A new lamb insists upon, really only one thing, and so her bleats increase into a screaming mantra. But spring shadows a rough beast
who drags his feet through the grass even in the day-long sun, even as the breeze massages the dry pasture slowly awake. Just when old Mother Ewe
can’t take one more snowfall, the sky darkens, the flakes begin to dress her fleece, and she lays down on her bags to low the same prayer with her lambs.
C. Mikal Oness is the author of Oracle Bones and Water Becomes Bone. His latest collection, Works and Days, is forthcoming from Cornerstone Press.
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By Hamiruddin Middya: Translated from Bengali by V. Ramaswamy
Babu, I am merely a poor Santhal. Please don’t take offence at anything I say. After all, we people who belong to the forest have always been losing. We are day labourers. We neither have nice houses nor do we possess any cultivable land.
Rangakul, Kusumkanali, Nabindanga and Mohulboni were all small Adivasi villages in the forest. Nearby were farmers, and people of the Ghosh, Mahato and Sinha communities. All the land belongs to them. We gaze at the sky in the hope of rain and cultivate a single crop. Some people have taken up the timber business and become rich and arrogant overnight. Why would they care about farming! It’s us who want to farm the land. A one-third share to the landlord, or else a monetary arrangement. We are poor folk, where will we get so much money! So, we cultivate the land on a crop sharing crop basis. But can one survive the whole year with that? The moment there’s no more rice for the cooking pot, we queue up beside the metalled road, wave out to any bus going eastward and get on board. After all, there’s no shortage of jobs there. With water from the canal available there, the fields yield golden paddy twice a year. By the grace of Marang Buru, all we want is to work our bodies so that we can feed our bellies.
When water is scarce at the edge of the forest where we live, famine looms. What’s new about that!
Singh babu is the big warehouse keeper here. He’s in the timber business. His house is at the fringe of the forest, across the railway line. It’s not a house but a fortress. He has done well in business with the help of his sons. Our men and women carry dry wood gathered from the forest to the babu’s warehouse across the railway bridge. He weighs our bundles and buys them. Even if the price is higher in the marketplace, who wants to go there if you have someone close by!
I cultivate a bigha-and-a-half of the babu’s land. It’s his warehouse that Lokha’s Ma carries wood to. There was a terrible drought this year. Fields, pastures and ponds were all parched, gasping for water. The paddy harvest was not good. The stalks were not tall. Just like a mother’s milk dries up if she is unable to eat, it’s the same with the ears of paddy. What will we eat the whole year? An unpared bamboo in the arse! How will I go to the babu and tell him?
I got the opportunity. Lokha set a trap somewhere and caught a waterhen. I told him, “Give me the bird, son. Let me give it to the babu.”
But Lokha did not want to part with it. “Why should I give it just like that?”
I said, “It’s not just like that, son. I have to make the babu happy, he’s very fond of bird meat. After all, we survive by cultivating his land.”
Who knows what Lokha thought but he did not argue any more.
I went with the bird at dusk. Singh babu was sitting with his son on a platform under the mango tree in front of the warehouse, he was doing some calculations. As soon as he saw me, he exclaimed, “Arey[1] it’s Hansda! What’s that in your hand?”
I went close to the babu. The babu studied the bird and exclaimed, “Wow! You’ve brought a waterhen!”
The babu never called me Sanatan Hansda, only Hansda. I could see that he was very happy to get the waterhen. His middle son, Haru, took the bird from me and left. Their house, surrounded by walls, was just behind the warehouse. I sat down below the platform.
The babu asked, “Has the paddy been threshed?”
“Babu, that’s what I came to tell you about. All the paddy has been destroyed in the drought! After threshing the remaining stalks, I could only get six sacks of paddy.”
The babu’s face turned grave. He blurted out angrily, “What the hell are you saying, bastard! Six sacks? I went to the field and saw for myself, it was full of swaying stalks.”
“Yes, babu, it was like that then. But there was no rain in Magh[2]. The plants began to droop after that!” I pleaded with the babu.
“Enough of your nonsense! Haru will go tomorrow and see how it’s only six sacks. Don’t try to be cunning!”
“Sure, send him then, babu. I am not telling you lies.”
Haru didn’t come. The next day, Singh babu himself arrived in haste. He came in the middle of our festivities. I was anxious wondering where I would ask him to sit, and what I would feed him. All of us, men and women, drink hanriya [3]and dance. Ours is a small village. We can’t afford to buy a dhamsa or a madol. We had everything earlier, but they broke long ago. When the boys and girls of the village grow up and it’s time for them to get married, we get those drums on rent. During our festivals, the boys in the youth club play music on the mic. We dance to that. Seeing our song and dance, Singh babu later whispered to me, “Give me a glass of hanriya too. Let me try it. But mind it, don’t tell Haru!”
“Oh no, babu. Don’t worry about that. Have as much as you want.” I thought it was funny. The father drinks out of his son’s sight. After all, we have none of all that. Father and son drink together to their heart’s content.
Why were Singh babu’s eyes so bloodshot today? I was scared. I said to him, “Come, come babu. Come inside and sit comfortably.”
The babu said angrily, “I haven’t come to sit, Hansda. Show me the paddy quickly.”
So, I showed the babu the paddy. He looked at me sternly and asked, “You haven’t hidden it somewhere, have you?”
“No, no babu. I would never do something like that in my life,” I said, holding my ears with my hands. “Why don’t you ask someone?”
“Chandmani and Gona Murmu got a good harvest. What kind of farming are you doing?”
“They got a pump-set from somewhere and irrigated their fields twice. There’s a shallow tubewell in the field there.”
The babu was about to leave with a sullen face. I said to him, “Let us keep the crop this time, babu. It’s a meagre harvest. My family can survive for a few days with that. I’ll repay you next time.”
The babu came to a halt with a start. He lowered his voice, and said, “Why should you go without food – am I not there! You have a young wife at home. Send her to the warehouse in the evening. After all, you can’t send her when people are around!” And saying so, the babu left. There was a strange smile on his face. Seeing that smile, my chest heaved. What on earth did the babu say before he left! How could I send Lokha’s Ma to the warehouse with wood now?
2
There was a fair in the nearby village of Mohulbani. As the Shalui festival is not celebrated with much fanfare in our village, it’s to the fair in Mohulbani that everyone dresses up and goes. There’s a cockfight every year during this time. This year, I too was a hauchi. Someone who participates in a cockfight is called a hauchi. I had never put a cock to fight. But the idea of doing that during this year’s festival caught my fancy.
Lokha’s Ma had brought the rooster as a tiny chick from her father’s house. I saved it so many times from the jaws of wretched mongooses and civets. It was big now, and sparkling red in colour. It crowed, konk konkkor konk, in the semi-darkness of dawn. Hearing its crow, the birds on the trees then began chirping. It hovered around every hen in the village, all by itself. It walked with its chest puffed out, as if it was the king of the forest. If such a rooster could not fight, then why on earth was it born?
Lokha tugged at my lungi and demanded, “I’ll go too, Baba. Take me along with you to see the fair.”
Lokha’s Ma said, “Take him along. He’s my little boy. On a festival day, he’ll go to see the fair, he’ll eat jilapi[4], but no – what kind of a father are you!”
“All right. Come along then.”
Mustard flowers were in bloom in the fields. It was yellow everywhere, both on the lowlands and the uplands. After all, it was a festival of flowers now. Men and women, old and young, were walking to the fair along the narrow boundary ridge. Some raced along on bicycles on the red laterite road, ringing their bells, kring kring. Close to the forest was the field known as Bhangatila Maath, which was where the fair took place. Shops with captivating wares, flutes for children, toy drums. Such a variety of food items, telebhaja[5], jilapi. Earthen pots and utensils were selling somewhere under a tree canopy. Rows of bicycles and pick-up vans were elsewhere. An old Santhal man was going around selling bamboo flutes. He himself was rapt in the melody he was playing. There was a cloud of red dust. Girls and young men were walking around holding hands, disregarding the dust. The crowd at the fair was made up of people from all the nearby villages.
Was it only Santhals? No, babu folk too had come to have fun. Everyone was dressed in new clothes, looking their best. Girls had applied mahua oil on their hair and parted their hair, with wildflowers adorning their coiffure.
Hidden away from the fair, in a clearing inside the forest, there was a crowd of people. That’s where the cockfights took place. It used to take place in the fair ground itself earlier. But a few times, police vans had arrived and pulled down everything. It has moved its venue into the forest ever since. I went there with Lokha. Sal-wood poles had been planted, and the spot had been encircled with a rope. Everyone was standing around the rope, Some of them were hauchis, with roosters in their hands. Others had come only to watch.
I asked Lokha to stand under a tendu tree, and told him, “Don’t go anywhere, son. Just stand here and watch the cockfights. I have to find us an opponent.”
I was going around with my rooster, looking for an opponent, when a suited and booted babu with a camera on his shoulder pushed his way through the crowd. Everyone gaped at the man.
A few kaatkaars, those who tied blades to the roosters’ feet, had gone into the enclosure through the boundary rope. Seeing the babu, they said, “Hey babu, what business do you have here? You want to publicise the cockfight? Stop taking pictures, we warn you!”
The babu put his camera into his bag following the threat.
As I went around searching, who should I encounterbut Singh babu — a pleasure-seeking man indeed! He frequently participated in cockfights to indulge his fancy. From time to time, he also wagered money on the days of the weekly market. There was a spirited rooster in the babu’s hands. Seeing me, he said, “What’s up, Hansda, have you brought one too?”
I nodded my head, and said, “Yes, babu. I did it for fun.”
“But you’re in bad times! So how come you’re indulging your fancy?”
Seeing the rooster in my hand, the babu’s rooster stretched its neck, fluffed the feathers on its neck, and glared agitatedly. When I had told the babu about the six sacks of paddy, the babu had glared at me in the same way. My rooster’s eyes too emitted fire. They were a fine pair, but how could I tell the babu that! He was a well-known man, why would he agree to a cockfight with me?
The kaatkar Hiralal, from Panchal was nearby, tying blades toa rooster’stoes. Seeing our two roosters, he burst out, “The two make a fine pair! Why don’t you get them to fight?”
Had Hiralal lost his head or what! What’s this he was saying! Would someone like Singh babu agree to a cockfight with my rooster! I was a poor Santhal. I survived by farming the babu’s land. But I was astonished to hear the babu’s response.
“Hey Hansda! Are you willing?”
I replied hesitantly, “Whatever you wish, babu.”
Hiralal began tying blades to the two roosters’ toes. We didn’t call them blades. The blades were known as heter. Kaatkars had arrived to tie the heter to the toes of all the fighting roosters. After all, there were so many roosters for the cockfight! If there had been only one kaatkaar, it would be night by the time the contests were over.
The rooster belonging to Budhon Ghosh, the ration-dealer from Harindanga village, was fighting now with the one belonging to Fatik Ghosh from Panchal. There was a circle made with lime powder within the roped-in enclosure. The two roosters were made to face each other within the circle. The roosters in the hands of other cockfighters in the crowd raised their necks and crowed. The cockfight was going to be a lively one.
Man playing the DhamsaMan playing the MadolFrom Public Domain
Meanwhile, the beats of the dhamsa and madol came wafting from the fairground. Intoxicated with mahua[6]and hanriya, our young men and women were dancing in a circle, hand in hand. A tide of joy washed over the hills. The whole forest was in a state of intoxication with the drim drima drim beat.
Budhon Ghosh won the cockfight. The spectators clapped and whistled to congratulate him. Fatik’s defeated rooster was his now.
It was our turn next. Singh babu and I entered the roped enclosure. We held the tails of the two roosters and stood them face to face in the middle of the lime circle. Singh babu and I too were face to face. These weren’t roosters! They were like magnets drawn to iron. They could not be restrained, they kept pulling forward. As soon as the whistle blew, fweeeet, we released the roosters. The fight began. They flapped their wings, torn feathers flew into the air. Neither of them spared the other.
When the babu’s rooster was overcoming mine, the spectators applauded, and cried out, “Singh babu! Singh babu!” Again, when my rooster was beating the babu’s rooster, a few spectators behind me excitedly burst out, “Hansda! Hansda!”
I was witnessing another battle. After all, the two roosters weren’t roosters. They were Singh babu and me. We were down on our hands and knees, both of us had become roosters. We were in an unflinching face-off. Behind me were rows and rows of Santhal men and women, mothers, brothers and sisters, standing with bows and arrows, battle axes, and spears in their hands. And behind the babu were row upon row of diku, as outsiders were known.
I suddenly heard the Santhals cry out excitedly, ‘Sanatan! Sanatan!’ I realised I had lost my concentration. I saw that my brave rooster had pierced his blade into the breast of the babu’s rooster and felled it. I had won!
I rushed and picked up the babu’s rooster. It was mine according to the regulations. The kaatkaar too had to be paid for fixing the blades. There was no end to Lokha’s joy! The next fight had already begun.
Lokha’s Ma had forbidden me again and again. “Hey, what if this fully grown rooster loses? How about indulging yourself with food only at the festival instead?” But I paid her no heed. How happy Lokha’s Ma would be now!
But as soon as I glanced at Singh babu, I had a strange feeling. Why had his face turned so ashen? After all it was merely a battle between two roosters…
I felt no joy despite having won. What had I done, oh dear! I had beaten the babu. How could I take his rooster home and eat it?
I said to Lokha, “Go, my son. Go and give the rooster to the babu.”
Lokha asked me, “Are you very angry? We won! So why should I give it?”
What was Lokha saying! That we won? After all, we had never been able to win! We had been beaten time and again, my dear! Ever since some distant time. What had I done now, oh dear, by beating the babu! My eyes turned moist. I went with the rooster to the babu.
The babu did not say a single word to me.
I said, “Hey babu! Take this. Let your boys have a feast. I have one already!”
The babu said, “No, Hansda. I won’t take a beaten rooster home.”
Hearing that, I shook my head. The babu patted my shoulder and said, “Let’s see what happens next year.”
Hamiruddin Middya was born in 1997 in Ruppal, a remote village in Bankura district in West Bengal. Born in a marginal farmer’s family, he has been in agricultural fields and farming from his childhood. His passion for writing started from his school days. He has worked as a domestic helper, a migrant construction mason, and travelled to rural fairs to sell wares. Hamiruddin’s first story was published in the magazine Lagnausha in 2016. Since then, three collections of his short stories have been published, Azraeler Daak (2019), Mathrakha (2022), and Ponchisti Golpo (2025). The story collection, Mathrakha, received the Yuva Puraskar for 2023 from the Sahitya Akademi, India.
V. Ramaswamy took up translation following two decades of engagement in social activism for the rights of the labouring poor of Kolkata. Beginning with the iconic and experimental writer Subimal Misra, he then devoted himself to translating “voices from the margins”, both in fiction and nonfiction. Besides translating four volumes of Misra’s short fiction, Ramaswamy has translated Manoranjan Byapari, Adhir Biswas, Swati Guha, Mashiul Alam, Shahidul Zahir, Shahaduz Zaman and Ismail Darbesh, among others.
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sometimes they arrive like a fox with a mouthful of feathers because somewhere, something has died or been eaten alive or they startle you like the clapping of pigeon wings – a spasm of applause in a silent wood – an idea stirring up there in the wet branches, one you’d half forgotten others push their way out of dreams, in the way tiny quills would poke through a feather bed or goose down pillow, to remind you of all you are resting on but the best of them drift down like a blessing, rocking like an airborne cradle to land between the gold of the nib and the cream of the paper with a message from the bird who’s already flown
Chris Ringrose is a writer of poetry and fiction who lives in Melbourne, Australia. His latest poetry collection is Palmistry (ICoE Press, Melbourne, 2016). Creative Lives, a collection of interviews with South Asian writers, was published by Ibidem Press, Stuttgart, in 2021. His poetry website is http://www.cringrose.com
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Pondicherry must have been a dream. To co-exist in the halls of history where the French had left their mark was well within one’s capacity, but to thrive in a society where sandwiches were the norm and butter paneer the exception verged on the extraordinary. Every day in Pondicherry merited a visit to Baker Street, whose otherworldly triad of sandwich, croissant and quiche deserved an equally competent pat on the back; to not grow fat, content and happy in this town would have been doing it an injustice.
The Basilica of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, towering above the modest remains of Mahatma Gandhi Road, buffered the excesses that Our Lady of Angels (or Notre Dame des Anges – you tended to pick up lingua colonia in Pondicherry) gracefully bypassed. The ashram of the terrorist-turned-mystic Aurobindo Ghosh sat quietly on Rue Marine. To capture the whiff of spirituality by contact two lanes away on Rue de Dupleix was not to ask for much.
Yellow buildings in French Pondicherry Church of Notre Dame des Anges
The breath of fresh air that Ananda Adyar Bhavan up the same road promised but did not deliver remained just as it was when I had last come here three monsoons ago; in a stubborn reluctance to offer it anything but importune wisdom, I remembered being carried away by Alexander Dumas’ The Count of Monte Cristo (1846).Yet, it befitted the traveller to note that Rue Dumas honoured the colonialist Pierre Benoît Dumas[1], and not the man considerably greater than him. Of course, the French celebrated Dupleix[2] far more, as evidenced by a huge monument dedicated to him at the end of Goubert Avenue. To them, he was the greatest hero in a world where Napoleon was yet to be born, and where the English did not have Cromwell and the Americans had not seen Washington.
The sun bypassed the graceless winds that set up shop on the Promenade every evening; frequented far more by tourists than locals, it risked losing its sheen as something more than a weekend destination. But the coffee — of course, the coffee — whose aroma one could smell five streets away, was only a tad more appealing than the Pain au chocolat in all the bakeries of Pondicherry, upon whom entire paeans could be written.
To be carried away by such history was a must in Pondicherry; to stay sane, all one had to do was avoid mixing one’s emotions up in the Black Town, and be carried away by scarcity, poverty and destitution while crossing the canal between Netaji Salai and HM Kassim Salai. When I asked a fumbling Frenchman as to why the most significant roads of Pondicherry were named after men who vociferously advocated for self-rule, he told me that he did not know much about de Gaulle, and that his companion, a mild-complexioned young woman to whom being a liberal meant the same as being a libertine, had not read Voltaire.
“In the heart of every Frenchman, there is wine,” I said, quoting Ramanujan, who had been to Strasbourg and Marseille by road, but this only elicited the tiniest of smiles from a pockmarked student from Nantes who had read Hugo, and to whom the world was only just showing its vraies couleurs. It was all she could do not to stand in attention and belt out La Marseillaise under the mid-afternoon sun on Rue de Bussy.
[1] Pierre Benoît Dumas (1668–1745) was the French Governor General for Pondicherry
[2] Joseph Marquis Dupleix (1697-1763), Governor general of French India
Mohul Bhowmick is a national-level cricketer, sports journalist, poet, essayist and travel writer from Hyderabad, India. He has published five collections of poems and one travelogue so far. His latest book, The Past Is Another Country, came out in 2025. More of his work can be discovered on his website: www.mohulbhowmick.com.
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Beside a relentless freeway, which is anything but free and takes its toll on users and non-users as well, ‘boys’ meet for coffee at Mothers Instinct with no apostrophe or wives in sight. They’re old boys now, content to breathe and able to coast on Old Age Pension. They laboured long, fathered kids by un- leashing millions of apostrophes into wives, had operations via Medicare to fix things that could have meant never retiring. Considering current high price of houses in their suburb, they are now wealthy but that does not stop them breakfasting at home before venturing out for second coffees. Too late to become loose with money, they leave that to the next generation. Every boy knows what every other boy knows – they watch same TV shows – so, no serious debate. Chuckle, toss gossip, kid each other, talk sport while picking at pastries that wives wouldn’t approve. You’d think their lives had been one long joke here in big city. Sip that pricey espresso, chat, zone out then wander home for lunch. Their wives, the ‘girls’, are elsewhere for pre-coffee yoga. They also laboured long, had the babies, kept every body fed. Fact is women usually outlive men, perhaps due to mothers’ instinct.
Allan Lake is a migrant poet from Allover, Canada, who now lives in Allover, Australia. He has published poems in 24 countries. His latest chapbook of poems, entitled My Photos of Sicily, was published by Ginninderra Press.
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The December breeze had turned nippy in Bengaluru, carrying with it the aroma of roasted peanuts and freshly fried banana chips from roadside stalls. Fairy lights blinked across MG Road, and plastic Santas dangled from shopfronts. Ravi watched the sparkle through his rear-view mirror as he waited for his regular passenger, Ananya, to emerge from the Barton Centre, where she worked at a real estate firm.
“Sorry, Ravi bhaiya,” she said, sliding into the back seat. “The office party ran late. You know how these Christmas celebrations are: too much food, too little meaning.” She sighed, glancing at her half-open goody bag stuffed with unopened chips and chocolates.
Ravi smiled politely. He liked Ananya. Always punctual, always courteous, never haggling over the fare. But her words lingered. Too much food, too little meaning.
That night, after parking his autorickshaw near his rented room in Ejipura, Ravi noticed a group of slum children huddled under a flickering streetlight. They were watching a television through the open window of a well-to-do home. A Christmas carol drifted out, and the children sang along, slightly off-key.
“Santa will come!” one of the younger ones shouted.
“Arrey, fool,” another replied, “Santa only goes to rich houses.”
Their laughter carried a quiet truth. Ravi walked past them slowly, his chest tightening. What if Santa came here—just once?
The thought stayed with him.
The next morning, Ravi tied a cardboard sign inside his auto:
CHRISTMAS DONATION BOX – HELP BRING A SMILE TO CHILDREN LIVING IN SLUMS
An old plastic box sat beneath it. Some passengers glanced at it and looked away. Others smiled. A few dropped in coins or notes.
“What’s this for?” many asked.
“I want to buy small gifts for the children near my place,” Ravi explained. “Like Santa.”
An elderly woman patted his shoulder before slipping in a hundred-rupee note. “Good man. May God bless you.”
Within days, the box filled faster than Ravi had imagined. One evening, he counted the money: over three thousand rupees. More than a week’s earnings. His hands trembled slightly as he folded the notes.
At the market, he bought candy packets, crayons, and small notebooks. In a second-hand shop near Shivajinagar, he found a faded red Santa coat, a cotton beard, and a cap. It wasn’t perfect, but it would do.
On Christmas Eve, Ravi transformed his green-and-yellow auto. Fairy lights ran along the roof. Paper stars swayed gently. A hand-painted ‘Merry Christmas’ sign was fixed to the back.
His neighbours laughed. “Ravi, have you gone mad? You’re a Hindu. Why Christmas?”
Ravi grinned. “Santa doesn’t ask who you are before giving gifts, right?”
By evening, the narrow lanes were alive with whispers and giggles. When Ravi stepped out dressed as Santa, a cheer erupted.
“Santa has come! Real Santa!”
He handed out candies, crayons, and notebooks. Laughter echoed between the tin roofs, mingling with jingling auto coins and distant church bells.
A barefoot little girl with bright eyes tugged at his sleeve. “Santa uncle, will you come next year also?”
Ravi bent down, his beard slipping sideways. “Only if you promise to study well and share your chocolates.”
She nodded gravely. “Done.”
Ravi laughed, blinking back, gripped by a sudden ache in his throat.
Later that night, he removed the Santa costume and counted the remaining money. Rs 1,800 still lay in the box. Someone had quietly slipped in two Rs 500 notes during the evening crowd. Ravi sat silently for a long moment, overwhelmed.
The next morning, he went to the Hanuman temple, where he prayed every Tuesday. He placed the leftover money before the priest as a thanksgiving.
The priest, an elderly man with cataract-clouded eyes, listened patiently as Ravi explained: the happiness he had brought to the slum children with the donation box, the costume, the Christmas star.
“I know it’s not our festival, Swamiji,” Ravi said apologetically. “But I wanted to do something good.”
The priest smiled. “Tell me, Ravi, did you ask those children their religion before giving them sweets?”
“No, Swamiji.”
“And did they ask yours?”
Ravi shook his head.
“Then where is the difference?” the priest said gently. “Whether one calls Him Krishna, Allah, or Christ, God smiles when His children care for one another. This is the true spirit of dharma[1].”
He placed his hand on Ravi’s head. “May your auto always carry light, not just passengers.”
That evening, Ravi drove through Bengaluru once more. Some fairy lights on his auto had dimmed, but a few still twinkled. The donation box remained inside. Though Christmas had passed, coins continued to clink into it.
For the first time, Ravi understood that Christmas wasn’t about religion, decorations, or abundance. It was about sharing warmth in a world that often forgets to care.
The road stretched ahead, glowing with city lights that shimmered like stars. And in the soft hum of his modest auto, Ravi felt as though he carried a small piece of swarg[2] through the streets of Bengaluru.
Snigdha Agrawal (née Banerjee) is the author of five books, a lifelong lover of words, and the writer of the memoir Fragments of Time, available on Amazon worldwide. She lives in Bangalore (India).
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Poetry by Atta Shad: Translated from Balochi by Fazal Baloch
Whether morning or eventide, dawn or twilight— what remains to be said of the rainbow and raincloud, of the scented breeze, of the beloved earth? The heart seems withdrawn from all.
The heart, a patient mendicant, feels and endures each rebuff. Desire wanders beneath the scorching sun, a traveler without a destination.
Night falls, (so we’ve heard). Day breaks, (so they claim). But who can tell of day and the night? Both are deemed dead now. Joy wraps itself in mourning’s cloak.
Love’s springtide carries the green pulse of bloom. Yet to slay hope, to shatter a vow, is a catastrophe enough for any age. Love and wrath are bound in a single knot.
In the mirror of dreams the world becomes a marketplace. And in that marketplace a shadow falls over translucent melodies of spring, over verdant meadows, over pearl-laden, swaying fields.
Eyes go blind. Ears turn deaf. Only wealth gleams, only riches glitter.
What remains to be said of the rainbow and raincloud, of the scented breeze, of the beloved earth?
In this marketplace you are for sale. So am I.
The heart, a patient mendicant feels and endures each rebuff. Desire wanders in the scorching sun, a traveler without a destination.
Atta Shad(1939-1997) is the most revered and cherished modern Balochi poet. He instilled a new spirit in the moribund body of modern Balochi poetry in the early 1950s when the latter was drastically paralysed by the influence of Persian and Urdu poetry. Atta Shad gave a new orientation to modern Balochi poetry by giving a formidable ground to the free verse, which also brought in its wake a chain of new themes and mode of expression hitherto untouched by Balochi poets. Apart from the popular motifs of love and romance, subjugation and suffering, freedom and liberty, life and its absurdities are a few recurrent themes which appear in Shad’s poetry. What sets Shad apart from the rest of Balochi poets is his subtle, metaphoric and symbolic approach while versifying socio-political themes. He seemed more concerned about the aesthetic sense of art than anything else.
Shad’s poetry anthologies include Roch Ger and Shap Sahaar Andem, which were later collected in a single anthology under the title Gulzameen, posthumously published by the Balochi Academy Quetta in 2015. The translated poem is from Gulzameen.
Fazal Baloch is a Balochi writer and translator. He has translated many Balochi poems and short stories into English. His translations have been featured in Pakistani Literature published by Pakistan Academy of Letters and in the form of books and anthologies. Fazal Baloch has the translation rights of Atta Shad from the publisher.
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Many, many years ago, even before time could be stamped with a number, our earth was absolutely empty. The utter silence depressed Singh Buga, the Adi devata—the First God. He could not live in peace in his heavenly abode. So Singh Buga decided to use his magical power to fill up the void with living things. But there was no soil on which they could be nurtured. Water, water, that’s all he saw everywhere. Yes, there was soil under the water, but who could bring it up from such depths? If only he could get some earth, even a small amount, he would fill it with trees and flowers, animals and other living beings. He thought and thought and then he created a leech, a crab and a tortoise. The leech was sent first to get some soil, but he failed in his mission. How could he go down to such great depths under the water? So, Singh Buga sent the crab. But for him too, the soil was too down below. At last, he sent the tortoise. The tortoise followed his Lord’s command and plunged in. He swam far into the depths, reached the bottom and touched the earth’s core. He smelled the earth, took a deep breath, rubbed some of the earth on his body, dug up some more that lay almost inert for eons under the cold water and carried it back for his Lord. Singh Buga was delighted and soon created all the things he desired. The earth that had lain lifeless underwater for thousands of years was touched by sunlight. Wind blew over it. It became full of life. The fertile land became green and spread to the horizon. Plants flowered, trees bowed down with the weight of ripe fruits. The earth was now full of colour. The God decided to create living beings. The calls of birds, animals and insects broke the silence. A pair of milk-white swans laid two eggs. From them Singh Buga created a pair of humans—a man and a woman. He was elated that men would now inhabit the earth. He let them live in a cave and waited with bated breath for news of a new arrival. But where was the news? He waited and waited, finally feeling crestfallen. The pair were very happy roaming around in the beautiful land, but they were ignorant about the mystery of creating life themselves. So, he made them drink laopaani—rice wine—to make their bodies throb with desire.
See that couple sitting morosely in a corner on the ferry? They are no older than the young couple Singh Buga had created out of two swan eggs. But this young couple exudes no sense of happiness. They belong to this burdensome earth; not for them the serenity of the pristine world that God Singh Buga had created. True, they worship him, but in their lives there is only pain and sorrow. Hunger and the torment of a painful existence has chased them every moment. Lack of peace and resentment towards their lot were their constant companions. Adi devata could intoxicate the young couple he had brought to life with liquor and generate in them a desire to create. But for this couple, even if God Singh Buga offered them the best drink, he would only lull them physically from the pain; he would be unable to awaken in them the ancient hunger of the body. Their minds were as dry as the drought-affected earth. On that famished land, only hot tears trickled down drop by drop. The hungry earth sucked in those tears instantly.
The girl, at the cusp of youth, looked utterly dejected. The long arduous journey had drained her energy. Her eyes shut, she rested her head on the shoulder of the equally exhausted young man sitting next to her. If she opened her eyes, the bright sunlight playing on the river’s surface dazzled her and made her head spin. She was too weak to move much.
Her name was Durgi. Durgi Bhumij. An expert sculptor seemed to have lovingly carved her figure. Her statuesque body had thinned down somewhat, but strangely, though wreaked by hunger and thirst, her light brown face had not lost its charm. She was, after all, Durgi—Durga mai, Goddess Durga. She was born during the autumn festival of Durga puja, when the throbbing madal drum was beating frenziedly outside their house. Her grandmother cut the umbilical cord, gave the baby a bath and placed her on her mother’s breast and said, ‘Durga mai has come to our house.’ The old woman named her Durgi in the likeness of the Shakti Goddess.
But now, her granny’s beloved Durga mai was facing terrible times. A devastating famine had crippled their land of red earth. Its canopy of forests of mahua, sal and teak were now filled with only heart-rending cries from hungry mouths, and death.
Durgi was at an age when she could digest even chips of stone. But there was nothing to eat. The fields lay dry. The white sahibs had taken away everything. There was no water in the river for them, no forests to pick fruits from. There was no work: no field to till, no forest to forage for potatoes and yams. Entering the forest for their age-old practice of hunting was banned. As was fishing in the river next to their village. All these now belonged to ‘others’. The only word that echoed through the land was: NOTHING…NOTHING. Nothing was left for them. Rice became as costly as gold.
There had been floods in the past, even droughts. But like a mother whose annoyance with a child does not last long, Mother Nature’s anger also did not carry on forever. The earth became indulgent again, green shoots showed up joyfully once more. But the kind of famine Durgi and her people were now facing was like coming up against a formidable hill they could not surmount…
(Extracted from Moonlight Saga by Arupa Kalita Patangia, translated from Assamese by Ranjita Biswas. Published by Speaking Tiger Books 2026.)
ABOUT THE BOOK
In the lush yet brutal landscape of colonial Assam unfolds a haunting chapter of history—the rise of the tea plantations and the human cost that sustained them. Drawn by promises of Assam desh—a land of dignity, abundance, and fair wages—Adivasi families from central India are packed onto overcrowded steamers and sent upriver, where hunger, disease and death shadow every step of their journey. Among them is Durgi, a young woman whose resilience endures even in despair. With her, she carries a small bundle of marigold seeds, a fragile memory of the land of red earth she has left behind. At her side is her husband, Dosaru, the rebellious archer, bound to her by love and the shared hope of building a life of their own. However, what awaits them at Atharighat Tea Estate is no promised land. Labourers are stripped, disinfected, confined to barracks, and driven into relentless work, while sickness, fear, and muted defiance simmer beneath the ordered rows of tea bushes.
Durgi’s life takes a complicated turn over the years—an intimate affair with Fraser, the white manager of the tea garden, results in the birth of three mixed race children. Their unequal relationship exposes another unspoken truth about plantation life—the generations of similar children, many of whom, abandoned by their white ancestors, still live in Assam’s tea gardens today.
Rooted in lived experience, Moonlight Saga gives voice to the forgotten men and women who built the empire’s ‘green gold’, bearing witness to their suffering, endurance, and fragile hopes—as the British Raj begins to crumble in the shadows of India’s Independence struggle.
Originally written in Assamese, the novel is a celebrated and much-discussed work in Assam, recognised for its unflinching portrayal of plantation life and its place in the region’s collective memory. Its translation into English opens up an essential regional story to a wider readership, ensuring that the sacrifices and struggles embedded in the tea gardens are not forgotten.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Arupa Kalita Patangia is one of the best-known Assamese writers of today. She has five novels, twelve short story collections, several novellas, books for children, and translations into Assamese to her credit. In 2014, she received the prestigious Sahitya Akademi Award for her book of short stories, Mariam Austin Othoba Hira Barua.
ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR
Ranjita Biswas is an independent journalist, fiction and travel writer, and translator. Ranjita has won the KATHA translation awards several times. She has also to her credit eight published works in translation.
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We are living under fallen skies in dark basements of sorrow a world of broken elevators and stairs too steep for us to climb up from our depth of despair lying curled like a foetus for comfort waiting waiting and waiting for the skies to clear waiting waiting and waiting for the sun to fill the blanks waiting for the sun to shine again
Lynn White lives in north Wales. Her work is influenced by issues of social justice and events, places and people she has known or imagined. She is especially interested in exploring the boundaries of dream, fantasy and reality.
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The phrase “irony of fate” is usually illustrated with the image of a sailor dying of thirst in the desert. Neat. Canonical. But as a mental exercise, one might try to find others, less obvious, less obedient. For instance, history has no grave for Herodotus, the very man whom Cicero, with the confidence of a Roman who knew how to assign paternity, called the father of history.
No tomb. No urn. No reliably identified city where he saw his last sunrise, or survived (or failed to survive) upto his final day. No one knows now. No one knew three hundred years ago. And judging by the silence, no one was particularly eager to know then either.
What remains are versions. Hypotheses. And the thick, practiced silence of old Hellas.
Thurii[1] gave him his second name, his last one, acquired while still alive. Yet, Thurii never returned the favour. No monument. No plaque. No modest column leaning into oblivion. Athens, meanwhile, built him something closer to a pedagogical complex. It was recommended for students who expected from the Lyceum not only rhetorical muscle but moral posture. Almost a museum. Almost a cult.
This asymmetry conveniently feeds the supporters of the so-called Periclean Scraper theory. According to them, Herodotus died not in some conveniently barbarian elsewhere, but in radiant Athens itself. Symbolic. Elegant. As the theory goes, he was removed along with other initiates into Pericles’ grand ideas by men who had begun to feel less like assets and more like liabilities. Or worse, witnesses.
We are not inclined to dignify such conjectures by reinforcing their place in history. Still less to supplement them with later interpolations produced by interested hands. These surface periodically in northern Aegean archives as lists or tables.
Yet one fact remains stubbornly intact. Herodotus was involved in the founding of Thurii.
A “common” colony, raised almost at the site of ancient Sybaris. Almost. Instead of theatrically restoring the legendary city of pleasures and refined excess (the Sybaris that gave its name to an entire philosophy of living), Thurii was assembled in haste, shoulder to shoulder with the ruins.
It was populated by Athenian volunteers, new settlers, descendants of Sybarites by blood or coincidence. Every day they walked through the ruins of yesterday. Every evening they returned to today. Dour, makeshift Thurii, assembled without taste or patience, it was like a punishment for former luxury.
The only unresolved detail was the addressee of that punishment.
Herodotus’ role in the final phase of Athenian democracy remains opaque. So opaque that one is tempted to suspect the opacity was the point. Too many moments in his biography coincide neatly with zones where documents stop leaving footprints. From fragments, partial transcripts, unsigned notes, and a couple of discreetly scraped tablets, the following version has been reconstructed. Its coherence is provisional. Responsibility for interpretation rests with the reader.
Pericles ( 495BCE–429BCE), Ancient Greek statesman and general.Herodotus (484 BCE – 425 BCE), Ancient Greek historian and geographerFrom Public Domain
Pericles acted with the confidence of a mature servant of democracy. His concept of an external threat (Persia) was remarkably versatile. It justified emergencies, softened expansion, and wrapped ambition in collective security. The threat itself worked better than any actual invasion. While others clung to the marathon, Pericles spoke of the future. A unified alliance of poleis, decisions made swiftly, centrally, and preferably in his office.
In practice, matters were simpler. The democratic faction wanted more. Territory, tribute, votes in foreign councils. Everything else was rhetorical upholstery. Their opponents could read subtext too, so Pericles began by clearing the flanks at home. The Areopagus was “reformed,” officially. Thucydides and his circle were removed next, with minimal explanation and maximum finality.
In the end Pericles remained one of the ten Strategoi[2], exactly as the constitution prescribed. But he alone decided. The others attended meetings, signed when prompted, nodded often. Formally, it was a democracy. In reality, a political singularity noticed by everyone and addressed by no one, because addressing it would have required rewriting the rules.
Only then could the Idea of a greater Hellas[3] be carried beyond the sacred city.
Herodotus arrived in Athens the way one arrives when one’s biography has already begun to resemble the synopsis of a tragedy. Still negotiable, but increasingly reluctant to change genre. There had been an attempted coup in Halicarnassus. It failed, but failure in Athens was judged alongside the elegance of the leap itself. Exile followed. He sailed with the Athenian fleet. More excursion than service, but the checkbox mattered. What he brought back was not heroism so much as stories, trimmed, calibrated, arranged with care. Athens was perpetually hungry for narratives, especially those that began as personal experience and ended as matter of state.
Pericles learned of him long before shaking his hand. By their first meeting, Herodotus had already been tested in conversation, whetted at banquets, evaluated through third parties of both sexes and varying loyalties. When Pericles finally invited him, first informally, then into his office, Herodotus was already half-installed. They spoke like men who had been reading the same books for years and drawing incompatible conclusions. Herodotus offered careful directness, still marketable. Pericles listened, then made the small, economical gesture Athenians read fluently. This man would be allowed closer.
From that moment on, Herodotus ceased to be merely a gifted interlocutor and became part of the infrastructure. His notes were quietly reclassified as “auxiliary material for decision-making.” He began to appear at discussions of issues that officially did not exist, meetings without agendas, where unrecorded questions were discussed and ideas could not to be seen walking alone in daylight.
It was elegant. Herodotus believed he was being heard. Pericles ensured he was being used. Athens congratulated itself on the illusion of mutual benefit. In conversations with Pericles and those nearest to him, Herodotus eventually let slip two places that unsettled him by their scale, precision, and absolute dissimilarity to anything he had encountered among any monuments created by human.
It was an even octagonal platform, a night’s march east of Tyre, made of marble cracked by age, yet laid so carefully, and on such a foundation, that no one, however motivated, managed to pry out blocks or grind it down into reusable rubble. The vacant expanse, roughly the size of four Athenian quarters, stubbornly refused conversion into cheap building material. And also a pyramid sunk deep into sand, referred to as Shaytep by locals. Later it was imitated with scholarly enthusiasm by Egyptians who inherited the territory above it. Its accessible chambers suggested the scale of a ten-story palace, if such a structure could ever make sense as habitation. Immense, curiously pointless, poorly translated allegories, it had the same heavy geometry, the same sensation that it was not built for people.
The locals knew nothing. Those who called them tombs did not argue with those who believed them to be stations of the gods. But one detail struck Herodotus as well as Egyptians, Persians, border tribes – all speaking different tongues had the same conviction – structures like these existed elsewhere.
No one had seen them. No one had mapped them. Yet everyone “knew” they must be there. Drunken sailors’ tales from the inhospitable north. Evening stories about distant shores of the Pontus. No names. No coordinates. Only background noise, the shadow of something once called knowledge.
Then there was Lampon, a seer, a priest, an interpreter of higher meanings knew how to speak with the gods or at least how to simulate the effect convincingly. In Athens he was respected not as a person but as a function. He had a lifelong right to dine in the Prytaneion, where the Council of Five Hundred formalised the will of the people. Lampon had access without election as he was said to have authority delegated directly from the sky. His task was to ensure no decision passed that might anger Olympus. A dizzying appointment for a supervisor overseeing assemblies theoretically designed to lack any single supervisor.
Lampon stayed close to Pericles, intimately close. Either Pericles believed in signs, or he understood the value of myth and knew how to deploy it. The two are not mutually exclusive. On the square, the people saw a priest and heard a voice as to who stood behind that voice remained speculation.
It was almost certainly Lampon who conceived the idea, layered like honeyed pastry. He compiled all reports of megalithic structures, convened a council of moderately learned men to interpret them, dispatched colourfully dressed priests with sombre escorts to the empire’s edges. And made the big announcement.
Athens, the statement would go, had recovered forgotten pre-literate knowledge. The knowledge of how to turn piles of stone into defensive infrastructure. Or, with fewer syllables, a wonder-weapon. Against it, Persian arrows and anonymous triremes would amount to little more than wind in a vineyard.
Domestically, it was signal geometry. Parallelograms of fact intersecting triangles of legend, with the Athenian party standing at the centre beneath the slogan. We read stone better than anyone. Anyone asking unnecessary questions simply would not be invited to the next symposium.
Externally, it was never about hoisting a catapult atop a pyramid. It was about saturating every diplomatic front with a myth. Athenian hegemony was not merely foreign policy. It was access to ancient knowledge, to a power beyond imagination.
Beneath the ornamentation lay the real goal – to ensure recalcitrant polies[4] would arrive voluntarily, bread and butter in hand, at a confederation where Athens controlled the bread, the butter, and the ledger.
Pericles did not merely approve Lampon’s hypothesis. He sealed it with an official nod and an unofficial proceed until it smoked. Marketability mattered more than the truth. If more than three neighbouring poleis believed it, it would cease to be a local myth and begin to function.
Herodotus received two sets of instructions. The written one was to collect and systematise material on the Greco-Persian Wars. Paperwork for the Academy and the gullible. The oral one was simpler – to locate traces of the “ancients” across the edges of the oikoumene[5], and try not to damage them too badly while taking measurements.
What would be done with the material was not explained, not out of mistrust, but pragmatism. Knowledge without leverage becomes ballast. And Herodotus already carried enough weight — nobility. faith in democracy coupled with dependence on his own authorial voice. Throughout the expedition, whose geography we know in exhausting detail, he sent Lampon encrypted reports with exemplary regularity about the locations of structures of titanic scale and improbable forms.
The earliest reports were meticulous, almost embarrassingly enthusiastic. As if he were seeking revelation in massive forms. He analyzed slab placement, light behavior, hypothetical priestly processions, even the dietary preferences of imagined builders. But by the eighth object the style thinned. By the tenth it collapsed into two lines, as if the text itself had grown embarrassed.
Geodesy and geometry remained precise. His team continued to perform duties in full compliance with instructions and payroll. But metaphors vanished. Comparisons evaporated. The rhetoric crumbled. The stones remained. The words did not.
Lampon followed the change with mounting concern. Some blamed fatigue, barbarian cuisine, women insufficiently trained in Hellenic desire. But Lampon was not convinced.
Herodotus’ second arrival in Athens was calm, without excessive praise. His report to Lampon was scheduled without urgency, for the evening. The time when architecture becomes philosophy and political maneuvering turns into liturgy. This meeting has been reconstructed below as per the authors’ assumptions.
“We’ll pour the wine ourselves,” Lampon smiled. “So, did you bring us an oracle from the barbarians?”
“I did,” Herodotus said. “The oracle, and the barbarians.”
He did not elaborate.
Lampon pressed gently. Herodotus replied, almost apologetically. “I’m avoiding language. When you try to describe what was created outside description, you don’t move closer to understanding. You build a private labyrinth of words and find a sign reading Museum Closed.”
“At first there were words,” he admitted. “Epithets. Analogies. Cyclopean observatories. Celestial surgery. Shafts draining souls to Sirius. But these similarities are projection phantoms. My culture reflected onto something without a reflective surface.”
Lampon asked what changed.
“We see a monument like an unsolved equation and immediately insert familiar context,” Herodotus said. “Circle means cult. Twelve means zodiac. Stone means ancestors lacked better materials. And we’re satisfied because we’ve obtained an answer that stops thought. That isn’t research. It’s mental self-fertilization.”
“So you went looking for a different answer?”
“No. A different question.”
A pause, then. “If you want to understand a shadow, you don’t stare at the object. You examine the source of light. I looked at the invisible craftsmen. At the light they emitted so we could amuse ourselves by drafting plans in the shade of their buildings.”
“How do you encode emptiness?” he added. “The impulse faded. I accepted the emptiness as it was. And I began to write accordingly. As a witness, not an apologist.”
Then, unexpectedly clear, as though rehearsed to the point of premiere. “They caught the wind not for movement, but for taste.”
“That’s all?”
“I found not an explanation,” Herodotus said, “but an understanding. That if among the ancestors there was one whose mischief outweighed his fear, he said: let’s place the stones like this. By the stars. Or the other way around.”
“And others followed,” he continued. “Not because they understood, but because it felt exciting. Amusing. New. And it spread, like a fire no one meant to light, but everyone enjoyed feeding.”
Lampon pressed. “You reduce the work of titans to a game?”
“A game,” Herodotus shrugged. “Or play. Or fashion. Rituals without gods. I searched for depth where there was only the width of a moment. Sometimes a dolmen is just a dolmen. The imprint of laughter that has gone silent.”
Lampon looked inward, auditing the contents of his guest’s soul. He found no deceit. Herodotus had tried earnestly to assign cult and function to chaos. Each new structure replied: “No. Nothing. Calm down.”
By the tenth, the traveler had calmed down.
In practice, however, Thurii happened.
The initiative came from the democrats, formally from Pericles’ associates, informally perhaps from Pericles himself. Here the fog thickens. Was this merely bureaucratic arrhythmia, or the final phase of a longer operation? The sponsor colony’s paradox remained. It did not eclipse Sybaris. It multiplied despair by forcing a daily view of its ruins.
It was there that Herodotus acquired his enduring epithet, the Thurian. It was there, tradition says, that he unified his Histories, at least in the “recommended” reading. The sequence gently guides an inexperienced reader toward the conclusion that the author prioritised events that glorified Hellas. Everything before appears as clay, material to be kneaded into anonymous coating for tablets meant to record the “truly significant” milestones.
Later editors, we now know, divided the work into nine books. Another irony. A life devoted to weaving disparate accounts into a chain. Successors dismantled it into links, then displayed them in whichever sequence proved momentarily convenient.
For a time Athens mentioned Thurii only occasionally, as one recalls a long dinner with dull relatives. Then something occurred to pull Herodotus back into the field of managerial imagination.The answer is disarmingly prosaic.
The old man decided it was time. Not to die. To speak.
Publicly. Before an audience. With scrolls and a lectern, and that expression professional speakers wear just before and do you know what else? Publication was discussed. Workshops began calculating margins.
Word of this reached Lampon not as a fresh wind but as a warm exhalation of antique panic. Ready for readings was enough. He knew how easily Herodotus could forget the boundary between narration and confession when listened to attentively. The danger was not a direct accusation. Herodotus was no enemy. Far worse, he was a witness. In the vortex of his diegesis[6], scraps of geography, personal reflections, unapproved versions could be swept together. Everything Pericles had ordered to be formulated, but not pronounced.
The decision was swift. Herodotus was summoned to Athens. The pretext was patronage. A chair. An audience. A laurel wreath and a lifetime bust. Perfect timing. If there were readings, let them occur at the center of the world.
And on the way back, a stone, rain, a robber, a horse — the classic, well, age after all. In modern terms, something we would call prevention. The Greek lexicon offered a more refined word. Hygiene. If nothing else, the Hellenes knew how to keep a narrative clean. Thus, according to proponents of the Scraper theory, the true story of Herodotus ends. Pericles methodically erases associates from the commemorative board.
His work survived, though not without excisions, and the factual foundation thinned accordingly. Speculation about conjecture and truth continues to feed professional unmaskers.
Pericles never obtained his diplomatic wonder-weapon. No column trembled under an egregore’s vibration. Instead, two blocs of poleis emerged, welded by paranoia and ambition, and the Peloponnesian War followed. An internal conflict of unprecedented scale, like a culinary dispute between the two heads of a single serpent.
As if that were insufficient, a plague disembarked in the Piraeus — classical symptoms with a metaphysical aftertaste. Pericles himself exited through an emergency door politely opened by the Queen of Epidemics.
Lampon, however, seems to have drawn a different conclusion — divine retribution for attempting unauthorised access to the gods’ toy chest. He dissolved his name into topical comedies and administrative archives.
Time, as is well known, is not the enemy of knowledge, but its only victor.
The pyramids sink deeper each year, as if the earth were ashamed of their nakedness. Island statues once mistaken for fallen heroes increasingly resemble quirks of terrain. The blurrier the outline, the freer the hypothesis. The fewer the features, the louder the voices eager to explain.
Perhaps this is how history repaid Herodotus. Monuments built in the style of titans (?) simply fade just as the meaning of their existence once faded, just as Herodotus of Thurii himself faded, leaving behind only a controversial image.
Andriy Nivchuk is a Ukrainian-born author with a background in IT engineering. He spent fifteen years working as an artistic photographer in Paris and now lives in Ukraine.
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Bibliography
Herodotus (life, association with Thurii, traditional framing of the Histories)
Borderless 