds of Muslim youth dressed in black, observing Muharram in a traditional fashion. The driver nodded his head sagely and said, "Now you realise why I wanted to take the other, safer route?" I
looked out of the window, and didn''t see any potential danger. Yes, there were thousands of young men out there, walking in an orderly fashion. There were a lot of police escorts too. Watching them from vantage points were the women of the community. And yet, the tension was palpable.
Once we''d left the mourners behind, the driver relaxed. "Anything could''ve happened," he muttered. He was right. Anything can happen these days, including a nuclear war. So what is the world supposed to do? Keep life on hold?
One of my journalist friends is ''embedded'' in Baghdad. Before leaving, she had to make a will bequeathing her worldly possessions to her husband of two years, in case of her death overseas. I wondered what might have gone through her head?
I know how keen she was to go (it''s an assignment worth killing for, or getting killed for, after all). Even so, I couldn''t get the image out of my mind.
Especially in that car, with some fool on an FM station cracking idiotic jokes about Saddam, Blair and Bush, between idiotic comments on Sourav, Sachin and Yuvraj. If one had blanked out the names, the DJ could''ve been babbling about any war — the words were that strong and vicious.
There was blood everywhere the next morning. Twelve people had died in a local train blast. Outside Mumbai''s grandest hotel, several political workers were injured by Mayawati''s supporters for daring to raise slogans against their warrior queen. Our ''boys'', meanwhile, were settling scores with the New Zealanders at Centurion.
Imagine our priorities. I actually heard a cricket fanatic say, "God, what if Bush attacks Iraq before the World Cup finals? Can''t someone bring pressure on the guy to hold it for another week?"
Maybe Saddam''s counting on that too. Imagine the irony: Cricket fans succeed where Chirac and Schroeder fail. The Bush fire gets doused. ''Embedded'' journos come home. Blair decides to make babies, not war. Everyone''s happy. Sourav takes off his shirt the last time. Our cup of joy runs over. Keep faith. It may just happen.