EIGHTY years ago this week, the Germans surrendered unconditionally to the Allied Forces. This week, King Charles of England began a four-day commemoration of that event. It seems like an ironic anniversary celebration, particularly from the perspective of South Asia where we are poised at the brink of a large-scale war. The cynics among us cannot help but consider the possibility of a third world war beginning on the same days of May when World War II ended.

The details of war, some verified and confirmed and others less so, are everywhere in conversations, text messages, Instagram reels, TV shows, TikTok, etc. Schools open, schools closed, exams proceeding, exams cancelled, work schedules gone awry, business trips that cannot be taken, concerns about the availability of food, etc all of it amounts to creating confusion and dread. One friend told me that she had stored up two months of groceries in her deep freezer, and is adding to it every day.

This seemed a bit extreme to me.

However, people respond to uncertainty in unusual ways. 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 the decisions of their governments and militaries 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 to feel that one can be prepared for terrible circumstances whose details are yet not known. People feel something must be done and to prepare for the worst. Then because of one`s 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 the 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 was not available, some burnt rice and added it to hot waterand drank it in the morning-to keep up the ritual of having a warm drink to begin their day. Maintaining this routine of familiarity, clinging to the rhythms of a normalcy that is gone is essentialfor 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 have had trouble focusing on work, focusing on studies, focusing 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 tollon human psychology. When war ends, even the living are left with the weight of having survived the debilitating burdens of many small traumas.

In the current situation, there are claims and counter-claims and attacks and retaliations.

Drones are raining down. Rhetoric is at fever pitch; each side touts its strength and killing abilities. To be against killing and against war in this moment is likely to be deemed unpatriotic. So very few would raise their voice against the utter senselessness of ego, bombs and the ability to kill large numbers.

Everyone seems to forget about the human devastation if hostilities were to be translated into the deployment of nuclear weapons how complete an end that would be.

It is possible, as the Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish once wrote, leaders will declare war and then leaders will shake hands. Hostilities that began will ultimately end. 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. • The wnter is an attorney teaching constitutional law and political philosophy rafia.zakaria@gmail.com