ONCE UPON A PAST

Vietnam has garnered praise for fl attening its curve of COVID-19 infections and rebooting its economy early. On her maiden trip to the country last year, SUSHMITA SRIVASTAV went riddled with haunting memories of its past and came back pleasantly surprised.

- SUSHMITA SRIVASTAV

I AM SURE NICK UT wouldn’t have imagined back in 1972 that the photo he was capturing in a moment of utter distress in a suburb of Saigon would win him a Pulitzer Prize. But Napalm Girl did more than that. It went on to become the symbol of the agony of war victims and eventually changed the course of the Vietnam War. The image of a nine-year-old Kim Phuc, screaming in pain and walking unclothed towards the camera after an airstrike, shook the world. Whatever your age when you first saw it, chances are that the Napalm Girl remained etched in your mind. It certainly did in mine.

That’s probably why I struggled to focus on the light-hearted conversation between two of my fellow journalists in the airport lounge as they discussed everything from pho (chicken or meat broth with rice noodles) to Vietnamese ao dai (a long-sleeved tunic with ankle-length panels worn over trousers) and Saigon’s famous nightlife. Just like our VietJet Air flight that was taking off for the first time from New Delhi to Hanoi last December, I was on my maiden voyage to the ‘Land of the Ascending Dragon’—a moniker that takes inspiration from the country’s shape on the world map. And I wanted to visit the former war zones, the infamous tunnels, the landmarks of agony. A lot of people disapprove of ‘dark tourism’. But nothing else could educate me as much as the historic monuments of the Vietnam War. Or so I thought.

A CIRCUS OF CULTURE