Dear Reader, 

Long is the history of humanity, and long is the history of warfare, violence, and us being jerks to each other overall. I was out for a simple walk, and yet even I couldn’t be exempt from this dark whirlpool of our history. 

I come from a land called India. Our cities are thousands of years old, and we possess a general disinclination for breaking things down. Consequently, there is never enough space for roads, let alone sidewalks. It makes more sense for foot space to be fought over here, but I am sure it’s really a global phenomenon. No matter where you went and what you did, echoes of this war would never leave you, and would keep reappearing in ever different guises. 

It has existed since long before civil engineers and dirt trails came across each other, and its hairy hands have harrowed or hallowed every querulous heart at some point. Yes, I come to tell you of the Sidewalk War. The perennial, universal Great Sidewalk War. 

I first found myself facing it in the manner of a baby giant, when I was out for a short walk back to the home. This baby giant was a foot taller than me, and it possessed more muscles than a low-end gym could ever dream of, or an old-city sidewalk imagine holding without a regime-change. It was speaking to someone on a phone, and didn’t even grunt when I splattered myself on its knee like a gut-sick fly. I didn’t have any milk or chocolate on me to lure it away for a bit, and I really needed to be back home in half an hour. Whose baby was it? Why had it been left alone, and how had it come to rest on the sidewalk where it blocked traffic like a finger stops a flood? 

“None of your damned business,” said a swooping shadow, taking the form of a crow once it perched on a giant shoulder. 

“Do you know how much stupidity I have had to witness just so I could meet you?” vexed the sidewalk crow. 

“I am sorry,” I said. 

“And for what? All of that, only for me to watch you ram into a baby when you had nothing better to do?” 

“What have I done?” I wept. 

“You, who are supposed to end a war, are here, beating up babies instead!” 

“War? Where?” 

“Lord curse me,” the crow spat. “Curse all my grey feathers black! You’d think it would be enough to wake up inside a chicken coop, boxed in with a couple of nattering hens and a dozen eggs, then get thirsty and drop rocks in a bottle only to get your beak stuck for hours, but no! You must also be cursed with this dunce of a hero, who is supposed to end a war, but ‘What war?’ he asks!” 

“The Great Sidewalk War, of course!” it said when I stared back like a cow. “The war you abominable creatures started, bringing hell upon the Sidewalk King and his subjects!” 

“When? How?” 

“How else? Look at this poor war orphan,” the crow pointed a wing at the giant progeny, “When you built this sidewalk, you displaced his maverick parents and sent them to a matchbox apartment on the other end of the city. If the father went in, the mother couldn’t. If the mother went in, the father couldn’t. They were forced to take jobs that let them work while the other slept, and disaster would strike if nature called at the same time. Eventually, the father became like the mother, and the mother became like the father, and one day, they both agreed that the baby was the parent and they were the babies, and this was how it had always been. That is how the giant baby was orphaned, making it loaf listlessly on the roads, playing with a phone it picked up somewhere.” 

“I want to do something for it,” I said. “Who knows how long it has been here, having an imaginary conversation with its friend? I want to be its friend. Real friend.” 

“Too bad. I need you to put an end to this senseless war. Do something meaningful first, then come back and indulge in your sidewalk man’s burden as much as you want, acting as if you want to solve the world’s problems after creating them in the first place.” 

“But I have to go home. Besides, I am not sure I am the best person for this kind of job.” 

“What’s that I hear? Doubt, humility, obligation? More like feckless feather-squirming. Oh, wait, you don’t even have feathers,” the crow said, after creating a great whirlwind only to send it at my face. “Chop chop. Move the legs, not the beak.” 

In front of me stood the broad chest of a giant, and by its sides windmilled world-ending arms. I could have whispered a meek “Excuse me,” but looking at its eyes, I could only dive between the legs and pray for a crawling escape. Salvation was granted, but a graveyard stood beyond the baby — one that couldn’t be seen, but had to be there, since the stink of a lounging corpse smothered my nose only to drift merrily away. What could make a graveyard sad enough to hold its tea-parties right by the road? 

“Fool, that’s not a graveyard,” the crow pointed at a vanishing half-shirt. “That is the pain of the forest children — when you took their home away, cut their trees down, and relocated their family away, they no longer even had the cover to cry, and all that water vapoured away to rain down your misty, cool gardens. That’s why the forest children can never bathe, not because they were too late for class and just slapped some clothes on.”  

“What can we do?” I asked the crow. 

“Save it. I can see the disgust on your face. Even when it is the outcome of your own sordid actions, you want to blame it on the forest children not bathing. Well, the sidewalk was their home before the barcode in the deodorant was even required.”  

And so it was. How many babies had I rammed through many a sidewalk in the past when they would not keep away? Babies that hadn’t learned to talk, let alone negotiate territory. How many forest children had I given a wide berth to, avoiding the creations of my own sins? And the day wasn’t going to get any easier, either, as step by step we went, guided by the crow’s august wisdom and the song of my surging destiny.  

“You have a great deed to do, my friend,” the sidewalk crow said. “Ready your heart, for all the crows in the world can’t save you from your stupidity. At least be brave.” 

Next, we came upon a group of trolls. They were out to see the evening, powdered in their running clothes, close yet not holding hands or kissing, speaking excitedly in a guttural tongue. Great in number they were, and even greater in their enthusiasm. It would make sense for them to miss me, but why would they not walk in a narrow file and leave some of the sidewalk free for the rest of us? I could not help curling my lip from among the stream of racing vehicles I had been forced onto.  

“And that’s what you would think!” shrilled the crow. “When you take their land, tax their grandparents, send their children to the mines and leave them all alone, so that they have no one in the world except for each other, and they become so afraid of losing they can only stand together and forget for a moment, you would take even that piece of sidewalk from them? And even that is not enough, you would also write a newspaper article mocking their lack of consideration for your personal space. No one is purely good or evil, but they do not deserve this.” 

And it was right. The crow was always right, so when I came upon a trio of maidens blocking the sidewalk for their breakout photoshoot on Instagram, did I bull my way like a cargo ship on its last legs? No, I looked at the crow for guidance, and guidance it provided. 

“Yes, a true absence of sense is theoretically impossible — you are living proof of it. But I am glad you asked me. They are battle sirens. They’ve been in a war since before they were born. Losing friends, fathers, fur boots? That’s nothing. They don’t even have the right to take selfies in their own homes. And that’s why they are here, in one final act of rebellion, making their marks before they leave for a fight they will only go to. And can you save them? Can you fire their bullets for them? No, every man must fight his own fight. But can you give them a lecture about taking selfies on the sidewalk? Don’t even get me —” 

“Please,” I said, “I can’t take it anymore. I am sorry. I really am sorry.” 

“And what would you being sorry do? ‘Oh, look at me — I did not even know they existed before, and now I feel sorry for them!’” the crow spread its wings in pantomime. 

“I’ll do anything! I’ll be your foot soldier! I could do anything for them.” 

“Good,” the crow said. “You don’t have to be a foot soldier. You are supposed to be the hero. Stop this senseless war. Let the Sidewalk King’s children live. Gather your people, rally their opinion, and then change things forever.” 

“How?” I gasped between sobs. “How do I do that? I’m just me.” 

“Khaw. Khaw. Khaw,” the sidewalk crow laughed, “Look around. We have come somewhere important.” 

And so we had. It was where the adventure — my story — would breathe its first. Birthing ground of miracles, cemetery of crucibles, it was... my home? 

“Never again,” the crow railed. “Never again will I tolerate the idiocy of you getting stuck behind a gaggle of housewives waddling down the highway, mumbling ‘Excuse me’ about fifteen times, and unheard, red-faced, shooting your bag of peanuts straight into my tail! I mean, my tree!” 

“Go home. AND STAY HOME,” it cried, and forever flew away. 

Dear reader. Why do we fight? Why do we not recognize each other? Why do we let hate take us over? And why do I care so much? I don’t know. And neither do you. But perhaps — and this is nothing but a desperate plea — for the sake of the next time we have to trample on the lives and rights of the sidewalk people, let us cut fewer trees, orphan fewer giants, tax fewer troll grandmas, and when possible, stay home.