To Sehwag, on how not to crack jokes

Dear Virender Sehwag,

Nice to see you making jokes on social media. Here's some advice that may help your future jokes carry all the way over the boundary, rather than get caught somewhere embarrassing.

The difference between a cricket bat and war is that I owned a cricket bat when I was six years old, but I could not, unfortunately, own a war.

A cricket bat is defined as: A device used by batsmen in the sport of cricket to hit the ball. And, war is defined as: a state of armed conflict between societies, characterised by extreme aggression, destruction, and mortality. The deadliest war in history is World War II, from 1939 to 1945, with 60 to 85 million deaths. Many Indian soldiers died in this nasty conflict, 67,000 were wounded, and a total of at least 74,187 died. The war killed them.

Yes, this may come as a surprise to you, but while people die in wars, they don't normally die of cricket bats. Jasper Vinall died of a hit with a cricket bat, in 1624, but that was a freak accident, and yes, it is true that more recently, Luke Batty was stabbed and beaten to death with a cricket bat by his father, but that was the rarest of rare.

Basically, it is like this. Gurmehar Kaur's father died in a war, she made an anti-war poster, and put it on social media. Now, if someone kills your father with a cricket bat, God forbid, then you can do a Tweet accusing cricket bats. You can say, if the murderer's name is supposedly "Dhoni", "The murderer Dhoni did not kill my dad, the cricket bat did."

Unfortunately, you may never get to make this Tweet, as you don't play hockey. Your friends in the ABVP-BJP-RSS will tell you, in India (especially Gujarat 2002), hockey sticks are used to smash the heads of people. Cricket bats are nowhere near as popular death facilitators, as hockey sticks and wars are. At least 108 million were killed in wars in the 20th century. The estimate for those killed throughout human history is 1 billion.

The war killed them. Gurmehar has the guts to add her voice, and it's a powerful voice, to the people who hate such wars. Let her be.

Her placard, is like if I made an anti-smoking message that says: "Cancer didn't kill me, smoking did." Which goes to the root of the problem, rather than just vaguely attack cancer. Also remember, if some former cricketer gave you "gyan" about batting, you would ask, "What was your average? And did you open for India?"

On this matter, I could well ask you, in which war did your father die fighting? Her father died in Kargil. Your dad sold grain in Najafgarh. And, most importantly, your bat did a good thing when it scored two triple centuries for India, but war was the opposite when it took away her father.

Next time you want to ridicule someone, do it properly. I loved your cricket. I get as agitated watching you mistime a six, as witnessing you miscue a Tweet.

(This post first appeared on Facebook.)