‘This diary was later published. I had expected America to reel under the shock of what they had done to us. Twelve years from that time, when my country's blood has already been sucked by sanctions, another assault is happening. What can we do that is different now from what we did then? Once again twenty-two million people are struggling to survive, heads down. Before this we had a dictatorship. That has been uprooted. Now we have an alien aggressor and occupation in its place. What can they do for us? What can artists do when the world is taken over by monsters? All I can do is look within myself to gauge how much humanity is left in me; to ask myself what I can still do of what I did before, when I knew myself to be human. Do I have in me some traces at least of the creative power I once had? Let me gather what is left and continue to do my work.’

These are fundamental questions of creativity in times of maiming and death. We have never faced anything like them, have we? We’ve never had to examine our work in that ultimate context. What are we when we say we are artists?

But I’m rambling.

Haridas sends the mail and sits staring at the computer till the screen flashes ‘message sent’. His thoughts are about Bush. This man can kill millions who don’t belong to his country and some of his own too in a futile war, but is supposed to be ‘pro-life’. What does his ‘pro-life’ amount to? A foetus in a woman's womb is an act of God. To take its life is to abrogate God's work. Then what about the killing of millions in Iraq who have grown from foetuses into running, chattering children? A fancy phrase takes care of that. They are not killed. They are ‘collateral damage’. They also lie on ‘the axis of evil’. Bush isn’t abrogating God's work in deciding who is evil. He is doing God's work upon earth.

Bush and his men must have been Brahmins in their past incarnations. The twice-born with the natural right to kill the once-born. They killed his father. His mother has barely survived. She is dry and wrinkled, every wrinkle a mark of aggression on her body by those who have the right to assault.

The ‘sent’ message has long since disappeared from the computer screen. Haridas senses a small movement behind him. Girji has set his mid-morning glass of milk beside him. She has come like a shadow, and gone like a shadow. She too is like his mother—survivor of life, that most dangerous thing.

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