Saakhi is a Sunday column from Mrinal Pande, in which she writes about what she sees and also participates in. That has been her burden to bear ever since she embarked on a life as a journalist, writer, editor, author, and chairperson of Prasar Bharti. Her journey of being a witness-participant continues.

One may try hard to be the normal kind of working woman, happily settled down in a sedentary job, available for the family 24×7 to sort out household affairs, but some of us fail to achieve that complete calm. Perhaps the stars in our horoscope ascertain a certain irresistible urge to pursue distant dangerous shores and write about wars and uprisings. Occasionally, without a premonition of trouble, one such writer may land in areas headed for major trouble escalating into wars.

This is what led to my presence, purely by chance, in Jerusalem during a happy harvest festival planned with old friends.

The first five days were heavenly, but suddenly on a Sabbath morning, a heavy and sudden bombardment started and one learnt of kidnappings of over two hundred Israelis by Hamas.

Illustration: Pariplab Chakraborty

There is no such thing as a war crime, one learnt in the last one month.

War is a crime in itself.

War enters and suddenly, the long years of hard work and the prosperity it begat, get rubbed off by an unseen hand.

“Tell us about how you felt when you woke up to the air raid sirens and hid in safe zones. What was it like to be in the eye of the storm?” friends ask.

Telling stories about a war is hard. Even more hard if the clash has taken place between two historically implacable enemies, two cultural streams.

You know from the start it is doomed to spread with dreadful swiftness and infect a larger and larger area as old historical faultlines from recorded ancient history also begin to heave. This is one of the most politically sensitive seismic zones in the world where East meets West. Where most of the major conflicts between the two cultures have raged since........

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