When Nelson Mandela was released from jail in 1990, after 27 years of life behind bars, I was a school student. Ukraine’s current president, Volodymyr Oleksandrovych Zelenskyy, who is almost my age, was also a young student with great sense of humour. Those days Russia’s current president Vladimir Putin had not started dreaming of exploring the political landscape, and he was comfortably leading an ‘apolitical’ life as a KGB foreign intelligence officer. He resigned from that post as a lieutenant colonel next year to take his political plunge in the now non-existent USSR.

Now, when I painfully read the news of the unending war between Russia and Ukraine, my mind goes back to the same period when Mandela became a free man, and Putin took the political plunge, when the Gulf war broke out.

I just imagine had I been the ruler of the world those days (hey, don’t mock at me, I know there is nothing as such called a world ruler), what I would have done?

Those days, many parts of the world were yet to open doors to globalisation, and internet was just a hearsay. Mobile phone was not even in the wildest of my imagination. We were in our on islands. So naturally I would not have thought of bringing the world together as a global village at that time.

If I ruled the world at that time when the Gulf war erupted, probably I would have brought the warring factions around one table, not to stop the war, but to save the petroleum resources. When I read the Kuwaiti oil fires caused by Iraqi military forces that allegedly set fire to over 730 oil wells along with an unspecified number of oil filled low-lying areas, thus causing huge environmental and economic disaster, I feel it was a great tragedy. Even now I feel that as a world leader I would have taken some steps to prevent the oil disaster, from which the world is yet to overcome in the truer sense. Then, I would have roped in the scientists to develop the technology to find a non-fossil energy alternative, which is the in-thing today.

Then, definitely I would have asked all other leaders to plant one tree for every shipment of oil they export and import, to make this world a more liveable space. A tree that we fell is a life that we eliminate, and we have the responsibility to compensate. Yes, if the world is greener, and oil was not the sole economic axis that controlled the world, our life would have been different.

Though power and politics are not my cup of tea, I often think that this is the time of the change-makers, and I always wanted to be one, hence all these wild thoughts.

And, if I ruled the world today, I would have asked mighty Putin and humorous Zelenskyy to walk around the rehabilitation camps where the orphaned kids and lakhs of others languish and have the first-hand experience of the pain of war. When you see your people and your rivals facing the same agony of bloodshed, you would definitely dream of the dove coming with an olive branch. We are not born to kill others, we are here to sustain a harmonious life.

Hey, but that harmony is going from the family front as well, as everyone is confined to the tiny screen of the mobile phone through which they see the world. So, I would definitely issue an order, banning the use of cellphones in the dining room and the drawing room, making sure the family has a real interaction with each other, thus reviving the family bond, which in turn would strengthen the bond of the society, thus leading to a greener, earnest world where we live in harmony, not in hostility. We need a world where there are no geographical borders and we all could move around like birds, without requiring a visa or passport. I am a world leader who wants you next to me without any barrier separating us!