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Flowers of war
It’s that time of the year again. The gulmohur(Delonix regia) blooms, and our sidewalk transforms into a crimson battlefield with the fallen flowers of war. Elsewhere in the world, real wars continue. Mercifully, we have left behind the days of close combat that drenched the battlefield with the blood of soldiers. Warfare is now fought…
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The sidewalk
I was reading the Mahabharata—unabridged, whole, explicit in every gory detail. The vivid images of the bloody battlefield were still fresh in my mind as I turned the corner. And stood aghast. There they were, by the hundreds and thousands, thickly carpeting the sidewalk. Unclaimed, mangled bodies lying dismembered, trodden, and trampled. The sidewalk of…