Friends Turn Foes and Vice Versa in a Shattered World

What a queer and bizarre this world has turned out to be now! One really fails to comprehend why and what has gone wrong with it?

- PROF PK SHARMA

It seems to be in a fierce and colossal war with itself. It is really a Herculean task these days to distinguish between friends and foes in this megalomaniac world which for the past some decades used to be deemed a global village in wake of revolutionary technological advances, nations coming together and very closer. Ironically, sans an iota of doubt, this demonic dance of death, dread, disaster, destruction, deprivation, displacement, and trauma for the past couple of years did scatter and shatter the world with the "divine nod" as innocent men, women, and kids are brutally killed, targeting hospitals, schools, and civilian bases by bombing, drones, firing missiles, and sophisticated weapons alike with impunity.

Eminent English poet Robert Browning is very relevant here in this context to cite who in his poem "Pipa Passes" remarks, "God's in his heaven and all's right with the world." The Almighty is there, but under His watch everything is fine in this world we can well imagine and see.

While undertaking my M.Phil in English course at Punjabi University Patiala in mid-1980s, I had to encounter Ferdinand de Saussure—the father of modern linguistics, the man who reorganized the systematic study of language and languages in such a way as to make possible the achievements of twentieth-century linguistics.