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Crazy Mangala

Mangala by the seaside is the place I hail from—Mangaluru as it was known in the vernacular, but Mangalore the real place name, everyone in my generation within the then Dakshina Kannada if not the whole of Canara identified themselves with.

I for one am still comfortable with the Mangala-orean identity as I am quite sure would be the hundreds of the proud and illustrious from here whom I could or not name. And for all these lovely people, being crazy and potty comes so easily, so naturally; as perhaps is inevitable in any tiny community that breeds within its own limited numbers. Being batty was so easy—especially for me. . . .

I recall the first time I gave my war cry. That was during the Korean War when North Korea, backed by China and Russia, sent troops into the pro-Western South Korea—an invasion considered the first military action of the Cold War. Which forced the United Nations go to the aid of the southerners with the USA as the principal force and the rest of the civilized world tagging along—plunging wholeheartedly into what was then considered as a war against forces of international communism itself.

And I was there, all of six years old, with no clue whatsoever to the concept of ‘cold war’ or of communism, leading my own contingent of troops with best friend Norman as my second-in-command and the rest of my classmates for my army. It didn’t matter that I was diminutive in stature, the smallest among my classmates. But then, with a pretty swollen chest and head held high, I had an imagination so vivid and larger than everyone else’s—at least I thought so—that it didn’t matter.

My jeeps could fly, with wings like that of the famed Indian Garuda1, the vehicle of the gods—that took off into the air to transport us instantly to General McArthur’s aid, when the UN troops and the US Marines landed at Incheon Harbour.

Isn’t that crazy! What for in anyone’s wildest dreams was I bringing Korea (of my fantasy land) on to my first page when Mangala is deep down south in peninsular India? Each day at story time before dinner, Father would update us with the latest from the radio, the only revered gadget and prized possession in the Pirreir household, the envy of our neighbours and of the entire neighbourhood.

This was the source that triggered my imagination, and fed my fantasies.

Mulling over pictures of marching soldiers, the thundering Pershing Tanks and bullet-spitting Sabre jets from Father Ligor’s descriptions constantly cast over my mind’s screen, I mused and I mused, be it at home or at school.

But never for a moment did I share with any, all my fantasies—despite the occasional mock fights with the others I got dragged into, with make-believe swords and sticks. In those days our war weapons and paraphernalia were limited, in comparison to what my children and grandchildren enjoyed with in later years. So my war cries were noiseless, more in my mind’s fantasy world, as I let it dream and wander to the battlefields beyond Chinese lines breaking out from the Chosin Reservoir, even as the fighter aircraft gave air cover to the Marines led by First Lieutenant Baldomero Lopez as they landed at Incheon.

And all through the three years the war lasted, and finally ended in 1953 without result or a winner with nothing more than the statistics for the world to learn lessons from, my silent war cries never ceased. Of an estimated 5 million lives of soldiers and civilians lost during this war, the Korean peninsula remains divided even today. Compared to the numbers each country contributed to the death toll, India lost just one, but that was more than many others in the list of those who didn’t lose any.

But who cared! The United Nations could do no wrong, and America took on the role of policing the world; when unlike today it enjoyed a reputation then of being the conscience keeper of the world. It carried the rest of the world with it, till George Bush’s misadventure many years later when the world dubbed it an aggressor in its oil and dollar war against Iraq. And Trump, his successor many times removed, has been accused by his own senators as capable of triggering World War III with the very same North Korea as the main adversary which his predecessors could not defeat in the 1950s.

—Mickey