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
A New Beginning 