The future does not arrive all at once. It seeps in quietly — through our cities, our screens, our climate, our homes, and our hearts.
Set in a near future shaped by forces already gathering momentum, this compelling collection explores what happens when irreversible hard trends collide with ordinary human lives. When familiar worlds tilt just enough to reveal what has already begun to change, they become recognisable tomorrows, shaped by powerful forces. A writer watches memory become a commodity in a digitised culture. An environmentalist confronts the fury of a climate unbound. Minds are shaped inside engineered echo chambers. An aging couple discovers that love, not technology, is the last refuge of belonging. These are not science fiction tales of spectacular collapse, but of subtle reckonings—where survival lies not in resistance alone, but in choosing what must still be remembered, protected, and passed on.
At once intimate and expansive, the stories follow ordinary people navigating extraordinary transitions — holding on to memory, dignity, connection, and hope as the ground beneath them shifts.
Blending imagination with insight, this book offers fiction as a lens — an exploration not of what gadgets we will build, but of who we may become.
What started as seemingly rational corporate cost-cutting became a destructive economic force: AI tools rapidly improved, especially agentic systems capable of building and adapting software, performing research, legal work, advice, and much more.
By late 2025, enterprise IT teams began using AI agents to replicate functions previously outsourced to expensive SaaS providers. AI worked 24/7, did not require salaries or healthcare, and drastically lowered marginal labour costs.
This triggered an investment cycle where companies laid off humans and invested the savings into even more AI capability — a negative feedback loop with no built-in brake.
At first, economic headlines still looked strong: productivity soared, nominal GDP grew, and corporate profits hit record levels.
But a deeper problem developed — the economy lost real income for workers, especially white-collar professionals whose jobs vanished first.
The Intelligence Displacement Spiral
The core mechanism of the crisis was what is today known as the “human intelligence displacement spiral”: AI replaced human labour, especially high-paid white-collar work. Displaced workers earned less or became unemployed.
With lower income, consumer spending — especially on discretionary goods — collapsed. Weak consumption slowed demand for goods and services. Firms responded by squeezing costs further with more AI.
Unlike traditional innovation cycles — where displaced workers eventually find new jobs that humans can do — AI agents could now perform the very tasks humans would shift into, preventing a robust labour resettlement.
As a result: Consumer spending fell sharply, undermining the engine that historically drove economies. Measured GDP remained deceptively high, because AI output showed up in national accounts even though machines spent nothing — a phenomenon dubbed “Ghost GDP.”
Traditional economic indicators became misleading. Production remained high, but money did not circulate through households.
This divergence — between high measured output and low real economic activity — undermined confidence, weakened markets, and destabilized the financial system.
Financial Contagion and Systemic Risk
In the mid-to-late 2020s, what began as sector-specific disruptions in software and services expanded into a full blown systemic risk:
Software and technology companies, once centers of innovation and stable earnings, saw cascading downgrades, defaults, and valuation collapses as recurring revenues crumbled.
Private credit markets, heavily exposed to tech and software debt, faced liquidity stress as assumptions about perpetual growth dissolved.
Legacy sectors that once seemed safe — payments, logistics, intermediation and financial services — were disrupted as AI removed human friction and extracts fees, undermining their economic moats.
Financial markets experienced sharp drawdowns, with broad indices down significantly from their 2026 peaks. Investors become unnerved not because AI failed as a technology, but because it succeeded too well in displacing labour without creating compensatory consumer demand.
International Ripple Effects
The crisis was not confined to the United States. According to analysis of the scenario, emerging economies with large services export sectors — like India — suffered uniquely. Countries whose growth models relied on low-cost human labour in services and IT became especially vulnerable as AI could produce equivalent work at near-zero marginal cost (limited only by electricity).
Major Indian IT firms saw contract cancellations accelerate, exports fall, and the national currency depreciate sharply.
The broader point was that global economic structures built around human capital got destabilized as AI systematically replaced it.
Core Takeaways
1. AI productivity gains did not automatically translate into broad economic prosperity. Productivity merely shifted wealth toward the owners of compute and capital; workers lost out as their labour lost value.
2. Consumption — not production per se — drove real economic growth. Artificially high output numbers could not mask underlying weakness as households lacked income to spend.
3. Traditional economic models and policy tools failed when automation cut across the core consumer base.
Central banks and fiscal policymakers found themselves ill-equipped to manage this novel disruption.
Conclusion
The 2028 Global Intelligence Crisis reframed the AI debate: it challenged the assumption that greater automation always benefits society broadly. Instead, it created a future in which AI’s triumph in productivity collapsed the foundation of modern economies — the income and spending power of humans themselves — leading to lower real economic activity despite record output figures.
It became a powerful reminder that technological progress alone does not guarantee shared prosperity, and that policymakers and investors needed to think deeply about how gains from automation could be distributed across society.
More than a decade after my coaching certification, certain ideas still return to me with surprising clarity. One of them is deceptively simple:
The difference between reacting and responding.
Most leaders intellectually understand this distinction. Few recognise how profoundly it shapes their daily impact.
I was reminded of this during a coaching conversation with a senior executive — let me call him Raghav. Raghav was known for his brilliance and intensity. Quick thinker. Decisive. Deeply committed. But his team described him using another word, offered cautiously and repeatedly: “Intimidating.”
When he came into coaching, his concern was framed differently. “My team has become strangely silent,” he told me. “Meetings lack energy. No one challenges anything. It’s frustrating.”
Frustration, I have learned, is often an interesting doorway.
“What usually happens when someone disagrees with you?” I asked. He looked puzzled. “Nothing unusual. We discuss.”
But leaders rarely observe their own behavioural patterns with accuracy. Our reactions are invisible to us precisely because they are so familiar. So, I asked him to walk me through a recent meeting.
He described a discussion where a junior manager questioned a proposal. As he narrated the incident, something subtle appeared — not in his words, but in his tone. “I explained why the idea wouldn’t work,” he said.
Then after a pause: “Perhaps a bit sharply.” “What do you think the manager experienced in that moment?” I asked. He shrugged. “Direct feedback.” “And if we asked them?” Silence.
The human mind is wonderfully efficient at justifying its own reactions.
**
In coaching, reactions are rarely the real story. Triggers are.
“What specifically triggered your response?” I asked. “The suggestion didn’t make sense.” “Was it the quality of the idea,” I continued, “or the fact that it challenged yours?”
That question lingered longer. Eventually he smiled — the kind that signals reluctant insight. “I don’t like being questioned in areas I know well.”
There it was. A deeply human pattern. Trigger → irritation → sharp dismissal.
Repeated often enough, reactions harden into leadership style. Unexamined long enough, they reshape culture.
We explored a small experiment. “Next time you feel that familiar irritation,” I said, “don’t change your opinion. Don’t soften your standards. Simply pause.”
“Pause?”
“Four seconds,” I suggested. “One breath. No words.” He laughed. “That sounds trivial.” “It is trivial,” I agreed. “And extremely difficult.”
Because reactions are automated. Responses are chosen.
**
Several weeks later, Raghav returned with an observation that genuinely surprised him. “The meetings feel different,” he said.
“What changed?”
“I haven’t changed my decisions,” he clarified. “But I’ve started noticing the moment before I speak.”
“And?”
“The irritation is still there,” he admitted. “But the pause stops me from firing.” That single gap — barely a few seconds — had altered the emotional climate of his interactions.
People spoke more. Defensiveness reduced. Energy returned. Nothing structural had changed. Only awareness.
**
Reacting is effortless because it is borrowed from the past — old patterns, old triggers, old conditioning.
A decade after my executive coaching certification, one idea continues to stay with me: Accountability is rarely about others. It is about the promises we make to ourselves.
Not the corporate version of deadlines, dashboards, and reviews. Something quieter. More personal.
A simple question: Who holds us accountable for the things that truly matter?
The uncomfortable answer: we do.
**
Some time ago, a senior leader — let’s call him Arvind — walked into my office. Highly capable. Well respected. Clearly exhausted.
“I’m working harder than ever,” he said, “but everything feels stuck.”
Experience has taught me that “everything” usually has a centre of gravity.
“What feels most stuck?” I asked.
“My restructuring initiative,” he replied. “Everyone agrees it’s necessary. But it’s just not happening.”
“What’s stopping it?”
“The usual,” he sighed. Quarterly pressures. Reviews. Endless fires. Bad timing.
Logical. Reasonable. Entirely human.
But then I asked him three questions:
“If the Chairman had mandated this with a deadline — would it still be pending?” “Of course not.”
“If your compensation depended on it?” “Would have been done already.”
“If your team’s survival required it?” “ Then, I would have done it yesterday.”
And there it was. The barrier wasn’t capability, clarity, or even time. It was consequence. Nothing happened if he delayed. No penalty. No discomfort. No urgency.
**
“Whose goal is this restructuring?” I asked.
“Mine.”
“Imposed?”
“No.”
“Do you believe in it?”
“Completely.”
“Then what agreement have you made with yourself about it?”
Silence. Then a smile of recognition. “None.”
**
Many of us confuse intention with commitment.
We say:
• I should do this • I need to get to that • I’ve been meaning to…
But progress rarely responds to “should.”
“What if,” I suggested, “you treated this not as a project — but as a promise?” Something you either honour or break. Not endlessly postpone.
**
“What’s the next visible action?” I asked.
“Announcing it to my leadership team.”
“When?”
“…Friday.”
“And how would you like me to support your accountability?” That question matters. Accountability imposed feels like control. Accountability invited becomes partnership.
“Ask me next week,” he said. “And challenge me if I haven’t done it.”
**
The following Tuesday he returned, noticeably lighter. “It’s done.”
“What changed?”
“I stopped treating it as something I should do,” he said, “and started treating it as something I had said I would do.”
A small shift. A profound one.
**
The most important commitments in our lives rarely come with external enforcement. No one penalises postponed courage. No dashboard tracks delayed growth. And yet, these commitments shape everything.
Accountability is not a management technique. It is a quiet act of integrity —an agreement between who we are today and who we intend to become.
**
Curious to hear your thoughts: 👉 Where have you seen self-accountability make the biggest difference in leadership or life?
“I don’t understand why I have to deal with him,” Arjun snapped, pacing the room. “He’s impossible. Defensive. Disrespectful. Always pushing back.”
Across the table, Kavya watched quietly. “You seem tired,” she said.
“Tired? I’m exhausted. I try to be fair. Professional. But with people like him, you have to be firm.”
“People like him?” she asked gently.
“You know exactly what I mean.”
“Maybe,” she said. “Or maybe you’re in the box.”
Arjun stopped pacing. “In the what?”
“The box,” she repeated. “It’s what happens when someone stops being a person and becomes a problem.”
He frowned. “He is a problem.”
Kavya didn’t argue. “Tell me about your last conversation with him.”
“I was clear. Direct. I told him his work wasn’t up to standard. He got defensive immediately.”
“How was your tone?”
“Professional.”
“How did you feel?”
Arjun hesitated. “…Annoyed. Honestly, I was already fed up before the meeting even began.”
Kavya nodded. “That’s the box.”
He looked at her, irritated now. “So this is my fault?”
“No,” she said softly. “That’s the tricky part. When we’re in the box, we’re not trying to be wrong. We feel justified. Righteous, even. But we stop seeing the other person’s humanity.”
“He still behaved badly.”
“Maybe. But inside the box, something subtle changes in us. Our voice hardens. Curiosity disappears. We listen to reply, not to understand. The other person feels it — even if we say all the ‘right’ words.”
Arjun looked away.
“And then,” she continued, “they react to our coldness. They defend. They resist. They shut down. And we walk away saying, See? I knew he was difficult.”
The room fell silent.
“So it’s a loop,” Arjun said quietly.
“Yes. A self-fulfilling one.”
He sank into a chair. “I didn’t even consider what he might be dealing with. I just saw poor performance.”
“That’s the box,” Kavya said again. “He became an obstacle to your goals. Not a person with pressures, fears, or a story you don’t know.”
Arjun’s voice was softer now. “So getting out means… what? Being nice?”
“No. It means seeing clearly. You can still disagree. Still hold standards. But you do it while remembering — this is a human being, not a hurdle in my way.”
He exhaled slowly. “And if he’s in the box about me too?”
She smiled faintly. “Then someone has to step out first.”
Arjun sat with that. The anger that had filled the room felt smaller now — replaced by something heavier, but cleaner.
“Maybe,” he said at last, “I’ve been fighting a problem… instead of talking to a person.”
Kavya nodded. “That realization is the door out.”
In musing……. Shakti Ghosal
**
Acknowledgement: ‘Leadership & Self Deception: Getting out of the box’ – The Arbinger Institute
“Did you read that piece I sent?” Arjun asked. Sameer frowned. “Who wrote it?”
“Why?” “Because that tells me everything.”
“So the argument doesn’t matter?” “Oh! it does matter,” Sameer said. “All folks who offer opinions always have an agenda.”
Arjun watched him quietly. “So we don’t examine the idea… we examine the person?”
Sameer shrugged. “Background. Bias. That’s how you know.”
Case closed.No thinking required. We like to believe we are rational. But most of the time, we are defenders, not thinkers.
Once a belief settles into the mind, it doesn’t stay a belief for long. It quietly becomes identity. And the moment that happens, any opposing idea stops feeling like information. It feels like an attack. Not on the argument. On us.
“Just look at the data,” Arjun said. “I already know the truth,” Sameer replied.That was the shift.His mind had stopped being a judge.It had become a lawyer. *Not asking, “What is true?”But, “How do I prove I’m right?”*
So the evidence hunt began: “I’ve read studies that agree with me.” “Experts support this.” “Your source must be flawed.”
And when facts refuse to cooperate? The mind does what skilled lawyers do. It bends them. Reframes them. Twists them — until they fit the story already believed.
“But you didn’t even consider it,” Arjun said. “I don’t need to,” Sameer replied. “I know the type.” That’s the final defense. If you can’t defeat the idea, discredit the person. “Who said it?” “What’s their background?” “What bias can we label them with?” Once a label is found, the argument is declared invalid. Comfort restored. Identity protected. This isn’t intelligence at work. This is ego guarding identity.
Psychology calls it confirmation bias — the tendency to search for evidence that supports what we already believe and dismiss what doesn’t. But deeper than that, it’s belief defense. The mind protecting its mental world from discomfort. Because being wrong doesn’t just feel incorrect. It feels like losing a piece of who we are.
Arjun said softly, “You know when real thinking starts?” Sameer looked at him. “When something challenges you… and you still choose to look.” A long pause. “That uncomfortable feeling?” Arjun added. “That’s the doorway most of us shut.”
Because growth never comes from defending what we already know. It comes from risking being wrong.
And in that small, silent moment —when we stop arguing and start examining — the mind takes off its lawyer’s coat…and remembers how to be a judge.
So we compress people into labels—rude, careless, incompetent.
And we expand ourselves into explanations—pressure, timing, constraints, intent.
This is the Perspective & Motivation Attribution Model.
From the outside, a person looks like a trait.
From the inside, a person feels like a situation.
Their one act becomes their identity.
Our one act becomes an exception.
Their failure becomes “who they are.”
Our failure becomes “what happened to us.”
And here’s the uncomfortable truth:
our reasoning is often not a search for what is true—
it is a search for what is forgivable.
The mind is not just a storyteller.
It is also a lawyer.
Wisdom begins when we offer others the same context, we demand for ourselves—
and hold ourselves to the same standards we casually apply to others.
So, what could be the road map forward?
Awareness is the start of moving forward. We start by noticing Perspective & Motivation in folks around us- through their articulations and behaviour. We then turn the searchlight onto our own selves. And we become observers of our own Perspective & Motivation afflictions…….
It was midway through my elective course “Winning in a Disruptive World” at IIM Nagpur last month when a student raised a question that momentarily silenced the class.
“Professor,” he began, “Elon Musk and Tesla seem to have anticipated the future before anyone else — electric vehicles, reusable rockets, large-scale battery storage. How does someone think so far ahead and act with that kind of conviction when others are still debating the probability of success?”
It was an incisive question — and one that went to the heart of what our course was about: how to win, not just survive, in a world defined by disruption.
The Disruptive Context
Disruption today is not an occasional storm; it’s the climate we live in. The rules of business are rewritten faster than most organizations — or individuals — can adapt.
In the course, we explored how the world has shifted from the VUCA paradigm — Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, Ambiguous — to what futurist Jamais Cascio calls BANI — Brittle, Anxious, Non-linear, and Incomprehensible. In such a world, the question isn’t whether disruption will occur; it’s whether we are ready to anticipate and shape it.
That was precisely what Elon Musk and Tesla managed to do — not by reacting to disruption, but by engineering it.
Tesla and the Power of Future-Back Thinking
When traditional automakers analyzed the electric vehicle (EV) opportunity, they saw it through the lens of probability. Their forecasts said adoption would be slow. Battery costs were high. Charging networks were inadequate. The “safe” conclusion was that the world wasn’t ready.
Tesla took the opposite route. It didn’t ask, What’s probable today? It asked, What’s possible tomorrow?
That question unlocked an entirely different trajectory.
Musk’s strategy exemplifies what I call Anticipatory Future-Back Thinking — a concept we explored in the later sessions of the course. It involves imagining the desired future state first — in this case, a world where sustainable energy mobility is the norm — and then working backward to identify what must be true today to make that future real.
Rather than extrapolating from today’s constraints, Tesla worked backward from a bold vision of tomorrow. That shift — from present-forward to future-back — is what differentiates disruptors from the disrupted.
Exploring Anticipatory future back thinking
Possibility vs. Probability: The Mindset Divide
When I turned back to my student’s question, I began with a simple observation.
“Most organizations,” I said, “plan from the present forward. They look at past data, run probability models, and make incremental improvements. That’s the Kodak way of thinking — safe, predictable, and ultimately self-limiting.”
In contrast, possibility thinkers — like Tesla — start from a future that doesn’t yet exist. They ask, What could be true if we dared to imagine differently?
Daniel Burrus, the futurist who first articulated the concept of Hard Trends, reminds us that the future is not entirely uncertain. Some aspects — technological evolution, demographic shifts, regulatory movements — are future facts. These are the certainties around which possibility thinking can safely operate.
Tesla built its strategy precisely on such hard trends:
The inevitability of climate change driving clean energy adoption
The advancement of battery technology and digital control systems
The regulatory momentum toward lower emissions
These were not probabilities; they were certainties in motion. Musk simply connected them into a coherent future vision — and then acted as if that future were already here.
From Disruption to Design
This is the essence of anticipatory leadership — not reacting to disruption, but designing it.
In my sessions, we discussed how the future-back approach allows leaders to create clarity where uncertainty dominates. It flips the conventional question from “What will happen to us?” to “What must we make happen?”
The difference is profound.
Present-forward leaders forecast the future.
Future-back leaders architect it.
McKinsey’s research on future-back strategy underscores that such leaders don’t rely on forecasts alone. They use scenario design to imagine multiple plausible futures and then work backward to identify strategic moves that remain resilient across them.
That’s what Tesla did: invest early in charging infrastructure, build direct-to-consumer distribution, and create software-driven vehicles that improve over time. Each move was part of a deliberate future architecture.
The Classroom Reflection
I recall telling my students that day: “Elon Musk is not successful because he predicts the future; he’s successful because he constructs it backwards.*”
In the classroom, this insight tied together much of what we had explored:
Hard Trends (what is certain) form the foundation.
The Three Lists (what I’m certain of, what I know, what I can do) create clarity.
Resilience sustains momentum when the future resists you.
Each of these steps builds toward the mindset of a possibility architect — someone who doesn’t wait for disruption, but wields it as a tool.
As the discussion deepened, another student remarked, “So Tesla wasn’t just lucky — it was structurally anticipatory.”
Exactly.
The Classroom reflection
Why This Matters Beyond Tesla
Every industry today — from energy and aviation to education and healthcare — faces its own “Tesla moment.”
In the energy sector, companies that waited for the probability of renewables to rise are now scrambling to catch up with those who invested early in solar and storage. In education, universities that anticipated the AI wave and reimagined learning around it are moving ahead, while others debate policies. Even in government policy, we see anticipatory thinking at work in projects like UPI and ONDC, where India intentionally designed positive disruption instead of waiting to be disrupted.
The principle is the same: the future belongs to those who can see differently, envision differently, and execute differently.
A Call to Future Architects
At the end of that class, I offered the students a reflection that I’ll share here too.
Winning in a disruptive world doesn’t mean outpacing change — it means aligning yourself with the inevitabilities of tomorrow and daring to act before others see them as obvious.
Elon Musk’s brilliance lies not in foresight alone, but in the courage to build on the certainties he could already see — however faintly — and to commit resources to them before anyone else believed.
For leaders and managers today, the lesson is clear: Don’t ask, What’s probable? Ask, What’s possible — and what must I do today to make it inevitable?
Closing Reflection
As we wrapped up the session that day, I noticed a quiet shift in the room. The students weren’t merely intrigued by Tesla anymore — they were reflecting on their own “future-back” opportunities.
That, to me, was the real win.
Because when young leaders begin to think like architects of the future rather than survivors of disruption, they start embodying the very mindset our world now demands — one that balances imagination with foresight, vision with action, and optimism with resilience.
And perhaps, in some classroom somewhere, the next Tesla is already being imagined.
I chanced upon a news item of a buried ship in one of the world’s driest deserts in Namibia, with a haul of centuries old treasure, untouched by centuries.
The discovery of the sunken ship was made in 2008, in the southern expanse of Namibia’s desolate Sperrgebiet, forbidden territory. Later identified as the Bom Jesus, a Portuguese vessel which was lost five hundred years back during a trade voyage to India. The ship represented the Portuguese maritime empire’s pivot towards India and the east at the height of the Age of Discovery.
Led by Dr. Dieter Noli, a South African archaeologist of repute, the excavating team uncovered more than 2000 gold coins, ivory tusks, copper ingots, and weapons, all in a remarkable state of preservation. Unlike most coastal shipwrecks degraded or looted over time, the Bom Jesus had been pushed inland over centuries by geological forces, and combined with wind blown sediment, it had remained sealed in a natural sarcophagus.
“The sea forgets no soul — it only waits for their return.”
They called it the Age of Discovery. But for those of us who sailed it, it was the Age of Reckoning.
It was the year of Our Lord 1533 when Bom Jesus set forth from Lisbon. She was a three-masted carrack of near 120 feet, her hull of oak black with pitch, her sails heavy canvas stitched in gold thread with the Cross of Christ. She carried five decks — the lower hold stacked with copper ingots from Augsburg and elephant tusks from Sierra Leone, the middle filled with gold and trade wares bound for Goa, and above, our cramped berths where men slept beside their sins.
I was the ship’s Chronicler — João Mendes, son of no one worth naming — tasked by the Casa da Índia to record the journey. I fancied myself a man of words, not of winds; I soon learned the sea had its own grammar.
We departed on Ascension Day, bells tolling from the Sé Cathedral, the scent of incense mixing with tar and brine. Captain Dom Diogo Pereira, a veteran of the Carreira da Índia, Portuguese East India Company, stood on the quarterdeck, broad-shouldered and proud, his hand resting on the hilt of his Toledo blade.
“Men of Portugal!” he thundered. “We sail for God and the King! For gold, glory — and for home, if He wills it!”
“Deus nos guie! God guide us!” we cried back, and the Bom Jesus glided down the Tagus into destiny.
Our route was the old one — past Cape Verde to the Gulf of Guinea, then around the Cape of Good Hope, across the endless Indian Ocean to Cochin and Goa. Ten thousand miles of wind, wave, and unseen graves of adventurers.
The first few weeks were kind. Trade winds filled our foresails; flying fish glittered beside the hull. We dined on hardtack, dried cod, and the Captain’s pride. At night I climbed the forecastle to watch the stars wheel — the Southern Cross like a torch over the horizon. The helmsman, old Mateus, would nod at it and murmur, “Mesmo o céu muda para quem navega.Even the heavens shift for those who sail.”
But the sea does not love those who sail it for long.
Near Cape Verde, the wind changed. The compass began to shudder though the sky looked clear. In the hold, a carpenter found an unlisted chest, iron-bound, its seal a reversed cruciform sigil.
The Captain frowned. “No such cargo was declared,” he muttered.
The priest, Father Almeida, whispered, “It bears the mark of the Templários, Templars. Heresy!”
“Open it,” the Captain ordered.
We broke the seal. Inside lay a crucifix of black gold, the figure inverted. It was a Satanic symbol! The air turned cold, though the day outside burned hot. The priest crossed himself. The Captain ordered it resealed and hidden. That night, lightning struck our mainmast.
An inverted, old, gold, satanic cross
Superstition spreads faster than scurvy. The men whispered that we carried a relic damned by God. One swore he heard chanting beneath the deck. Another said he saw a man in robes walking the gunwale at midnight, his feet never touching the wood.
Still, we sailed on — south past Angola, into seas uncharted. The coast grew barren; dunes stretched like the bones of the world. The charts called it Costa dos Esqueletos — the Skeleton Coast. We knew that even the seagulls avoided it.
Then the fog came. It was thick, white, soundless, relentlessly surrounding us. The lookout cried, “Land! Sand ahead!”
“Hard to larboard!” shouted the Captain.
But the current seemed to seize us like a claw. The keel scraped something unseen. The Bom Jesus groaned, a deep, living sound. Below, the ballast shifted; the copper ingots sliding here and there. The ship’s stability seemed to be teetering.
“Drop anchor!” cried Mateus. “Santa Maria, tem Piedade! Saint Mary, have mercy!”
The anchor vanished into the mist. The ship tilted. The priest clutched his crucifix and began to pray, though the words seemed to be coming out backwards.
I stumbled to the hold to rescue my journals. The water flooding in seemed to glow faintly green. I saw that the sealed chest had burst open. The inverted crucifix floated upright, its eyes gleaming red as coals. Around it, the gold coins trembled, rising and falling as if breathing. I remember shouting, “Capitão! Venha ver isto!, Captain, come see this!”
He never did. The hull split. Sand and water surged in. The ship screamed as if alive, ribs cracking, decks collapsing. I clung to a beam as men were swept into the dunes that moved like tides.
Through the maelstrom I saw — or dreamt I saw — a figure standing on the water’s surface, face hidden by a cowl, hand raised in benediction. The bell tolled, though no man rang it. Then all went black.
When I awoke, the world was silent. I lay on a dune, the wreckage scattered around me, half-buried in glittering sand. No ship. No men. Only the wind’s long sigh.
I found my quill and a scrap of parchment. The ink had turned thick with salt. I began to write. I needed to remember, to exist. The days blurred. The sun moved, the dunes shifted. Sometimes I would see the broken ribs of the Bom Jesus thrust through the sand like bones. Once, I heard laughter carried on the wind. The laughter of men long drowned.
At night, a pale glow rises from the sea. I hear the toll of the bell, steady, patient. When the fog drifts inland, I glimpse lanterns bobbing on the horizon. Our ship sailing still, her sails tattered, her decks empty. I know her. She calls out to me.
Perhaps I never left her. Perhaps I am still aboard, walking the splintered deck, quill in hand, scratching words no living eye will read.
If you find this parchment, if by some fate the sands give it back, take heed: do not seek the Bom Jesus. Her treasures lie where faith and greed collide, guarded by the sea’s own curse.
And should you hear a bell tolling across a calm shore, do not answer. For the Bom Jesus sails yet. And her chronicler still writes. Though his hands are bone, and his words drift like mist upon the tide.
“In every wave sleeps a memory, and in every wreck, a prayer unfinished.”
Ma passed away a few days ago. In her 93rd year, the end came quietly, almost imperceptibly—an erratic pulse, two deep breaths, and then a stillness that felt like both departure and arrival. As I sat with the silence that followed, I realised that Ma, my mother, had been throughout her life a bridge—between worlds, between the slow rhythm of yesterday and the unrelenting urgency of today.
She was born into a Bengal still rooted in an older order, one among eight siblings, the third successive daughter in a family that longed for sons. Her given name, “China,” carried within it a wound of social prejudice. In colloquial Bengali, it implied “not wanted,” a stark reminder of how deeply patriarchal values once diminished the worth of a girl child. Yet, rather than allowing that name to define her, she infused it with dignity through the life she lived.
Her childhood belonged to a world we can barely imagine today—a house with a cowshed, a manual hand pump for water, and a pukur, a pond at the back where the family bathed. Dirt roads wound between houses, lanterns cast the evening glow, and chalk on slate was the beginning of literacy. But this simplicity was not untouched by history’s turbulence. Ma was a child when Japanese planes dropped bombs over Kolkata during the Second World War. She saw emaciated villagers streaming into the city during the Bengal famine of 1943, begging for fyan, the water from boiled rice, which households discarded. She was there when the horror of the Calcutta killings unfolded in 1946, a prelude to the traumatic Partition that would tear the subcontinent apart.
At nineteen, she married my father, more than a decade older, in the manner common to her time, seeing him for the first time on her wedding day, then journeying more than a thousand kilometers away to Delhi. Communication with her family in Calcutta became an exercise in patience: hand-written postcards, inland letters slipped into red post boxes, and the long wait for the postman that brought replies.
Her early years as a young bride unfolded in a government quarter on Punch Quin Road. Delhi summers were hot and dry, cooled only by the hum of ceiling fans and open windows. Even though she had to pick up the new language of Hindi, she formed easy friendships with neighbours, women bound together by proximity and mutual reliance. If she ran out of salt or turmeric while cooking, she would simply knock on a door and borrow. Life was slow, and its pace cultivated the virtue of patience. Waiting was not an inconvenience—it was a way of life. Waiting for letters, waiting for the dairy gate to open, waiting for a favourite song to emerge from the crackling radio.
As the years passed, her single-minded focus of her family became what defined her. She bore two sons and lived for her husband, her children, and later, grandchildren. Days blended into one another, but in that blending was the rhythm that gave her life meaning.
Meanwhile, the world outside was changing with increased speed. She saw the milk delivered warm from a cow at the dairy replaced by cold cartons stacked on supermarket shelves. She watched neighbourhood grocers, who once weighed vegetables on balance scales, give way to supermarkets where barcodes replaced conversation. She moved from the clunky rotary-dial telephone, whose every call was deliberate, to the age of the smartphone, where continents could collapse into a single video call. She saw handwriting, once a vital art, yield to text typed on computers and phones.
But what stands out most is how Ma absorbed these changes, without losing herself. She adapted, yet never forgot the cadence of the world she came from. She could marvel at a video call and also leaf through old preserved letters kept between the pages of the Panjika, the Bangla almanac that dictated her daily rituals. She delighted at the convenience and taste of instant noodles yet remained a reference point of how meals could be cooked slowly and better over coal or wood-based fire. In her, two worlds seemed to coexist, not in conflict, but in harmony. She was a living reminder that adaptation need not mean erasure, that continuity and change can inhabit the same soul.
Ma bore witness to the eradication of dreaded diseases like smallpox and polio, but also endured the arrival of Covid-19. She celebrated the births of grandchildren and great-grandchildren, while also grieving the loss of friends and siblings.
Four generations
Over the years, her own family shrank, with the passing of my father and brother. She increasingly withdrew into a world of her own inhabited by Jap, piety and meditation. During the last couple of years, she would hold my hand in silence, after blowing her shank, conch shell every evening. A mute reminder that I was the only one left of the family she had been devoted to.
Now, as I try to understand what she has left behind, I realise she was more than a mother; she was the bridge between what was and what will be. She connected the slow, earthy world of ponds, lanterns, and letters to the digital age of instant gratification and restless speed. She stood between fading traditions and emerging futures, carrying forward love, devotion, and humanity as constants amidst change. In her, I saw that resilience is not loud or forceful but quiet, steady, and accepting.
To live ninety-two years is to live many lives within one. As I look back at her long journey, I feel gratitude more than grief. For in her passing, she has not left me empty-handed. She has given me the assurance that change can be embraced without losing one’s essence. And she has shown me that love, patience, and quiet resilience are the true bridges between the worlds we inherit and the worlds we leave behind.
A New Beginning 