Yesterday’s storm in Kolkata was not merely weather. It was a warning.
87 kmph winds. Uprooted trees. Flooded streets.
The broken branches would no doubt get cleared. The roads would reopen. And life too will resume its familiar rhythm. But perhaps that is precisely how great changes begin—not as catastrophes, but as interruptions. A little more water. A little more heat. A little more wind. Until one day we realise that what we called “unusual” has become normal.
While writing 2056: The Year of Water and Fire, I imagined a world shaped by rising waters and extreme weather. Yesterday, Kolkata offered a glimpse of that possibility. The future is rarely somewhere ahead of us. Often, it is already knocking at the door.
When I met Dr. Laxmi Parasuram to hear her thoughts on The Last Writer of Kolkata and Other Stories, I expected literary observations. What I received instead was a question that lingered.
She spoke of the emotional weight in the stories—the sentiment, the ache, the quiet melancholy. Then she asked, “Why do so many of your stories seem to end sadly?”
The question took me by surprise. I had never consciously thought of these as sad endings. To me, these stories are about ordinary people standing at extraordinary crossroads—where technology, hard trends, and shifting social realities place pressure on the human spirit. In those moments of disruption, what gets tested is not merely survival, but something deeper: memory, dignity, love, identity, silence, moral choice.
And when the protagonists choose to hold on to some irreducible fragment of their humanness—even at a cost—I had seen that not as tragedy, but as resistance. Yet perhaps this is the paradox of our times.
What one person sees as loss, another may see as courage. What appears to be a sad ending may, in fact, be the final refusal to surrender what makes us human.
It made me wonder: Have we become so accustomed to measuring success by comfort, victory, and neat resolutions that acts of emotional fidelity now look like defeat?
Dr. Parasuram’s question stayed with me. And perhaps that is what literature is meant to do—not provide answers but quietly rearrange the questions we ask ourselves.
Set in a near future shaped by forces already gathering momentum, this collection explores what happens when irreversible hard trends collide with ordinary human lives. From climate catastrophe and algorithmic control to cultural erasure and institutionalized ageing, each story follows characters forced to rethink love, loyalty, memory, and courage as familiar worlds quietly transform around them. These are not 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.
The Last Writer of Kolkata In a near-future Kolkata where memory, culture, and even grief are packaged and sold, an ageing writer quietly records a city that no longer listens. When his private words are appropriated and monetized, the story becomes a haunting meditation on erasure, resistance, and the fragile dignity of remembering in a world that profits from forgetting.
2056: The Year of the Water and Fire In a near-future Sundarbans battered by super-cyclones and rising seas, a grieving environmentalist, his resolute daughter, and a sentient AI boat are caught between prophecy and science as fire erupts beneath the ocean. As water and flame converge, the story asks a haunting question: when nature reclaims its power, is survival an act of technology, faith—or human courage to stand and choose?
Echo Chamber In a near future where minds are seamlessly linked and memories can be accessed, altered, and weaponized, a gifted intelligence analyst uncovers a conspiracy that turns thought itself into a tool of control. As truth, identity, and free will begin to blur, the story confronts a chilling question: when belief is engineered, is freedom still a choice—or merely an illusion?
When the Rain Remembered In a near-future Kolkata where ageing has been systematized and kindness regulated, an elderly couple shelter a displaced child inside a gated retirement enclave that has forgotten laughter. As rain, unrest, and quiet courage unsettle rigid rules, the story becomes a tender meditation on belonging—asking whether homes are built by policy, or by the human instinct to care.
The Last writer of Kolkata and other stories is making waves amongst discerning readers. To know more, visit: http://www.shaktighosal.com
Ron with his wife Oishi were staying in their serviced apartment in Pakhiralaya; they were on a visit to Sundarbans. Their daughter Rusha had not accompanied them on that trip because of college work. That evening was heavy and suffocating, as a cyclone loomed. Oishi, with a set of volunteers, was working to strengthen bandhs and send supplies to an isolated fishermen community.
Despite Ron entreating with her to come hinterland to safety, Oishi had remained stubborn.
Rasping breath, hurried footsteps—Oishi’s silhouette moved through the dense mangrove shadows, her figure flickering in the erratic glow of distant lightning. The wind howled through the tangled branches, the sound merging with the guttural cries of unseen creatures.
Her breath was coming in short, sharp gasps. She clutched her shawl tightly around her, the fabric soaked and heavy against her skin. The path back to the apartment was barely visible, obscured by the relentless downpour. The ground beneath her feet was treacherous, a shifting sludge of mud and tangled roots.
A sudden gust slammed against her like a malevolent force, making her stumble. She somehow caught herself against a tree, the bark was slick, unforgiving. Behind her, something creaked ominously. The storm was trying to shift the forest itself, bending it to its fury.
The sound came, low at first, then a deafening crack. The air trembled with it. A loud whooshing sound accompanied the toppling of a tree. Oishi turned, eyes wide, searching. A massive limb, gaunt and jagged, descended toward her in an unstoppable arc. The sharp end glinted in the erratic lightning, a spear of nature’s wrath.
She tried to move. But it was too late. A piercing scream became a crescendo, riding atop the growls and grumbles of thunder, rising between the heavens and earth. And then, silence, it was swallowed by the storm.”
The mysterious Pakhiralaya in Sundarbans, the planet’s largest surviving estuarine mangrove forest, features in the story ‘2056: The year of the Water and Fire’, part of my book ‘The Last Writer of Kolkata and other stories’. The book is making waves amongst discerning readers. For more details, visit: http://www.shaktighosal.com.
The long orange strip unfurled from the small roll at the end and then snaked across the entire wall. It changed colour from deep to light orange before morphing into a green strip and finally ending with a tiny four-inch blue coloured block at the end.
I was looking at a timeline representation of the start of life on earth, about three and a half billion years ago, culminating with the appearance of us humans two hundred thousand years back. That blue-coloured block highlighted the minuscule period ( around 0.006% of total ) that we humans have existed on mother earth as compared to all life.
Each loop represents approx. 0.5 billion years; the final 0.5 billion years is expanded to show more detail.
I was at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History on a recent visit to Washington DC. Though the museum carries the same name as the more well-known American Museum of Natural History in New York, I was finding the format and the presentation refreshingly different.
As I looked at the representation, I was intrigued to see the periods of mass extinction that have taken place in the planet’s living history. There seem to have occurred around five major extinction events since earth cradled life. These were when between fifty to ninety-five percent of all living species died out. I got particularly interested in two such events.
The first was the one that led to the demise of the dinosaurs. I sat watching a video of what might have happened sixty-six million years back when the age of the dinosaurs ended. A large meteor comes hurtling from outer space and hits earth in the Mexican coastal region. The impact kills all life on land and sea for thousands of kilometers all around, its explosive power equivalent to billions of atomic bombs going off at the same time. And as if that is not enough, giant tsunamis and billions of tons of vaporized asteroid and terrestrial debris spew up into the atmosphere, envelop the earth and block out sunlight for years. Photosynthesis all over the world gets seriously impeded and the global climate alters leading to large-scale death of flora and subsequently the herbivores and carnivores going up the food chain.
It is estimated that three-quarters of all life on earth perished during what is today known as the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event. But the event also led to an interesting development. The age of the mammals commenced. Being smaller in size and with less need for sustenance, the surviving mammals who had existed on the peripheries during the dinosaur age got the planet to themselves and started flourishing. The evolutionary path over several subsequent million years took the necessary steps toward modern humans with the ability to walk on two legs.
Writes Rick Potts, the Director of Smithsonian Institute’s Human Origins Program, “East Africa was a setting in foment—one conducive to migrations across Africa during the period when Homo sapiens arose. It seems to have been an ideal setting for the mixing of genes from migrating populations widely spread across the continent. The implication is that the human genome arose in Africa. Everyone is African, and yet not from any one part of Africa.”
The second extinction event that intrigued me was the one in which the human species more or less vanished around seventy thousand years ago. Estimates range from a few hundred to a thousand humans who remained to fend for themselves in a dangerous world. The event is generally linked to a super volcanic eruption named Toba which went off in Indonesia and spewed a colossal amount of ash, debris and vapour into the atmosphere. The Sun got dimmed for years disrupting seasons, choking rivers and killing all vegetation in large parts of the planet.
Says Science writer Sam Kean, “There’s in fact evidence that the average temperature dropped 20-plus degrees in some spots,” after which the great grassy plains of Africa may have shrunk way back, keeping the small bands of humans small and hungry for hundreds, if not thousands of more years.So we almost vanished.”
As I continued to look at that unfurling orange strip and read about the extinction events, I found it indeed amazing how the present world stands dwarfed by close to eight billion of us humans. Even though our footprint remains that tiny blue coloured four-inch block on the timeline representation of life. The probability numbers about a meteor hitting or a super volcano erupting remain minuscule and clearly in our favour because of our small timeline footprint. But within that insignificant (fleeting?) footprint, we have managed to subjugate every other species, harnessing both flora and fauna to our needs. We have mastered science and technology in wondrous ways, improving our lot in every way conceivable. Be it food, be it energy, be it resources, be it our understanding of the Universe.
But could it be that we are willy nilly walking on the extinction pathway of our own making? Stemming from our sheer numbers and our continued actions to reorder and realign nature to our own needs. Vulnerability to increased incidences of diseases and viruses. Vulnerability to our own selves as we fight for scarce resources. Vulnerability from the very technology which we believe we have harnessed.
Scientists and environmentalists are raising the alarm that we may be already at the extinction tipping point arising from global warming and climate change. A tipping point that might lead to the mass extinction of more than half of humanity with the collapse of social, political and economic structures. Once the tipping point is breached, the world could witness accelerating global warming and climate change with no way to control. Simulation studies point to an overall ecological disaster and collapse leading to the mass extinction of a large number of flora and fauna species; more than a million species are on track to go extinct in the coming decades. Would this be Judgment Day for Humanity and its cradle planet?
It seems to me that we have been plain lucky. There really is no certainty of our continuing the domination of the world beyond the so very tiny and fleeting ‘blue block four-inch’ period that we have done so. If our luck was to change, we might just have an epitaph written about us by someone in the distant future. Like the way we have written one about the dinosaurs.
Standing there I was left wondering whether we are creating the right luck for us.
Man who gave you life, man who gave you home Man who gave you all you desire? All you do is blight, all you do is waste Don’t you see the ash of your fire? Our mother’s crying, our mother’s dying Our mother’s cancer is true Mother we belied, mother we defiled May your human child’s end be good for you
In mythology, Niflheim was a land of primordial ice and cold, with Élivágarand Hvergelmir, the frozen rivers from which arose all other rivers of the world.
According to legends, Niflheim was the primordial region that was born out of two realms. The Ginnungagap, the home of ice and the Muspelheim, the home of fire. Between these two realms of cold and heat, the world got created as ice mixed with fire. Niflheim became the abode of Hel, the goddess daughter of Loki (remember the estranged brother of Thor from the Avengers!), and her subjects.
As my flight cruised over Greenland, I watched the morning rays streaming, glistening and bouncing off the frozen land. A quote of Albert Schweitzer came to mind.
“As the sun makes ice melt, kindness causes misunderstanding, mistrust, and hostility to evaporate.”
But is the melting ice really improving understanding and trust in the world I mused.
From my aircraft window, I could spot the rivers formed by the melting Greenland Ice Sheet.
Greenland’s glaciers, in existence for millions of years, have now suddenly begun to rapidly retreat and thin. Scientists have concluded that the Greenland ice sheet is in the throes of irreversible ice loss. Paleoclimatic evidence indicates that even a mere 2 °C of global warming could endanger the Greenland glaciers leading to a sea-level rise of six meters. Large swathes of inhabited coasts and islands in the United States, Europe as well as densely populated regions of Bangla Desh and India would go underwater.
My thoughts about Greenland, its melting glaciers and the impact on Humanity were interrupted by the flight steward politely asking me about my choice of breakfast. Looking up at him and then around me, I seemed to be in a cocoon far removed from the impact of global warming playing out below. But were I and my co travellers really in a cocoon or were we shutting our minds to the inevitable? I was left wondering.
A New Beginning 