The full quote that is attributed to Andy Warhol is: “In future everybody will be world famous for 15 minutes.” These words were spoken in 1968. I like quote. I find it incredibly portentous.

If we go back for a minute to Burrell’s Independent piece, essence of article was his views on how media as a whole has a wealth of tricks up its collective sleeve to lure people into spotlight. But don’t just think reality TV here, though of course, this is a massive part of it. Think also of myriad of kiss and tell stories that we so often read. All these chances, all these opportunities to make a deal and go public, just for sake of being paid to go public. The media pays vast sums of money. Why speak of this? Well again, I want to quote Andy Warhol here. He said: “Being good in business is most fascinating kind of art.” Here, he was speaking in 1975. It’s a mess quite frankly. Fame is cheap but money’s good. Everyone wants to be a star. Being a star is big business.

Let me try and pull it all together by thinking a little about what Stephen Fry recently said in an interview with Jack magazine when asked about his views on 21st century fame. He spoke of it being “less stylish”, “more self-conscious.”

"We are, meanwhile, going to erect befitting memorial tombs with beautiful flowers on them for our fallen soldiers. And inscribe their names on their tombstones in letters of gold, with our national flag flying overhead. For they did not die in vain. They fought and died for empire. And we hope that many more will volunteer to fight and die for our Great Fatherland. May God bless Empire!"

That was not voice of president of United States, addressing fellow Americans on Memorial Day. Rather, it was speech of Sunrise and Sunset, two kings who had led expeditionary forces throughout earth in a vain search for Inferno, terrorist. They had returned home without their soldiers, and had to explain to their countrymen and women why it was necessary for soldiers to die. The book's title from which quotation was taken is my controversial work, CHASING SHADOWS! : A Dream.

According to Jonathan Glover in his book, Humanity—A Moral History of Twentieth Century, "Death in twentieth-century war has been on a scale which is hard to grasp. . . . But, if these deaths had been spread evenly over a period, war would have killed around 2,500 people every day. That is over 100 people an hour, around clock, for ninety years." Hardly something to cheer about. People are either being slaughtered in political, racial, or religious wars. And members of armed forces are dying in large numbers.

It is for this reason that nations all over word have set aside a date to remember its fallen soldiers. Americans have two—the Memorial Day, which is marked on last Monday of May, and Remembrance Sunday or Veterans Day celebrated on November 11. On these occasions, seasoned speech writers ensconced in serenity of well guarded offices, craft Demosthenian and Ciceronian speeches and hand them over to draft dodging heads of states, who intone virtues of sacrifice and reward of patriotism in mellifluous voice of angels.

There will be somber religious services in churches on Memorial Day in United States. The pastors will specifically petition God to accept ‘souls' of departed soldiers and give them special seats in heaven; wives would weep over their dead husbands; tombs of ‘gallant' heroes would be whitewashed and beautiful flowers would be laid on them; war veterans who had been forgotten would instantly be remembered; there would be reports of sighted soldiers in far away lands who had been missing in action; and most important—there would be a one minute silence in memory of dead.