Trump feeds General Munir as wars feed Trump's hunger for Nobel prize

It's 11.30 pm. I am wide awake. Genuine Iranian handles, not handled by some Abdul in Karachi, are posting about "a big surprise the world will remember". Some new footage of ballistic missiles being intercepted over Tel Aviv has been dropped. Towards the end, a hypersonic missile escapes, it drops with immense speed, a ball of fire emerges from its drop location, and the sound of the blast reaches a second later. Giving some satisfaction or fear to the viewer depending on her/his allegiance.

I check the replies to see if this footage is from some other war, then I check the status of the biryani (for me) & some hummus-pita (for the better half) that I ordered from the nearby trusted place. Fifteen more minutes. The delivery is a bit delayed. I think by that time we will get to know if America is actually going to bomb Iranian nuclear factories.

I am monitoring all this from a city in Haryana, roughly 3,000 kms away. Netflix has taken a backseat. This is the new theatre. My food choices reveal, I don't really have a big favourite here. At some point in time, both sides helped my country. But never together. Recency bias helps my choices.

Actually, most people just support the guy whose win will give the maximum grief to that troll they hate. Social media has brought wars to your living room. Until you are out of range of a warring country’s longest-range missile, you can make jokes about it or happily order biryani. I remember when drones were hovering over Jammu, a friend, whose parents lived in Sanik Colony, tried calling her parents and couldn't make contact.

She was inconsolable. Ask the brave hearts in Tel Aviv when a hypersonic missile penetrated through their iron dome and crashed into a building close by. No amount of retaliatory bombing can erase that fear of a ferocious ballistic missile crashing into the nearby apartment where your parents live.

One upside of this round-the-clock vigilance is that you are pretty upto date with all the new defence tech.

"Ah, they are saturating the Israeli air defences with a swarm of cheap ballistic missiles, so that they can slip in a Hypersonic Fattah to create maximum damage".

I couldn't fathom making such a statement with confidence, barely six months ago. Thanks to a war that came to my doorstep, I was forced to learn. Evidently, every war is a sales exhibition for defence tech manufacturers. Battle-hardened countries learn to make drones, missiles and air domes so that they can export them to nations with a troubled neighbourhood or just an oil-rich nation that likes collecting fashionable war tech. Like a rich wealthy guy in Delhi, with a lavish farmhouse in Chhatarpur, buying an Ostrich.

Suddenly, there was news that Trump had invited Asim Munir to lunch. He called PM Modi too, but the invitation was, reportedly, declined. There is no pressure to have vegetarian stuff now. Trump can happily share dining-table space in return for some Pakistani airspace. The same story will repeat.

America breaks protocol, meets the army chief instead of the civilian government representative, some quid pro quo happens. Pakistan happily seeks rent for access to its forever troubled backyard. It has already extracted considerable rent across one of its borders, time to exploit the second one. India proceeded to buy more Sukhois and S-400s.

The chief opposition party, which is still reeling from the vote-share bump Operation Balakot gave the incumbents back in 2019, doesn't want the same benefits to accrue from Operation Sindoor. This time it's on a war-footing to dilute every winning slogan, neutralise every advantage, by showing up the PM as weak.

Such lunch invitations by Trump help its cause. But often at the cost of national consensus in matters of foreign policy. Pakistanis pick such stuff up and play in front of their audiences gleefully, in a way showing them the benefits of having the opposition leader in jail.

These are Trumpian times, the countries of the world are fighting among themselves to help him land the next Nobel Peace Prize. It's his last term, he has all the money, he just needs a legacy. Meanwhile, my Iranian origin biryani has arrived. The night is long.

(Abhishek Asthana is the founder of a creative agency – GingerMonkey. He tweets as @GabbbarSingh)

(Views expressed in this opinion piece are those of the author)