I've never been much of an expert on world history or politics.
It was no surprise that when my university exam results came in last week, I fared much better in economics and marketing than the other two.
My knowledge of history from school stops abruptly at 1947, which is two years after the end of the Second World War and the year of India's independence.
I never looked back on that subject and chose to study commerce in high school, but I always came away feeling a little behind the times whenever I heard anything about the Vietnam War or the one in Korea.
Partly to camouflage my lack of interest, I always feigned distaste for anything remotely political or historical.
But wars cannot be forgotten and as much as we would like to distance ourselves from those dark periods of human history, we can't be wholly untouched by them.
A BBC feature I happened to watch last week showed how people still lose their lives as a result of forgotten mines from the Second World War, which are still buried in fields.
The war may have ended 65 years ago, but the destruction it wrought, the human misery and loss of lives still continue to this day.
The large-scale displacement of people during the course of the war has today resulted in many people not knowing their roots, while others have discovered they were living with false identities all along.
The UK and the Australian government a few months ago apologised to thousands of forgotten children shipped to Australia after the war in search of a "better life".
Many of those had been falsely told their parents were dead and were used as cheap labour in farms, where they were often abused.
The war's legacy still continues to haunt countries, international policymakers and individuals - so much Middle East conflict today can be traced back to the end of the Second World War.
It is strange that when countries go to war, they expend their strength in justifying themselves only to later regret it with much pain.
Battlefields bring out what is most bestial and primitive in us and even if men go to war to rout evil or overthrow dictators, the extremities to which they go to prove themselves right make them no better.
There's a poem by Robert Southey called Battle of Blenheim, where an old man is quizzed by his grandchildren about why the war was fought.
His grandson had found a skull in a field, which the old man said must belong to some fallen soldier.
He recalls with great pride how villages were razed and people slaughtered.
The children keep asking him why the armies fought and what good came of it, but the old man has no clue what it was about and answers all their queries with "it was a great victory".
At the end of mindless carnage, it is no use making erudite excuses as an afterthought.
If the cause isn't good enough to explain to our grandchildren, it's not worth fighting for.
¥ Jennifer Gnana is a former Bahrain resident now studying in Mumbai. Her family still lives here.
Copyright 2010 Al Hilal Publishing and Marketing Group
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