#SoCS Aug. 7, 2021

Your Friday prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday is “wee.” Use the word “wee” or find a word that contains it and use it in your post. Have fun!

This week something strange happened. I have no explanation for it. My cousin posted a photo of a sunflower with a goldfinch sitting on the top in our family WhatsApp group. I like sunflowers. When I looked at the photo, I remembered the sunflower fields we saw on our way to my father’s elder sister’s home. I had taken a photo of the beautiful flowers. Years ago, our daughter was learning oil painting and I asked her to paint the sunflower field. I posted all this in our WhatsApp group. My cousin was astonished that I had not noticed the beautiful bird. I looked at the photo and wondered how I had missed seeing the yellow and black coloured bird. Maybe the memories which the flower evoked did not allow me to register anything else.

I remembered this incident as I was reading an article in the newspaper about the bombing of Hiroshima on August 6^th 1945. It is said none of the pilots had any real idea about the bomb’s destructive potential. They just knew they were on a historic mission, to end the war. Major Claude Eatherly piloted the weather reconnaissance airplane over Hiroshima which signalled the ‘go ahead’ to release the bomb. Prior to the bombing maybe he looked at the city as just an enemy target. He did not see anything else.  Later, the target became hundreds of thousands of people like him.  He was tormented by guilt for the role he had played in the tragedy. Later, he was declared insane by the American courts and confined to the mental hospital.

August and Second World War reminded me of an incident which occurred on the 9^th of that month in Hospet in 1942. My father told me about this. My grandfather was the headmaster of the Municipal High School. The school had a very good library. That night my grandfather woke up suddenly to see a bright light from the direction of the school. He rushed to the school to see the building burning. People living nearby came running. The school well was at the other end of ground. Hundreds of people had gathered, they formed a human chain. Water was passed  from person to person to put out the fire but the library could not be saved. Later it came to light that the act of arson was part of the Quit India Movement whose goal was to kick the British rulers out of India. My father said he had never seen such a look of despair in his father’s eyes. He never forgot the picture of his school ground covered with half-burnt paper. My father said, “We do not know what the persons who burnt the books to be read by children gained from their action.  But, we students lost thousands of books which were the main source of our knowledge.’

Roberto Bolano has rightly said, ‘“People see what they want to see and what people want to see never has anything to do with the truth.”

Photo sent by my cousin.

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