India-Pakistan conflict: Clinging to the rhythms of a normalcy

The Star

18-05-2025

Local residents looking at the Indian side of Kashmir from a tourists point in Karen, in the Neelum Valley near on the Line of Control, the de facto border that divides the disputed region of Kashmir, some 93km from Muzaffarabad, the capital of Pakistan-controlled Kashmir on May 1. — AP
EIGHTY years ago this month, the Germans surrendered unconditionally to the Allied Forces.
On May 4, King Charles of England began a four-day commemoration of that event. It seemed like an ironic anniversary celebration from the perspective of South Asia where we were poised on the brink of a large-scale war between India and Pakistan.
The cynics among us could not help but consider the possibility of a third world war beginning in the same days of May when World War II ended.
The details of war were everywhere in conversations, text messages, Instagram reels, TV shows, and TikTok, among others.
Schools opened, schools closed, exams proceeded, exams cancelled, work schedules went awry, business trips could not be taken, concerns about the availability of food, et cetera – all of it amounted to creating confusion and dread.
One friend told me that she had stored up two months of groceries in her deep freezer.
The ordinary person in war situations has little control over what his or her government chooses to do. At the same time, the impact of those decisions are inevitably felt most by these same ordinary people.
It is the nature of the human mind to try and create certainty, and the inherent unpredictability of war is a challenge to this.
The current barrage of information, with doses of misinformation, presents a situation in which individuals try to mitigate feelings of helplessness.
Hoarding food is one way to do this – people feel something must be done to prepare for the worst. Then, because of their preparations, they imagine themselves as somewhat safe.
War is the ultimate disruption in human life. The continuing sense of crisis is traumatising in its ability to cast one into some parallel universe where the certainties of the old do not apply.
In the accounts of people who endured the travails of World War II, there are stories of attempts to create some semblance of normalcy even in the shadow of complete devastation.
Even after schools were closed, parents tried to set up lessons for their children at home.
When tea or coffee were not available, some burned rice and added it to hot water and drank it in the morning to keep up the ritual of having a warm drink to begin their day.
Clinging to the rhythms of a normalcy that is gone is essential for survival.
Survival, therefore, is not a matter of physical security alone. The trauma of war is not simply that of living or dying; it is – as the younger generations of South Asians would learn in the event of a full-scale conflict – a matter of enduring a million other smaller traumas.
Ever since the terror attack on Pahalgam on April 22, people in Pakistan – and I'm sure in India too – have had trouble focusing on work, on studies, on the other details of life that otherwise are central to our existence.
The spectre of conflict means everything else has less meaning and yet everything still has to be done. Work assignments have to be completed, exams to be taken, children fed, and chores completed.
The tension of looming doom takes a heavy toll on human psychology.
And when war ends, the living are left with the weight of having survived the debilitating burdens of many small traumas.
As the Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish once wrote, leaders will declare war and then leaders will shake hands.
Hostilities that begin will ultimately end.
But then, only the mother waiting for the dead son or the girl waiting for her father, or the wife waiting for the husband will be left with their loss.
For those that incur those losses, the war will never end; it will continue for the rest of their lives. — Dawn/Asia News Network
Rafia Zakaria is an attorney teaching constitutional law and political philosophy.