Tag: Shakti Ghosal

The House That Time Forgot


A Masai Welcome dance

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.

Masai Mara

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.

What if…


….. a city allows danger to become normal until tragedy makes it visible.

August 2026

The fire in the Free School street building which housed hotels, offices and homes may have started with a short circuit. But tragedies of this magnitude are rarely caused by a single spark. Nine people died in a building where hotels, offices and homes had somehow learnt to coexist within a maze of cramped spaces, narrow passages and questions about fire safety.

Times Of India report

I kept wondering: who allowed this to become normal? Perhaps that is the more uncomfortable question. A city does not become unsafe in one day. It becomes unsafe one ignored violation at a time. One certificate not checked. One inspection postponed. One illegal alteration overlooked. One warning that nobody thought was urgent. And then, one night, the building catches fire.

We will now demand accountability. There will be investigations, committees, audits and perhaps arrests. All these are surely necessary. But does governance have to begin only after people die? The real test of a city is not how efficiently it rescues people from a burning building. It is whether it had the courage to prevent that building from becoming a death trap in the first place.

As I folded the newspaper, I wondered whether we have become too accustomed to calling preventable tragedies accidents. Perhaps the most important responsibility of governance is not to manage disasters better. It is to make fewer disasters possible.

— Rudra Bose, The Last Writer of Kolkata

What if…


……societies change not because they have become wiser but because they become preoccupied with different anxieties.

August 2026

Nineteen years.  That is long enough for a child to become an adult. It is also long enough for governments to rise and fall. Long enough for a city to forget the sound of its own anger.

The other day, the newspaper told me that Taslima Nasrin has returned to Kolkata after nineteen years. The same city that once burned over her presence now seems to have greeted her mostly with routine, security cordons and a curious indifference.

Talima Nasrin report in the Newspaper

It made me wonder. What has really changed? Did we become more tolerant? Did we finally learn that books and what is written within need not be answered with barricades? Or have we simply acquired newer fears that leave us with less energy for old ones?

Perhaps every generation chooses its own battles. Yesterday it was identity. Today it is jobs, examinations, inflation, technology, security and an uncertain future. The loudest outrage of one decade quietly becomes yesterday’s headline.

As I folded the newspaper, I realised that a mature society is not one where everyone agrees. It is one where disagreement no longer needs to be escorted by violence. If Kolkata has truly changed, the victory does not belong to any government, any ideology or any writer.It belongs to the simple belief that ideas should be answered by better ideas, not by frightened crowds.

That is how civilisation grows—almost unnoticed, one quieter street at a time.

— Rudra Bose, The Last Writer of Kolkata

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.

A Times of india report

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

What if…


…. we do not really know the people who live beside us?

August 2026

When I was a child, every neighbourhood had an unofficial security system. It was called knowing one another. Your mother knew who lived next door. The grocer knew whose son had returned from college. The postman knew which house had a new baby. The stranger was noticed because everyone else was familiar.

Today we have CCTV cameras, biometric gates, visitor apps, facial recognition and digital identities. Yet we often do not know the person who shares the lift with us.

The newspapers tell us that a young man, described by neighbours as polite and ordinary, is now accused of living a different life of a terrorist behind an ordinary face. If the allegations are proven true, it is a chilling reminder that the greatest disguises are no longer masks. They are routines. Terrorism succeeds long before any explosion. It succeeds the day suspicion replaces trust, when every unfamiliar face begins to look dangerous, and every ordinary neighbour becomes a question mark.

That is precisely why a civilised society must refuse both complacency and paranoia. Security agencies must remain vigilant. Citizens must remain alert. But neither should surrender the humanity that allows communities to exist.

As I folded the newspaper, I wondered whether the greatest security failure of our times is not merely that dangerous people can hide among ordinary citizens. It is that modern life has quietly taught ordinary citizens to live among one another without ever truly knowing those around us. Perhaps the strongest wall against terror is not built of concrete or surveillance. Perhaps it begins when a society rediscovers the forgotten art of being a community.

— Rudra Bose, The Last Writer of Kolkata

#thelastwriterofkolkata, #rudrabose, #shaktighosal, #communitylife

The Invisible Architecture of Success


We often admire people’s discipline, without ever seeing the structures that quietly support it.

Some months back, during my morning walks, I started noticing an elderly gentleman doing his exercises in the central garden of our residential complex.

He was there every day, almost at the same time and doing the same routine. For many mornings, I simply admired his discipline from a distance but one day, curiosity got the better of me. I wished  him ‘Good Morning’ and soon we were sitting on a nearby bench, I remarked, “I see that you have incredible willpower.”

At that, he laughed, “That’s what everyone thinks. But it isn’t really true. Not really.”

As I looked at him, puzzled, he pointed towards his wristwatch, “My alarm rings at five-thirty.”

“So does mine,” I smiled.

He continued, “My walking shoes are beside the bed every night. My exercise clothes are laid out before I go to sleep. My doctor expects to see my blood sugar readings every month. And my granddaughter has made me promise that I’ll be healthy enough to dance at her wedding.”

He paused, “Now tell me… where exactly does willpower come into the story?”

For a few moments, I didn’t have an answer. I seemed to have mistaken discipline for determination. What I was really seeing was structure.

As we got up to walk back to our respective towers, he said something that has stayed with me ever since, “Most people wait to feel motivated. I prefer to prepare my environment.”

That single sentence shifted my perspective. How often do we rely on willpower alone? We promise ourselves we’ll read more, exercise regularly, spend less time on our phones, learn a new skill. In my case, it is even, write that book. In your case, it might be to start that business.

Then, when our enthusiasm fades, we conclude that we lack discipline. Perhaps the problem isn’t our commitment. Perhaps, it’s our architecture. It became increasingly clear to me that our lives are already full of structures. Some quietly support the future we want. Others quietly support the habits we’re trying to leave behind.

Success is rarely built on one heroic act of determination. More often, it is built on dozens of small decisions made long before the moment of action arrives.

Before we parted, I thanked the gentleman for the conversation. He smiled and said, “People spend too much time trying to become stronger. They spend too little time making the path easier.”

As I walked home, I realised that remarkable lives are not held together by extraordinary willpower. They are held together by ordinary structures, repeated with quiet consistency. Perhaps that explains why success often looks effortless from a distance.

We see the destination.We applaud the discipline.But we rarely notice the invisible architecture that made the journey possible. And perhaps that’s the first structure worth building.

In musing…….                           Shakti Ghosal

What if…


……when a generation no longer asks for privilege, but for credibility.

July 2026

A few mornings back I learnt that an entire movement has chosen to call itself the ‘Cockroach Janta Party’. I smiled. Not because the name is amusing. But because history has always had an odd habit of allowing the insulted to reclaim the insult. (I recall many years back, the Chai-wallah epithet had provided a positive momentum to Prime Minister Modi’s persona)

There was a time when young people marched carrying flags. Today they march carrying memes. Yesterday’s slogans have become today’s hashtags.

Yet beneath the humour, I hear something painfully familiar. It is not anger; it is disappointment.

Every generation believes the next examination will open the next door. When that examination itself becomes the subject of doubt, it is not merely a paper that leaks. Trust does.

The young are often accused of being impatient. Perhaps they are. But there are few things more dangerous than asking an entire generation to wait while uncertainty becomes a way of life.

Governments may negotiate. Oppositions may protest. Television studios will certainly debate. But none of them can afford to overlook the quiet question echoing through millions of homes, ‘If merit itself begins to look negotiable, what exactly are young people expected to believe in?’

As I folded the newspaper, I realised that the greatest examination before our nation is no longer the one written by students. It is the one our institutions are writing every day. And unlike the students, they will not be judged by the answers they give. They will be judged by the trust they restore.

— Rudra Bose,
The Last Writer of Kolkata

#WhatIfWithRudraBose #RudraBose #TheLastWriterOfKolkata #ShaktiGhosal #PoliticsAndSociety #Democracy #Justice #HumanNature #ReflectiveWriting #WritersOfInstagram

20th July: Between a Briefcase and the Moon


There are some dates on the calendar that quietly gather meanings over a lifetime. For me, 20th July is one of them.

As a child in Delhi, I was fascinated by the Second World War. That fascination began at home. My father had an extraordinary gift for storytelling, and through his words I travelled to battlefields, cities in ruins and moments when the fate of the world seemed to rest on the decisions of a handful of people. Those stories led me to books, documentaries and films, and much later, to Berlin itself.

Over the years, I visited Berlin many times. Once, I even stayed in what had once been East Berlin, long after the Wall had disappeared. Yet the city still carried memories that no bulldozer could erase. Every street seemed to whisper history. Years ago, I wrote a blog titled Those Faces of Berlin (https://esgeemusings.com/2013/04/01/those-faces-of-berlin/ )  , reflecting on that remarkable city and, among other things, the failed attempt by Claus von Stauffenberg and his fellow conspirators to assassinate Hitler with a bomb hidden in a briefcase on 20th July 1944.

Operation Valkyrie failed. Hitler survived. Many of those who dared to resist paid with their lives. Yet what has stayed with me is not merely the failure of the plot but the courage behind it. Sometimes history remembers victories. Sometimes it remembers those who knew they would probably lose, yet chose to act because conscience demanded nothing less.

Bendlerblock, Berlin – Where the conspirators were executed

Exactly twenty-five years later, on another 20th July, humanity wrote a very different chapter.

I was a small boy then. I still remember my father listening intently to the live broadcast of the Apollo 11 Moon landing on the Voice of America. Later that day, we went to the United States Information Service near Mandi House in New Delhi to see the full-size replica of the Lunar Module. Like countless others of my generation, I stared at it in wonder. For days afterwards, our classroom conversations revolved around rockets, astronauts and a future that suddenly seemed limitless. Even 2001: A Space Odyssey, set what then felt like the distant future, no longer appeared to be science fiction.

Decades later, I travelled to that Mecca of Space travel, NASA’s Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral. For me the trip was a pilgrimage in more sense than one. As I roamed between the life size models of the Saturn V rocket, the command and the lunar modules of the Apollo program, my mind once again went back to the 20th July of more than half a century back. I also came to know of the Artemis program tasked to once again send Man to the Moon. I wrote a blog on that visit : https://esgeemusings.com/2022/05/19/the-children-of-zeus/

Apollo 11 Lunar Module on the moon

It strikes me that these two events, separated by a quarter of a century yet sharing the same date, reveal the astonishing range of the human spirit.

On one 20th July, people risked everything to rid the world of tyranny. On another, human beings stepped onto another world altogether.

One date reminds us of humanity’s darkest impulses. The other celebrates its brightest possibilities.

Perhaps that is why every year, when 20th July arrives, I think not only of history but also of choice. We are capable of building dictatorships, and we are capable of building spacecraft. We can choose fear, or we can choose courage. We can remain trapped by our past, or we can reach for horizons that once seemed impossible. History does not merely tell us who we were. It quietly asks us who we wish to become.

What does 20th July evoke for you—a lesson from history, or a reminder of humanity’s endless capacity to dream?

In musing…… Shakti Ghosal

The Match That Refused to Become a Classic


Or perhaps, more truthfully…   The Night Football Taught Me One Last Lesson

For days, the build-up had been impossible to escape. Argentina versus Spain, the reigning World Champions against the reigning European Champions. Kolkata itself seemed to be preparing for battle. Giant screens were being erected across the city, clubs announced that their bars would remain open well past midnight, and even the Chief Minister joined the excitement by supporting public screenings across the districts.

My wife and I prepared with equal seriousness. Dinner was served early. Television was politely ignored. We even resisted the temptation of “just one episode” of our favourite series. Sleep was carefully scheduled like a military operation. For once, my biological clock decided to cooperate. I woke up five minutes before the alarm, feeling rather pleased with myself. If only Argentina had been equally punctual…….

From the opening whistle, Spain looked every inch the team we had admired throughout the tournament. Their passing was crisp, their movement effortless and their control of the midfield almost hypnotic. Watching Rodri and company was like watching expert chess players move pieces three moves ahead.

Argentina, on the other hand, looked strangely burdened. The flowing football that had carried them to the final had vanished. Passes went astray. Clearances seemed to arrive at Spanish feet with remarkable generosity. Creativity had apparently decided to sleep in, unlike me. The longer the match went on, the stranger it became. This was supposed to be a feast, instead, it felt like waiting for fireworks that stubbornly refused to ignite. Only one man seemed determined to keep Argentina alive, Emiliano Martínez, the Goal Keeper. Save after magnificent save, he single-handedly prevented the scoreline from becoming embarrassing. Had the trophy been awarded to goalkeepers alone, the ceremony could have ended much earlier.

Half-time came. Then full-time. Still no goals. Argentina was eventually reduced to ten men after a red card, and one could almost sense the inevitable drawing closer. In the second half of extra time, Ferran Torres finally found the breakthrough that Spain had threatened all night. It proved enough. Argentina launched one desperate final assault. Messi searched for one last moment of magic. Instead, his final effort struck a Spanish defender before the whistle brought an end not just to the match, but almost certainly to one of the greatest World Cup careers football has ever witnessed.

The image that stayed with me was Messi sitting quietly on the turf. Sometimes silence speaks louder than celebration. As I finally went back to bed at nearly four in the morning, I realised that football had once again wandered into philosophy. Every once in a while, we meet someone—or some team—that is simply better on that particular day. There is no shame in acknowledging excellence. In fact, there is wisdom in it. Spain didn’t win because Argentina failed. Spain won because they played almost the perfect tournament. And perhaps that is the hardest lesson of all. Not every disappointment is the result of our shortcomings. Sometimes, someone else simply deserves the applause……

Even if, somewhere in Kolkata, two sleep-deprived football fans quietly wished the ending had been different.

In musing….                                                             Shakti Ghosal

The Future Doesn’t Arrive All at Once


A piece from the Newspaper

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