On the night of May 7, I received a frantic message from a friend: “War has started.” War? Could a war begin so suddenly? As an Indian who wept over the brutal Pahalgam terror attack, I had, in a moment of helpless fury, hoped for a strong retaliation — something that would put the attackers in place.

But a full-scale war? That seemed unlikely. Who, after all, has the economic muscle or the moral recklessness to push a brittle region into the jaws of crisis? Still, the message came from someone I trusted. I turned to Google, half-expecting it to be social media alarmism. But it was true, though not in the truest sense. India had carried out precision airstrikes on strategic terror hubs in Pakistan, a now-familiar signature response to provocation.

But in the theatre of such events, where state action is celebrated and hashtags fly like flags, one question haunts the quiet corners of conscience: who bears the true cost? Not the decision-makers in glass towers or pundits on television screens, but the innocent caught between sovereign pride and political vengeance. It is the schoolchild woken by air........

© The Pioneer