The fact is, India and Pakistan are developing nuclear weapons and missile-delivery systems even as we speak. The lull in diplomatic acrimony between the two countries is cold comfort: there are simply too many variables in play for a situation not to arise, eventually, wherein one side will make a pre-emptive nuclear strike on the other. The other will then respond, and true Armageddon will be upon us – a Kalratri that will change the world as we know it.
But for the moment, anesthetised by our own inability to fight the relentless push towards nuclear weaponisation – marked most gruesomely by our failure to get the public at large rallied against the development of these weapons – we wipe all thoughts of the bomb from our minds. We need ways to pinch ourselves in the brain. One such way is by physically meeting the Hibakusha, the survivors of the American atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
1945. The sixth of August, just after eight in the morning. It was at this moment that the first of two nuclear bombings in history occurred, in the sky above Hiroshima. The Japanese would surrender before long, and the war would soon end, but the US military high command nonetheless wanted to test out its atomic toy, and justify the high cost of the Manhattan Project. And so, Little Boy was dropped on Hiroshima.
Sitting at the solemn and oddly regimented memorial ceremony at the Hiroshima Peace Park, the eye goes past the memorial cenotaph and peace flame to a point in the cloudy sky about 600 metres above the city – where, on that morning back in August 1945, Little Boy exploded.