In the grand theatre of global conflict, where generals play Risk with real lives and politicians clink glasses over bodies still warm, there is a moment of such profound absurdity that even a gonzo journalist must pause mid-gin and tonic to weep into his ice cubes. The final words of an Indian sailor, a man named something like Ram or Ravi or perhaps simply 'the cook' to those who launched the missile, have surfaced. He called his wife, his love, his anchor in a world gone mad, and said something unspeakably mundane and beautiful.
'I will bring you silk from Colombo,' or 'Don't forget to feed the parrot,' or 'The fish curry was better in Goa.' We will never know, because that manuscript of the human heart was incinerated by a US strike that turned a ship into a sculpture of twisted metal and floating debris. The Pentagon called it a 'precision strike.
' Precision, indeed. The kind of precision that turns a man's last breath into a news cycle. The kind of precision that makes his wife's phone vibrate with a message, not from him, but from a journalist asking for comment.
This is the human cost of war, dear reader. It is not numbers on a graph. It is a parrot, unfed.
It is a silk scarf that will now be worn by the sea. And here I sit, in my crumbling flat in London, banging on a typewriter that smells of regret, while the world's leaders shuffle papers and talk of 'escalation' as if it were a spicy new flavour of crisp. God save us from the sober men who plan such things.
They are the real pirates.
