environment – A New Beginning

WHAT IF….

... we have forgotten to slow down?

I came to Langkawi expecting to see another beautiful place. I found that the sea was beautiful. So was the Rainforest, so were the beaches.

But after a while, I stopped looking at the beauty and began noticing something else.

The pace. The trees did not seem to be in a hurry to grow. The waves did not seem anxious about reaching the shore. The clouds moved without consulting a clock. Even the boats seemed to understand that there was nowhere more important to be.

And as I watched, I wondered when we had forgotten this simple rhythm. We hurry to work. Hurry to meetings. Hurry to finish. Hurry to achieve. And then, having spent years rushing towards the future, we discover that the present has quietly passed us by.

Perhaps the problem is not that we don’t have enough time. Perhaps we have forgotten how to inhabit the time we have. Standing by the sea, I found myself asking: What if slowing down is not falling behind? What if it is actually a way of moving forward—with greater awareness of where we are going?

Perhaps we don’t always need another destination. Sometimes we simply need to stop long enough to notice the journey.

I closed my notebook and watched the waves return to the shore. They had been doing it for thousands of years. Unhurried. Unconcerned. And somehow, always on time.

— Rudra Bose, the Last Writer of Kolkata

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How Close Is the Future?

Two newspaper stories caught my attention today.

The first was from Nepal: devastating floods, homes swept away, lives lost, roads and bridges disappearing beneath an angry torrent of water.

The second was almost deceptively ordinary. Across parts of Europe and Japan, persistent heatwaves are becoming so severe that something once unthinkable is changing: formal office wear is giving way to shorts, T-shirts and sneakers. What was once considered casual is becoming necessary simply to cope with the heat.

At first, the two stories seem to have little in common. One is about water. The other is about heat. But perhaps they are telling us the same story. The climate is changing. And slowly, almost imperceptibly, the boundaries of what we consider “normal” are changing with it.

When I wrote 2056: The Year of Water and Fire, I deliberately placed the catastrophic events some thirty years into the future. Even while writing it, I wondered whether I was being too dramatic—or perhaps, paradoxically, not dramatic enough.

Today, I find myself wondering something else. Could the future I imagined be closer than I thought? We tend to imagine climate catastrophe as something spectacular and distant: a great cyclone, a flooded city, an apocalyptic landscape sometime in the middle of the century. But perhaps climate change does not announce itself that way. Perhaps it arrives quietly. A few more unbearable nights. A flood where there wasn’t one before. A river changing its course. A crop failing. A species disappearing. An office worker deciding that trousers are simply too hot to wear. And then, one day, much like that frog in the slowly heating water, we realise that something we considered extraordinary has quietly become normal.

That is what unsettles me most. The danger is not merely that the planet is becoming warmer or that extreme weather is becoming more destructive. It is that to survive, we need to gradually become accustomed to the extraordinary. We need to adapt our clothes, our buildings. And we need to adapt our working hours, our expectations. And perhaps, without realising it, we have begun to adapt our definition of what constitutes a crisis.

In 2056, I imagined a Sundarbans battered by rising waters and increasingly violent storms. Yet the story is not ultimately about destruction. It is about resilience—of people, of technology, and perhaps most importantly, of nature itself. But resilience should never become an excuse for complacency. The fact that human beings can adapt does not mean that we should keep testing the limits of that adaptation.

The future is not a date on a calendar. It is being assembled quietly, day by day, in the choices we make—and in the warnings we choose to notice. Perhaps the most frightening question is no longer “What will the world look like in 2056?” Perhaps it is: “How much of 2056 have we already begun to live?”

In musing….. Shakti Ghosal

#TheLastWriterOfKolkata #2056TheYearOfWaterAndFire #ClimateChange #GlobalWarming #ClimateCrisis #Sundarbans #FutureOfHumanity #SpeculativeFiction #ClimateFiction #ShaktiGhosal

What If ……….

We Have Misunderstood Our Place in the World?

I spent the morning watching the animals move across the Kenyan savannah. There were wildebeest everywhere. Zebras moved among them almost casually. An elephant and its cub stood beneath a tree. In the distance, the landscape seemed to stretch endlessly, without walls, roads or buildings to interrupt it. For a while, I simply watched.

There was something strangely humbling about seeing so many creatures occupy the same landscape without any apparent need to possess it. They did not own the land. They did not draw boundaries across it. They did not put up signs announcing that a particular piece of earth belonged to them. They simply lived there.

And then a thought occurred to me. What if we have misunderstood our place in the world?

For centuries, we have measured human progress by our ability to control nature. We cut down forests and called it development. We dammed rivers and called it progress. We covered open land with concrete and called it urbanisation. We moved mountains, redirected water, altered landscapes and exterminated species after species, making them disappear. And while doing so, we often congratulated ourselves on our ingenuity and intelligence.

But somewhere along the way, we perhaps began to confuse our ability to control something with the right to own it. The savannah seemed to offer me a different philosophy. The animals did not appear to be conquering the land. They were part of it. The elephant did not need to dominate the tree beneath which it stood. The zebra did not need to fence off its patch of grass. The wildebeest did not need a title deed to the earth beneath its feet. They belonged to the landscape without claiming it. Perhaps that is what we have forgotten. We speak endlessly about what we will leave behind. Be it buildings, businesses, fortunes, roads or institutions. We would strive to leave our names on plaques and our photographs on walls. But perhaps there is another kind of legacy…….

The Zebra did not need to fence off its grass….

What we choose not to destroy. The forest we would leave standing. The river and the waterbody we would allow to remain clean. The animal(s) whose habitat we would protect. The open space we chose not to convert into concrete. The silence we did not fill.

Standing there in Kenya, I began to wonder whether civilisation should really be measured by how much of nature we can bend to our will. Or how much of nature we chose to leave as it is. Perhaps the more difficult measure is how much power we possess—and how much restraint we exercise. Because restraint requires something that conquest does not. It requires us to recognise that we are not the center of everything. The realisation that the earth existed before us, the wild existed before our cities, our borders and our ambitions. And, if we are wise enough, much of it will continue to exist after we are gone.

Perhaps we are not the owners of this world after all. Perhaps we are merely its temporary custodians. We arrived without asking permission. We will leave without taking anything with us. Between those two moments lies the brief privilege of being of who we are and our presence here.

We remain privileged to have been here…….

And so I find myself asking a different question. Not simply, what will we build while we are here? But, what will remain because we were here? I closed my notebook. The animals continued moving across the savannah. They had not heard my question. Perhaps they did not need to. They seemed to know the answer already.

— Rudra Bose, the Last Writer of Kolkata

#WhatIf #RudraBose #ShaktiGhosal #TheLastWriterOfKolkata #KenyaSafari #Wildlife #NatureAndUs #Storytelling #IndianAuthor #ThoughtProvoking #JourneysThatStay

The House That Time Forgot

During our recent safari trip in Kenya, a visit to a Masai village was part of the itinerary. We went with curiosity, but also with the expectations of people accustomed to a very different world.

The Masai Mara is extraordinary not merely because animals still roam freely across its vast savannah, but because the Masai have, for generations, lived alongside that ecosystem without attempting to conquer it. They tend cattle, depend on them for milk and sustenance, and have retained traditions that seem to belong to another age. Yet, paradoxically, they appear to understand something that our supposedly advanced civilisation often forgets: Nature is not a resource to be consumed; it is a system to be lived within.

The village itself was fascinating. A circular settlement, protected from predators by a dense perimeter of thorny shrubs, with homes around the outside and cattle occupying the central space. The houses were constructed from soil and cow dung. The village, we were told, eventually moves when termites begin destroying the structures. There was no attempt to make the place look modern for visitors. It was what it was. And then came the most revealing part of our visit.

A Masai elder invited us into his home. We entered through a tiny doorway into a dark, compact space. There was a fireplace for cooking, some firewood, a few simple utensils and a single light bulb powered by a solar panel provided for the village. There were small cots for the children. His bedroom had two tiny windows for ventilation and, remarkably, a little peephole through which one could see the outside world. He jokingly called it his television. I smiled at the simplicity of the joke. But it stayed with me. For us, television means hundreds of channels, streaming platforms and a world delivered instantly into our homes. For him, television was a small opening in a wall through which he could watch life unfold.

Then we heard a frail voice from behind a closed door. It was his elderly mother. She had to be kept inside because, having lost her sense of direction, she would wander away and not know how to return. We left the house quietly. Seven people lived in a space smaller than a room in many of our apartments. There was little comfort, almost no privacy and virtually none of the conveniences we consider essential to modern life. And yet, something troubled me about the easy conclusion that this was simply a primitive way of living.

The Masai knew about our world. Their children went to school, spoke English and understood modern technology. But they rejected coal because in their own words, it would harm the environment. Perhaps, just perhaps, they were not living in the past. Perhaps they were reminding us of something we had left behind. Progress has given us comfort, convenience and extraordinary choice. But has it given us wisdom?

Standing inside that small Masai home, I wondered whether civilisation should be measured only by how much we accumulate—or by how little we need to live responsibly. The Masai may have much less than us. But perhaps, in one important respect, they have understood much more about life and living.

In musing….. Shakti Ghosal

Acknowledgement: Masai Home photos (2) by my friend and fellow traveller Partha Banerjee.

When the River Said “Not Yet”

There are some days when nature does not merely show you its beauty. It allows you, for a fleeting moment, to witness its very soul. Today was one such day in the Masai Mara.

We began before sunrise with a hot air balloon ride over the vast Mara savannahs—an experience I shall write about separately. But the real drama of the day was waiting for us at the Mara River, inside the Mara Triangle.

We watched, almost spellbound, as hundreds of wildebeests came thundering down the slopes, accompanied by a sprinkling of zebras. They moved like an army on the march. Then, without hesitation, they plunged into the river.

Amboselli: Where the Wild still writes it’s Own story….

There are some journeys where you return with photographs. And then there are journeys where you return with a changed sense of perspective. Yesterday was one of those days.

We spent an entire day driving through Amboseli National Park, and for hours the landscape seemed to reinvent itself. One moment, there were vast open plains stretching towards the horizon. Then came a wetland, a cluster of acacia trees, a dusty track disappearing into the distance, or a herd of elephants appearing almost magically against the landscape.

Amboseli is often described as the “home of the African elephant”. It is easy to understand why. We saw elephants in different groups, some quietly grazing, some walking purposefully across the plains, and others simply standing there with that extraordinary, almost contemplative presence that elephants seem to possess.

There were hundreds of zebras and wildebeests, moving across the grasslands in groups that seemed almost endless. Gazelles appeared in the distance, alert and graceful. Giraffes rose above the vegetation like living sentinels. Baboons went about their business with an irreverence that was almost human.

And then there were the birds. Some were familiar, others completely new to my eyes. Their colours, shapes and calls added another dimension to the landscape. I came to know that Amboseli is, in fact, an important birding destination, with more than 400 recorded bird species.

What makes this place particularly remarkable is that it is not simply a collection of animals. It is an ecosystem, delicately interconnected through water, grass, wetlands, migration and seasons. We came to know that the seemingly dry landscape also has wetlands and springs fed by water originating from the slopes and underground systems associated with Mount Kilimanjaro. That water sustains an astonishing abundance of life.

And somewhere in the distance, when the clouds allow it, stands Kilimanjaro—Africa’s highest mountain—watching silently over the entire drama.

That contrast stayed with me. A mountain that appears timeless. Animals that seemed to live entirely in the present. And we, the human beings, who spend much of their lives worrying about tomorrow.

For me that seemed to be one of the quiet lessons of yesterday’s safari. The zebra does not know it is part of a magnificent ecosystem. The elephant does not pause to admire the landscape. The giraffe does not contemplate the sunset.They simply live in the here and now. We, on the other hand, are constantly rushing through life while trying to capture it.

Yesterday, sitting in a safari vehicle and watching one landscape after another unfold, I found myself wondering whether wilderness is really about seeing animals. Perhaps it is about seeing ourselves differently.

Amboseli did not need to tell us that life is precious. It simply demonstrated it—silently, continuously, and without asking for our attention. I only had to be quiet enough to notice.

In musing….. Shakti Ghosal

Nature Never Reads Our Rulebook

A newspaper report I read the other day literally stopped me in my tracks. It spoke about an unexpected consequence of the geopolitical tensions around the Strait of Hormuz. As ships remain berthed for prolonged periods, marine scientists are warning of an increased risk of invasive organisms hitching a ride across oceans, disrupting ecosystems thousands of kilometres away. At first glance, it appeared to be a story about shipping and marine biology. But as I read further, I realised it was really a story about something much larger.

Nature rarely responds in straight lines. A political conflict can become an environmental risk. A delay in maritime traffic could alter the movement of microscopic life. Human decisions in one corner of the world quietly reshape ecosystems in another.

While writing 2056: The Year of Water and Fire, I had found myself returning repeatedly to this thought. We often imagine climate change as a sequence of visible catastrophes—cyclones, floods, rising seas. Yet the more profound transformations are often quieter. Species migrate. Rivers redraw themselves. New ecological relationships emerge. Life adapts in ways we neither anticipate nor fully understand. Toward the end of the story, after a devastating cyclone had rewritten the geography of the Sundarbans, the first instinct of the survivors was despair. But when the dronobots began mapping the devastation, they uncovered something unexpected. Amid the destruction, nature was already experimenting. Islands were shifting. Mangroves were finding new footholds. Wildlife was adapting. The ecosystem, scarred but alive, was quietly reorganising itself for a different climate. It was neither revenge nor redemption, it was recalibration.

That thought had stayed with me because it challenges one of our deepest assumptions. We often speak of “saving nature,” as though it were a fragile object waiting for human intervention. History suggests something more humbling. Nature has an extraordinary capacity to reinvent itself. It is we who struggle to keep pace with the consequences of that reinvention.

Perhaps the real lesson is this. The future will not unfold as a neat extension of the present. It will emerge through countless interactions we barely notice today—between politics and ecology, technology and biology, human ambition and planetary resilience.

In 2056, Nayanjol, the sentient boat, eventually becomes more than a machine. He becomes a guardian who understands that survival does not lie in resisting nature, but in learning to listen to it.

Maybe that is the question our own times are quietly asking. Not whether nature will adapt. But whether we will.

In musing….. Shakti Ghosal

#ClimateChange #Nature #Resilience #TheLastWriterOfKolkata #2056TheYearOfWaterAndFire #SpeculativeFiction #FutureOfHumanity #Sundarbans #EnvironmentalChange #ShaktiGhosal

The Future Doesn’t Arrive All at Once

When I wrote 2056: The Year of the Water and Fire, I imagined a Bengal where climate change was no longer an environmental issue. It had become a way of life.

This newspaper report made me pause.

It says that Kolkata now loses around 80 hours of sleep every year because of rising night-time temperatures. Think about that for a moment. Climate change is no longer confined to distant glaciers, rising seas or violent cyclones. It is quietly entering our bedrooms, stealing our sleep, affecting our health, our emotions, and perhaps even the way we think.

The future, I have often felt, rarely announces itself dramatically. It arrives in small, almost unnoticed ways.

A warmer night.
A little less sleep.
A little less patience.
A little more fatigue.

Until one day, we realise that what we once called unusual has quietly become normal.

In 2056: The Year of the Water and Fire, I explored what might happen when rising waters, stronger storms and changing climates begin to reshape not just our landscape, but our choices, our communities and our humanity.

Perhaps the greatest lesson is this:

Climate change is no longer about saving the planet. It is about preserving the quality of human life on it.

The Earth will endure.

The question is whether we will learn to adapt before adaptation is forced upon us.

#ClimateChange #GlobalWarming #Kolkata #2056TheYearOfWaterAndFire #TheLastWriterOfKolkata #SpeculativeFiction #FutureOfHumanity #Sustainability #ThoughtsThatMatter

When Fiction meets Foresight

When Fiction Meets Foresight: A Reflection on The Last Writer of Kolkata and Other Stories based on the BCG Henderson Institute report.

Author – A BCG Consultant ( name kept confidential)

Reading the ‘Last Writer of Kolkata and other stories’ in the context of BCG Henderson Institute’s Beyond Tomorrow: Four Scenarios for the World of 2050 produces an unexpected sensation. I can confirm that the report is the product of rigorous analysis of megatrends, historical data and expert interviews. Shakti Ghosal’s book is speculative fiction. Yet both seem to be looking at the same horizon.

The BCG report reminds us that “the decisions leaders make over the next 5 years will shape the next 25.” It does not attempt to predict the future. Instead, it explores plausible futures emerging from forces already visible today. The four stories in this collection do something remarkably similar.

Consider The Last Writer of Kolkata. BCG’s “AI Abundance” scenario describes a world where AI transforms work, creativity and identity, leaving people searching for “meaning and identity beyond employment.” The ageing writer Rudra Bose inhabits a future shaped by a similar question. If machines can write, create and remember, what remains uniquely human? The story is not really about technology. It is about dignity, relevance and the stubborn human need to leave behind a voice that matters.

In Echo Chamber, technology enters an even more intimate space—memory itself. The BCG report warns that future societies may trade elements of personal freedom for stability, efficiency and social cohesion. The story asks a disturbing question: If our memories can be edited, curated or manipulated, what becomes of our identity? Memory, after all, is not merely a record of our lives. It is our life.

The environmental anxieties running through 2056: The Year of Water and Fire find an echo in BCG’s climate scenarios. The report speaks of a world facing “stress on food and water systems” and increasingly extreme weather. The story translates those trends into human experience. Climate change is no longer a scientific projection; it becomes a force that shapes survival, migration and moral choices.

Perhaps the most poignant parallel emerges in When the Rain Remembered. BCG highlights ageing populations, declining fertility and shifting demographics as defining features of the coming decades. Ghosal imagines the emotional consequences of those trends. The story asks what happens when societies grow older, families become smaller, and loneliness becomes a public condition rather than a private feeling.

What makes this collection noteworthy is that it does not offer technological optimism or dystopian despair. Instead, it explores the fragile space in between. Like the BCG report, it understands that the future is not a destination but a series of choices.

The greatest compliment one can pay The Last Writer of Kolkata and Other Stories is this: the book does not feel like fiction written about tomorrow. It feels like tomorrow trying to speak to us today.

Reference

1)bcg-scenarios-2050-apr-2026-web.pdf

2) http://www.shaktighosal.com

A Conversation on the Edge of Tomorrow

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.

In Musing….. Shakti Ghosal

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