Picking a vacation/tour place(s) is always a bit of work by itself. I generally try to follow a theme if I can. For ex: going to places like a) early republics with some democratic elements or b) to be in the cradle of renaissance or c) tracing the reformation etc.,
This time I wanted to follow the path of events which gave us the current world order, an order that has resulted in almost 70 years of relative peace and prosperity across Europe and around the world. The alliances, treaties, institutions, agreements and pacts that were put in after the second world war WWII have given us the new world-order, in other words new-rules. In general it is safe to say that the world has adhered to this order and played by these rules, at least until recent past.
Like most of the people living today, I am one of the biggest benefactors of this world-order. I wanted to learn more of the roots, which gave rise to this order. More importantly I wanted my children to understand that the world-corridors through which they pass every day, and systems they engage with and participate in cannot be taken for granted, moreover they weren't here since beginning of time. This order, as much as sound and sturdy it looks from outside, it has been relatively new and seemingly fragile these days.
Well, let’s face it. An ignorant septuagenarian born soon after the end of WWII, who now wants to be the premiere of the pinnacle of western liberal democracies, is threatening that order with his know-nothing crusade of anti-intellectualism.
Hopefully the populace will send him into political oblivion. We will wait and watch.
I digress.
Any attempt to understand the current world order and it's institutions like United Nations, IMF, World Bank, treaties like NATO, systems like Bretton Woods which introduced Gold-Exchange-Standard, agreements like GATT, WTO takes us to the Second World War. We all know that the seeds of WWII were sown at the end of First World War in Treaty of Versailles. With that in mind and with many calendar limitations and hurdles, I have finalized the plan and I set out to follow a path touching down at important places along the way.
We began with Poland. Few countries on planet suffered as much as Poland did. It was crushed between Germany from west, and Russia from east during WWII and thereafter. This is the country which was robbed of its place and name from the map before WWI. A country which was bulldozed by giant powers of Europe/Eurasia with ease more than once. It is a country where the helpless side of humanity has witnessed its EVIL side, to a degree that is inconceivable to an individual mind even by standards of savages (read Auschwitz). And yes, this is also a country where an ideal town Nowa Huta was built by Soviet Union as a model town of communist ideology. This is also a place where USSR has refused to permit even a single church, a decree against which a local bishop has vehemently fought against by placing the cross in its place, every time it was removed by authorities, who eventually rose to be the leader of catholic church as Pope John Paul II . This is a place where Solidarity Movement among workers started. A movement in the end challenged the mighty soviet empire with the help of church, inspiring others along the way, leading to the collapse of Iron Curtain.
I had to see all of it and show all of that to kids.
As part of this trip, we have visited THE city of 20th century aka Berlin. I cannot think of any other city like Berlin in the entire world. It was the epicenter of WWII and a front line during Cold War. Younger people say 9/11 changed the world in profound ways. May be so, but for my generation, and a few more before and after mine, there is no other year like 1989. It was a year unparalleled in modern history. Those six months in 1989 not only shook the world, but also put every nation and every citizen of this world on a new path, into a new paradigm. The period 1989-1991 has changed this world in so many ways and so much so that, Frank Fukuyama wrote 'The end of History and the Last Man' in those days of euphoria, arguing in essence that history of both world-wars and the result of struggle between two opposing ideologies has finally proven that the destiny of all societies has arrived and it is called 'capitalist liberal democracy'. (We now know how premature conclusion it was! No wonder Fukuyama is ridiculed relentlessly even to this date. Hindsight is 20/20 always!).
I vividly remember 1991. It was the year in which USSR collapsed. I still remember the split-second intense pain that I felt in disbelief, as if a great revered figure was hurt, when I read in Telugu newspapers in my rural village that Lenin statues were being dragged in streets and people were hitting those statues with their shoes. Some even spat on him, I read. I could not fathom it. How in the world any human, let alone residents of the so-called paradise on earth, can treat a great man Lenin like how it was described in those papers? I had a totally different mindset back then. I grew up in south, learning about world through the writings that were slanted left. I was never a radical by any definition, but I could see the point in the argument from an intellect perspective. Not because I was in the so-called lower-middle-class strata of society or more aptly put higher-poor-class, but because of compelling moral case that I found in those writings of various op-eds. The heck, even learning real physics had to come from "Nithya jeevitam lo bhoutika sastram" (నిత్యజీవితం లో భౌతిక శాస్త్రం) by soviet author Yarkov :)
Ultimately when Berlin wall fell down, I did not know that in few more years, I would be working for a German company which not only participated in demolition of wall with its cemented carbide tools, but also would proudly display the small relics of that wall in show-cases across their plush front-offices around the world, and I would be walking past daily and looking at them with wonder, pondering about the unseen walls behind which my early formative years were shaping up.
Nothing would take me back to myself and to the world that has left long ago for good, as much as standing at Berlin Wall or in Tiananmen Square (that I am yet to visit). To me it would be a sort of an emotional closure of the past, to give that one final wave off to a world that has promised the manifestation of humanity's best ideals but never came close to fulfilling them, cursed by humanity's own worst practices. As much aching as it can be, and as much dramatic as it sounds, how melancholic and exhilarating, both at the same time would it be to play the real life Shakespearean's Hamlet standing on Berliner Mauer, contemplating to take that one final step to put both feet on West side forever?
What else would be content enough, to exactly stand in a place where at once, the young man from 1989 dug down his both feet staring down the column of tanks in that square near Forbidden city? The image of that “tank-man” from an arguably the most powerful picture of 20th century was etched on to my mind and into my heart for an eternity. I would stand upside down to shake his hand, even if it is an imaginary one, as the fate of him remains a mystery to-date.
This trip also took me to Paris and London.
Oh London! Dear London!! Where would I begin and where would I end? May be I can start with couple of hours that we spent inside House of Commons watching Article 50 of Brexit being debated!
London, my London! It would take a long time, so I stop here for now.
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